Prof. Lee In-ho’s Royal Asiatic Society lecture on “rewriting Korean history” (mentioned on this blog here) is now available for download at Korea.com—just click on the “Royal Asiatic Society” banner on the top right sidebar. From the “hat-tip email”:
This lecture goes almost 72 minutes, but I can assure you that the time you devote watching this straight forward discourse will be highly worth your time. (I am saving the download on CD for future reference.) This is a remarkable tour de force that concisely reviews, analyzes and explains matter of factly why many young Koreans have a very warped and confused understanding of their nation in the world community.
“Highly recommended” is an understatement.
Now download it and give it a listen.
(HT to reader)
16 Comments
I’ve met her a number of times. She is simply an extraordinary person.
I tried to download it, but it was taking way too much time. Could someone summarize or point me to other online resources of Professor Lee In-ho?
Just click on it and it should play fine in the Windows Media Player — start right away and plays perfectly smoothly for me this morning… If too slow overseas, perhaps just wait until your net is flowing faster, try again…
This is very good news, that RAS Lectures finally start being online! And this particular one is a fine one to start… I’m glad that Professor Lee gave us permission to post her talk.
As said before, her first 30 minutes is just first half of it is a review of standard & well-known Korean-American history, covering events that everyone knows; it gets really interesting after that. She explains the origins and progress of the revisionist history movement, points out the problems and dangers of it, and offers both heartfelt concerns and insightful perspectives. Watch it!
Just watched the lecture. Very, very good and insightful. Even in that standard review in the first 30 minutes, I was interested to hear her link the success of pre-War communism in southern Korea to the region’s material success. I had never heard that before… the argument that because the south had relatively more wealthy people, it had more people who were educated abroad (in Japan and elsewhere), which at the time meant more exposure to Marxism.
As for more modern stuff, Prof. Lee puts a lot of the current problems on the Yushin movement/constitution, which saw a hard nationalism become institutionalized and communism oppressed/neglected at the same time (which she called the anti-communist education at the time “obscurantist”). In the 1980s, the nationalism stayed, but communism became more like forbidden fruit. Add to that more effective propaganda out of the North, and you have the basic ingredients for a radical pro-North student movement.
Otherwise, I think Sanshinseon’s review of the lecture in the original Marmot write-up (post #14) was a good explanation.
Wow, that was an interesting lecture, and I was very impressed by how honest and candid Professor Lee was. She spoke from her heart without any notes. Actually, it was more of a confession than a lecture, which was how even Professor Lee described it.
She seemed to be embarrassed by how Korea’s flawed political and educational systems have led to the anti-Americanism in South Korea and the glorification of the North Korean state by South Korean teachers, students, and others. However, she said that the incident with the MacArthur’s status seemed to wake people up to what was happening in Korea, and said that there are now forces working to correct the problem. She ended by asking the people present to be patient with Korea.
I hope this lecture is a sign of good things to come.
new confidence from economic and political successes + sheer ignorance of communism = current dynamite (and the force that drove the noh-nothings into power)
Given time, I think many South Koreans would recognize this fact since South Koreans are certainly not dumb, however the South Korean Government should take far more action against this sort of activity since it undermines their very authority or right to govern.
Exposing and discussing the motivation behind the lies and ignorance that is used to promote a particular brand of politics is not the activity of a “cold-war” mentality but a requirement for social and political integrity in any democratic society.
I only fear the activities of certain elements in South Korea and the nuclear testing of NK as a means of fomenting social unrest in South Korea. If the housing price bubble does bust due to the increasing household debt (there is the potential for this more than ever), the resulting economic distress could be used to reshape the society and public opinion (just as happened with the IMF crisis) into something more accommodating to North Korea. Considering the bits and pieces of information that is available, this sort of scenario is not far-fetched at all.
Does the audio include the last three minutes when she spoke about her research and dissertation with regards to the effects of Freemasonry on the world?
My friends and I were very impressed and happy with the presentation until that little gem slipped out.
I really hope the NGOs and others interested in the plight of the North Korean people will also QUICKLY get to understand how much broadban’s expansion in the world —– has opened up a tremendous opportunity to get the information they collect out!!!
Next, I hope the RAS videos can inspire some of the other orgs who frequently have lectures and panel discussions concerning Korea to get with the broadban revolution.
It would be a bright idea for The Korea Foundation to try to work with some of the well-known Korean Studies centers in the world to pool together videos like this in a central place like The Korea Foundation.
I know the Korea Foundation has contacts with these centers duing the year.
And it really is simple to put together. You don’t need to waste much money at all on production value. People who want to hear stuff like this care about the words spoken, not the presentation.
C-Span’s coverage of the US House of Representatives or Senate is a good example. Just put a camera on a tripod and press “record” — then upload it to a webserver with a few basic titles added — and you are good to go.
With the Korea Foundations connections, I believe it could be the right group to centralize the effort.
I know the U. of Hawaii holds a few Korea-related public lectures and/or panel discussions and the East-West Center there offers several a year as well that include Korea and things connected to Korea in East Asia.
There really is no excuse for such a pooling of current work on Korea being done.
It certainly shouldn’t be because of costs.
It also certainly shouldn’t be because of lack of technical skills. You don’t have to hire an outside company to do this stuff. You can find college students on campus who know enough about video cameras and video editing to do a good enough job. (If I can do it, most anybody who tries can as well).
I guess there could be some problem is professors or other specialists don’t want their work available like that in the public domain - but what percentage of profs would really be like that? I would think most of the profs I’ve had over the years, and there have been a whole lot, would be fine with having their message and learning (which took them so long to build) were reaching a wider and wider audience.
If a high percentage of profs would object to allowing such videos to be put up like that - it would say something rather sorry about academia….
Anyway……..I thank the RASKB very much for this
and I hope it is the start of many other orgs like theirs following their lead…..
Grumpy,
The recording does include the Freemason reference, but I didn’t think she was descending into Wackoland. I thought it was just in connection with her dissertation on secret societies and their influence in “Germany” and late Tsarist Russia.
Think we’ve got a troll with #11.
The video, sadly, no longer seems to be available at the URL indicated. Does anyone know an alternative URL where I can download this?
Thanks in advance.
It’s there; I just downloaded it.
From this homepage
http://en.korea.com/
look on the right for a blue and white button saying Royal Asiatic…etc.
My own lecture on Jiri-san last night was recorded, and they certainly have my permission to post it, but since i had the lights off to show pictures of what i was talking about for about 75% of the time, i don’t know how it will come out. I suppose it will be posted in the same place in about a month…
I’m glad to hear the Jirisan lecture will be put up. I can never seem to get a break to hear these lectures.