If you go to The Daily NK, you can see a post about a major NK Human Rights Conference in Seoul starting (or on) the 21st of this month. That’s 9 days away…
There has been some video of the Washington NKHR Week making its way onto the net but not much. LINK
I am asking if any of you in Korea have the desire to go to the conference events, and have a video camera and tripod, and a willingness to record some of the events?
I put messages up like this back in 2005, with about as much time left until the conference, and we were able to get up some coverage of those events - more than you can find anywhere else…
I wish these groups would follow the lead of South Korean society as a whole and get with the broadban revolution and put videos of these things up on the internet for anybody to see anytime. I think it would help get the message out, and it is cheap (even free) to do so….
C-Span finally got up some footage from the NK Human Rights Week held recently in Washington. The link below is to a RealMediaPlayer vid of North Korean defectors speaking at the Defense Forum Foundation.
The most hawkish people I’ve heard on NK have been the defectors. The only other person I can remember calling for bringing down the regime even if it means military action was a Russian Korea specialist who said he understood living under that kind of regime, and the Soviets weren’t even as bad as Pyongyang in his lifetime.
No regime, none, never, ever can be brought down from the outside. Do whatever you can to influence it, but regime change must come from inside. There is no other way.
Below is a link to an interesting article on the origins of the japanese language. here’s a very intersting snipet:
‘During the early Yayoi era, probably the language of South Koreans and our proto-Japanese were identical. But as time went by, the language on the island started to be influenced by the phonetics of native islanders. Island people didn’t have consonant ending syllables so they couldn’t hear them clearly. Susumu Oono show many examples to corresponding words.
mil -> midu (water), nunmil -> namida (tear),
nat -> nata (hatchet), pat -> pata (farm),
kot -> kusi (spit), sal -> sa (arrow) — /sa/ of /ikusa/
kama = kama (sickle), mail -> mura (village)
(Bart mentioned here that the evidence is getting pretty strong that early Korean didn’t have consonant-final syllables either.)
Between Ancient Korean and Ancient Japanese, over 20 phonetical corresponding rules were found:
k-k, s-s, s-ch, t-t, n-n, P(F)-p, m-m, s.z-r.l, etc.
The basic vocabulary of body part names from Korea didn’t replace Japanese words, but it was transformed into verbs, related to the part of body originally in ancient Korean.
ip (mouth) -> ipu (to say)
ko (nose) -> kagu (to smell)
kui (ear) -> kiku (to hear)
al (egg) -> aru (to be born), etc.
(examples are from “Origin of the Japanese Language” by Susumu Oono)’
ps sperwer, could you give me some non chinese sources in english that state that goguryeo is not part of korea’s history? i’m having a hard time finding them. you seem to know since ou say goguryeo ain’t korean. thanks.
i dunno if there have been some big changes that i missed but the site seems pretty crap the last month or so.
i don’t get to visit much these days because of work but the site just doesn’t seem worth visiting much anymore. before there was always something worth reading but doesn’t seem to be anymore.
#12: You’re making funny, right? If not, we have the 3rd Reich (hell, even the 2nd Reich), the 3rd Republic, Tojo’s war cabinet, Pol Pot’s bad boys, Mussolini (OK, that was sort of internal, but outside pressure had a bit of an influence), Antonescu, Haile Selassie, Kurt Schuschnigg, Quisling, numerous others, and that’s just the 20th Century. Yeah, you’re pulling my leg.
Wedge is right. In Germany it is sort of proverbial to state:
A dictatorial régime is almost impossible to topple from the inside, unless it has given itself up already (as was the case in the former East Germany).
#24. We have been muzzled by the thought police, or as I like to put him; The Shadow. Beware of the Black Hand of the Blog, or your comment will sleep with the fishes.
Re my pathetic #12 above, what a dumbass post, if I do say so myself.
My only concrete idea for regime change in North Korea is the Smelly Death Strategy. Idealists from all over the world invade North Korea by land, sea, and air. Each of us carries a bag of rice as a peace offering. Of course, we will be killed, but that’s the point. Our bodies will be stacked up higher and higher, faster than they can be buried even with Chollima-brand tractors. And we will stink! At some point, there will be so many of us, and we’ll stink so bad, that the North Korean people will have to take down Kim Jong-Il and his cronies in order to survive our furious onslaught of stench.
Esteemed Marmot. Far Outliers has a post on trade in East Asia from the 8th thru 12th (?) centuries C.E.. Some mention is made of Silla’s trade with China and Japan. Pity I can no longer find a link to you on the main page. Hope it’s not my dyslexia.
