Well, at least they haven’t accused me of being a Zainichi yet.
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English Books on Korea... and More!
Funny Comments
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on July 5, 2007 at 11:14 am, filed under Asides, East and Central Asia, Japan. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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10 Comments
Talk about being selective. So, whoever posted that thought it was important that you mentioned that at one point Korea had a similar relationship with China as it does now with the US (something most Koreans would love to forget) and that you used to be an English teacher (”Ooooh, evil white guy”) but forgets to mention that you enjoy wearing the Korean national clothes. Wow, talk about picking and choosing.
Actually I think you’re missing the point on why that’s being quoted — probably because machine translations never work perfectly. (I’m assuming you’re referring to the comment #3 on that thread.) The original poster theorizes that Robert’s wife is not Mongolian, but in fact Korean, and that he is only saying she is Mongolian as to appear to be neutral in issues related to both Japan and Korea. That part about the clothes was included to set the story for the next line, “My (Korean) wife…” to seemingly contradict Robert’s wife being Mongolian.
HOWEVER, notice that it says “Korean” in parenthesis, so Robert didn’t actually say that, the journalist who quoted him added it. So it’s very possible that the journalist just assumed his wife was Korean.
The original poster is also misunderstanding the English article as well. He asks, “if she (Robert’s wife) were Mongolian, why would she make her husband wear traditional Korean clothing”, but that’s not the case at all. In the article Robert wears the clothing because he likes them, while the wife disagrees and doesn’t.
The only thing that really needs attention is the complaints about the moderation (censorship is the word used in the comments). #8 talks about ‘hate speech’ towards blacks being deleted but ‘hate speech’ towards Japanese remains. I don’t remember ever seeing any racist things about blacks being posted here, but I do question the moderation policy at times. However I think someone needs to tell them (the commentators at the referenced site) that Robert doesn’t do the moderation.
And I think you miss the guy’s motives. Why would he bother highlighting the fact that Robert came in Korea to teach English?
I don’t believe I’m missing the point, Peter Pan.
I’m sure you’re not, I was referring to SomeGuyInKorea to ask his question about why the comment about the clothes was included. I’m not defending anyone, I’m answering a question.
SomeguyinKorea: It’s not the highlighted part — although it does beg the question why those sections would be highlighted — but his commentary at the end I find most amusing. And some of the comments, of course.
As far as your gyeryang hanbok is concerned, you’d better be careful in the near future, for the following note has been sent out from the incomparable Occidentalism:
I thought my stomach felt a little funny this morning…
“The original poster theorizes that Robert’s wife is not Mongolian, but in fact Korean, and that he is only saying she is Mongolian as to appear to be neutral in issues related to both Japan and Korea.”
This line of reasoning is, indeed, funny - I myself AM married to a Korean national, but few people who have ever read my comments will be tempted to conclude that I am biased in favour of the ROK…
Some who have read what I wrote accused me of being biased against the country, an implication which isn’t true, either. I merely intend to remain neutral…
Bias often does not come from the speaker or blogger, but from their critics.
Given a neutral stance, it’s quite easy to “show” bias by selective quoting. A critic merely needs to ignore the inconvenient and stress what they want to stress : bias proven !