The Marmot’s Hole

6 Comments

1. mins0306
   Posted April 20, 2007 at 10:14 am | Permalink

   Expat Jane nailed it right at the spot.

   As a Korean who have spent his childhood in the Middle East, the collective nationalism, fortunately, wasn’t drilled into me and to this day I do not comprehend nor accept it. The collective nationalism, IMO, is something that is doing more harm than good to the Korean people. Fortunately, not every Korean follows the party line when it comes to the above mentioned collective nationalism.

   After the tragic incident of 2002, I was having lunch with two coworkers, one female and one male. The lady was and is still is a closet DLP supporter and she spent the entire lunch mouthing the line almost every Korean at that time was mouthing. I’ve had enough and I told her that she and the rest of the country for that matter was making a too big deal out of the tragic accident. I added that it was all right to mourn the girls and symphatize with their families, but it was not all right to let ourselves get whipped up into an anti-American frenzy. What she said after that I will not mention here, the male worker who didn’t say anything for the entire time looked at me and said “You shouldn’t say those things in public. Some people might decide that you are not worth alive.” The lady’s verbal abuse was one thing but to hear from someone I know saying that my life maybe in danger for saying something which I truly believed was rational….well.

   Anyways, that evening at home I was talking with my mom about the incident. She simply said “It is true that we are making a big fool out of ourselves and it seems I’m not the only one who thinks that way. Today I went to the Namdaemun market and the merchants there were saying that it wasn’t the US Army’s fault and considering that there were big rumbling armored vehicles in the convoy, the girls should have gotten themselves out of the way as soon as they spotted the US convoy coming down the road”

2. SomeguyinKorea
   Posted April 20, 2007 at 10:45 am | Permalink

   I talked about it this with one of my Korean friends yesterday. He said it’s inevitable that some people who will see this as an opportunity to fan more anti-Americanism. He hinted that the people who do so are probably the same losers who waste an awful lot of energy hating China and Japan. He believes there’s nothing we can do about it but ignore it. It’s a vicious cycle that will never end because there are some like minded people in China, Japan and the US. They all feed off each other.

3. estebanko
   Posted April 20, 2007 at 11:01 am | Permalink

   Wow, two insightful comments in a row without any dash of finger pointing. What’s the world coming to?

4. hardyandtiny
   Posted April 20, 2007 at 12:38 pm | Permalink

   Look at me, I’m Korean! Something happened and a Korean was involved, and now, as a Korean I must suffer. I will now have tremendous stress as a Korean student and all Koreans will have to constantly worry about what Americans think of Koreans. Look at me. Look at my society. See how much we must suffer. We are like this because we have suffered so much through history. We have been constantly invaded and colonized for thousands of years and that is why we are like this………….Did you hear what I said? Hey! Hey! I’m Korean! I’m Korean!

5. JiMong
   Posted April 21, 2007 at 7:15 am | Permalink

   “….the people who do so are probably the same losers who waste an awful lot of energy hating China and Japan. He believes there’s nothing we can do about it but ignore it. It’s a vicious cycle that will never end because there are some like minded people in China, Japan and the US. They all feed off each other…”

   Very good points.

6. SomeguyinKorea
   Posted April 21, 2007 at 11:28 am | Permalink

   JiMong,

   The sad thing about it is that my studied to be a reporter but is unable to find a stable job in that field. Being a married man, he’s forced to work in an unrelated field to support his family.