Attention angry people,” Lambourn wrote on his site. “I will take this game down from Newgrounds (where the game is hosted) if the donation amount reaches $1,000. I’ll take it down from (Lambourn’s Web site) if it reaches $2,000 and I will apologize if it reaches $3,000.
Guy’s got big balls for such a crappy game… to say nothing of the poor taste…
You may already be familiar with this particular article written by Jared Diamond, but if you aren’t, you should definitely give it a read. http://discovermagazine.com/19.....eroots1455 He advocates the theory that the language of Goguryeo–different from that of Silla which evolved into modern Korean–bears a strong resemblance to Old Japanese.
Since Diamond is not a linguist, he fails to mention that while Goguryeo language did differ from that of Silla, it was similar to that of Baekje. After all, Baekje was founded by Onjo, the son of Jumong, the founder of Goguryeo. And of course, as you undoubtedly know, and as documented in Japan’s own Nihongi and admitted by Akihito himself, the Japanese royal family traces its heritage to the family line of King Muryong of Baekje.
Anyway, I digress. The most widely accepted theory in linguistic circles as of now is that, as Diamond has suggested, Japanese is indeed a relative of the now extinct languages of Goguryo, Baekje, and Buyeo. Sometimes all of these four languages are grouped together in a hypothetical language family referred to as the “Buyeo languages.” In fact, a guy named Christopher Beckwith at Indiana University did an impressive job of compiling a lexicon of cognates between the Goguryeo and Japanese languages in his book “Koguryo: The Language of Japan’s Continental Relatives.” They do sell the book at Amazon but for about $120. I was fortunate enough to read it as a part of my research at the East-West Center at the Uni. of Hawaii. As with most books on linguistics, it can be incredibly dense but is definitely worth the effort.
The interesting thing about the debate surrounding Goguryeo is that China’s ridiculous claims actually give some fodder to the ultra-right Japanese anthropologists in who pointedly reject any ancestral, linguistic influence from Korea. The more the identity of Goguryeo can be obfuscated–Beckwith kind of treats Goguryeo as its own culture, neither Korean nor Chinese–the more it serves the ludicrous claims of Japanese academia that the Japanese, while clearly descended from settlers from the Asian mainland, are most definitely not related to the Koreans.
I’m hardly a Korean nationalist. In fact, I begrudgingly refer to myself as an ethnic Korean only when pressed because I really believe that we should no longer subject to ourselves to petty emotions like nationalism and jingoism. But nations as entities have existed and do exist, and I am interested in the truth. And the truth is that Goguryeo was a Korean culture–Wang Geon, the founder of Goryeo would not have named his country after Goguryeo if it was a Chinese state. And all research give strong credence to the theory that modern Japanese is a descendant of the now dead Goguryeo and Baekje languages. But of course, the powerful get to present their version of history, and that is why you still see in most generalist references this absolutely unscientific crap about Japanese being a language isolate.
34 Comments
Hannara party is really in trouble. The fight between Park and Lee has no easy solution.
This can split the party, which may not be a bad thing.
The next train test between the South and North is scheduled for this Thursday. What are the odds it takes place as scheduled? I’d say about even.
Although I’d love to see Lucy pull the football away from Charlie Brown again, as one online wag put it.
Has anyone gathered any links with real numbers/forecasts on the FTA? Please post ‘em. Thanks!
#2: My money’s on Lucy pulling the football away.
If you go to The Daily NK, you can see a post about a major NK Human Rights Conference in Seoul starting (or on) the 21st of this month. That’s 9 days away…
There has been some video of the Washington NKHR Week making its way onto the net but not much.
LINK
I am asking if any of you in Korea have the desire to go to the conference events, and have a video camera and tripod, and a willingness to record some of the events?
Dec 2005 Seoul
I put messages up like this back in 2005, with about as much time left until the conference, and we were able to get up some coverage of those events - more than you can find anywhere else…
I wish these groups would follow the lead of South Korean society as a whole and get with the broadban revolution and put videos of these things up on the internet for anybody to see anytime. I think it would help get the message out, and it is cheap (even free) to do so….
nobody, nobody wants to comment on Kirin’s drink, Mets and Mets Hard?
Gosh, they must just come here to stir up talk when it’s about East Sea, Dokdo, Comfort Women.
WJK, have you tried looking for it on the web?
Who needs to ogle kiwi-sized titties when there’s a far juicier NSFW video over at Japan Probe:
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1723
Sonagi, You have go way over the line!
yes, I tried. You know how you find out more about Korean stuff by using a Korean site and reading about it in Korean?
Kind of the situation here with Kirin Mets and Kirin Mets Hard and all the variations. Very little about it in English.
C-Span finally got up some footage from the NK Human Rights Week held recently in Washington. The link below is to a RealMediaPlayer vid of North Korean defectors speaking at the Defense Forum Foundation.
The last speaker is rather powerful…
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter042707_korea.rm
The most hawkish people I’ve heard on NK have been the defectors. The only other person I can remember calling for bringing down the regime even if it means military action was a Russian Korea specialist who said he understood living under that kind of regime, and the Soviets weren’t even as bad as Pyongyang in his lifetime.
No regime, none, never, ever can be brought down from the outside. Do whatever you can to influence it, but regime change must come from inside. There is no other way.
10# If it means that much to you I can ask my Japanese friend to get on it. What would you like to know?
Below is a link to an interesting article on the origins of the japanese language. here’s a very intersting snipet:
‘During the early Yayoi era, probably the language of South Koreans and our proto-Japanese were identical. But as time went by, the language on the island started to be influenced by the phonetics of native islanders. Island people didn’t have consonant ending syllables so they couldn’t hear them clearly. Susumu Oono show many examples to corresponding words.
mil -> midu (water), nunmil -> namida (tear),
nat -> nata (hatchet), pat -> pata (farm),
kot -> kusi (spit), sal -> sa (arrow) — /sa/ of /ikusa/
kama = kama (sickle), mail -> mura (village)
(Bart mentioned here that the evidence is getting pretty strong that early Korean didn’t have consonant-final syllables either.)
Between Ancient Korean and Ancient Japanese, over 20 phonetical corresponding rules were found:
k-k, s-s, s-ch, t-t, n-n, P(F)-p, m-m, s.z-r.l, etc.
The basic vocabulary of body part names from Korea didn’t replace Japanese words, but it was transformed into verbs, related to the part of body originally in ancient Korean.
ip (mouth) -> ipu (to say)
ko (nose) -> kagu (to smell)
kui (ear) -> kiku (to hear)
al (egg) -> aru (to be born), etc.
(examples are from “Origin of the Japanese Language” by Susumu Oono)’
http://users.tmok.com/~tumble/jpp/japor.html
ps sperwer, could you give me some non chinese sources in english that state that goguryeo is not part of korea’s history? i’m having a hard time finding them. you seem to know since ou say goguryeo ain’t korean. thanks.
railwaycharm, sorry for bothering you.
I’d just like to know what’s the difference between Mets and Mets Hard.
thanks
WJK: This is what my friend came back with.
Kirin: headquarter - makes alcoholic drinks
kirin beverage corp.: subsidary or group company -makes non-alcholic drinks like a tea etc.
there seems to be a one called “Kirin Mets Hard Gingerale” talked on the someone else’s blog in 1996. But i do not see the product on the website.
thank you very much, Mr. Railwaycharm. I appreciate it.
WJK, if I were a betting man i would say the hard has alcohol, the mets does not.
Sorry for the double post. You are most welcome WJK.
Will the Marmot be turning Gravatars back on any time soon?
Hussein’s regime came down from the outside….
Some Korean kids added a Dokdo protest to the “free hugs” thing, opening a whole new frontier for petty nationalism:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/kore.....hp?t=87082
Here’s a great program for people learning Korean (or Japanese or Chinese etc):
http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx
“POPjisyo is a web based pop-up dictionary for Japanese, Chinese, Korean” It works pretty good.
marmot
i dunno if there have been some big changes that i missed but the site seems pretty crap the last month or so.
i don’t get to visit much these days because of work but the site just doesn’t seem worth visiting much anymore. before there was always something worth reading but doesn’t seem to be anymore.
maybe its just a slow period or maybe just me.
thats my feedback anyway.
#12: You’re making funny, right? If not, we have the 3rd Reich (hell, even the 2nd Reich), the 3rd Republic, Tojo’s war cabinet, Pol Pot’s bad boys, Mussolini (OK, that was sort of internal, but outside pressure had a bit of an influence), Antonescu, Haile Selassie, Kurt Schuschnigg, Quisling, numerous others, and that’s just the 20th Century. Yeah, you’re pulling my leg.
Wedge is right. In Germany it is sort of proverbial to state:
A dictatorial régime is almost impossible to topple from the inside, unless it has given itself up already (as was the case in the former East Germany).
#24. We have been muzzled by the thought police, or as I like to put him; The Shadow. Beware of the Black Hand of the Blog, or your comment will sleep with the fishes.
Re my pathetic #12 above, what a dumbass post, if I do say so myself.
My only concrete idea for regime change in North Korea is the Smelly Death Strategy. Idealists from all over the world invade North Korea by land, sea, and air. Each of us carries a bag of rice as a peace offering. Of course, we will be killed, but that’s the point. Our bodies will be stacked up higher and higher, faster than they can be buried even with Chollima-brand tractors. And we will stink! At some point, there will be so many of us, and we’ll stink so bad, that the North Korean people will have to take down Kim Jong-Il and his cronies in order to survive our furious onslaught of stench.
Esteemed Marmot. Far Outliers has a post on trade in East Asia from the 8th thru 12th (?) centuries C.E.. Some mention is made of Silla’s trade with China and Japan. Pity I can no longer find a link to you on the main page. Hope it’s not my dyslexia.
http://faroutliers.blogspot.com/
Again with the flag-eating protestor:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....id=2875636
Mmm…Chinese flag…delicious
I could’ve sworn I saw a discussion a couple days ago on this site about a Korean creating a VA-Tech shooting video game. Well, I read this today:
http://news.com.com/8301-10784.....47-1_3-0-5
For those that are curious, this leads to the actual game:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/378086
Attention angry people,” Lambourn wrote on his site. “I will take this game down from Newgrounds (where the game is hosted) if the donation amount reaches $1,000. I’ll take it down from (Lambourn’s Web site) if it reaches $2,000 and I will apologize if it reaches $3,000.
Guy’s got big balls for such a crappy game… to say nothing of the poor taste…
Pawikirogi,
You may already be familiar with this particular article written by Jared Diamond, but if you aren’t, you should definitely give it a read. http://discovermagazine.com/19.....eroots1455 He advocates the theory that the language of Goguryeo–different from that of Silla which evolved into modern Korean–bears a strong resemblance to Old Japanese.
Since Diamond is not a linguist, he fails to mention that while Goguryeo language did differ from that of Silla, it was similar to that of Baekje. After all, Baekje was founded by Onjo, the son of Jumong, the founder of Goguryeo. And of course, as you undoubtedly know, and as documented in Japan’s own Nihongi and admitted by Akihito himself, the Japanese royal family traces its heritage to the family line of King Muryong of Baekje.
Anyway, I digress. The most widely accepted theory in linguistic circles as of now is that, as Diamond has suggested, Japanese is indeed a relative of the now extinct languages of Goguryo, Baekje, and Buyeo. Sometimes all of these four languages are grouped together in a hypothetical language family referred to as the “Buyeo languages.” In fact, a guy named Christopher Beckwith at Indiana University did an impressive job of compiling a lexicon of cognates between the Goguryeo and Japanese languages in his book “Koguryo: The Language of Japan’s Continental Relatives.” They do sell the book at Amazon but for about $120.
I was fortunate enough to read it as a part of my research at the East-West Center at the Uni. of Hawaii. As with most books on linguistics, it can be incredibly dense but is definitely worth the effort.
The interesting thing about the debate surrounding Goguryeo is that China’s ridiculous claims actually give some fodder to the ultra-right Japanese anthropologists in who pointedly reject any ancestral, linguistic influence from Korea. The more the identity of Goguryeo can be obfuscated–Beckwith kind of treats Goguryeo as its own culture, neither Korean nor Chinese–the more it serves the ludicrous claims of Japanese academia that the Japanese, while clearly descended from settlers from the Asian mainland, are most definitely not related to the Koreans.
I’m hardly a Korean nationalist. In fact, I begrudgingly refer to myself as an ethnic Korean only when pressed because I really believe that we should no longer subject to ourselves to petty emotions like nationalism and jingoism. But nations as entities have existed and do exist, and I am interested in the truth. And the truth is that Goguryeo was a Korean culture–Wang Geon, the founder of Goryeo would not have named his country after Goguryeo if it was a Chinese state. And all research give strong credence to the theory that modern Japanese is a descendant of the now dead Goguryeo and Baekje languages. But of course, the powerful get to present their version of history, and that is why you still see in most generalist references this absolutely unscientific crap about Japanese being a language isolate.
“I
am
interested
in
truth…”