Several papers have run stories about the Korea University doctorial student, Seo Kyoung-duk and his use of modern mass marketing techniques in addressing issues such as Dokdo, placing Korean museum guidebooks in major museums in New York and Washington, DC and the Japanese Army’s Korean comfort women. Seo intends to take on the Northeast Project and its misrepresentation of Korean history as being Chinese. Here is a korea.net link as well.
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31 Comments
It appears he’s also an expert at self-promotion.
I don’t know why this guy is wasting his efforts, after the Dokdo Rider project has corrected all foreigners’ misunderstandings.
I find it ironic that this guy is spending all his efforts and other peoples’ money to put guidebooks in American museums when one, who resides in Korea, has a hard time trying to find good info about Korean culture and interesting places to go in Korea. I mean Robert does a better job than this guy and it surely doesn’t cost USD 50,000 to upload the great photos showing the side of Korea, most of us never knew existed.
The timing of this article is quite ironic, too. As you mentioned in your blog, Brendon, the Korean government has essentially killed a bill that would have potentially improved the status of foreigners in Korea. One would think that the most logical way to further the image of this country would be to pass laws that protect its minorities (foreigners alone make up close to 2% of the Korean population now). After all, a country is only as great as it treats its minorities, or something like that.
Mins, perhaps Seo’s politics are appealing to the kind of people that think non-Koreans are interested in Korean issues as opposed to the virtues and culture of Korea, thus the korea.net article. The ad for the comfort women was a pretty well done job, IMHO since it raised the public awareness of the issue in the US. I only hope Seo has more luck with the Northeast Project since that sort of politics should keep him busy for a while.
I liked the museum guidebooks too.
#5,
I like the guidebooks idea as long as they present the facts in an unbiased manner and use proper English.
Self-promotion and long-nursed national inferiority complex aside, it’s certainly a step in the right direction from producing pictures of Pakistanis (who probably only spoke Farsi) looking at Korean nationalistic slogans written in Korean and broken English. But, I still think that a greater asset to Korea would be a stronger anti-discrimination law, not a strategically placed guidebooks.
correction…not strategically placed guidebooks.
What a load of crap!
“In the meeting, he showed his deep knowledge of the museum, which he had studied for two months by memorizing 1,000 pages of information he downloaded from the Internet and reading some 20 books.”
How much says he DIDN’T memorize 1,000 pages of information?
#8,
The reporter is embellishing the story. My guess is that he wisely did his homework. I’ve ‘read’ so many books in graduate school (you learn to read for specific information). I’m sure he used the same strategy.
I agree with Someguy in regards to the guidebooks, but one also asks why not here too? I mean if one were to go to a museum here in Seoul, one would realize that English descriptions of the exhibits are somewhat lacking.
R. Eglin is right in that Seo’s beliefs are probably more tuned to reaching out to non Koreans overseas, but IMO he should look at the things inside before he reaches for the things outside. For example, the comfort women issue. What Japan did to the comfort women during WW2 was atrocious, but one also doesn’t have to go far to figure out that a former S. Korean president more or less sold them out in the name of economic development, forty years ago.
Now I’ve run into a lot of Koreans like Seo in the past, and was disappointed that they were more interested in showboating, instead of doing what they believe in. I’ve never met Seo and thus will reserve judgement, but I hope he’s not one of the showboaters.
How much says that quote is fabricated?
Korean historical claims to “Dokdo” are essentially blatant lies, which is why Korea is forced to rely on BS artists, I mean “PR experts,” like Seo.
And for Korea’s “comfort women” accusations against Japan, I suspect that, like Dokdo, much of that are also lies, half-truths, or exaggerations. With all the Korean prostitutes that lived around Korean and US army camps in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, is it really that difficult for people to believe that there were also such women in the 1940s?
As for China’s Northeast Project, I am curious to see how Seo and Korea handle that one.
#12,
BS or not, they have the island so it’s theirs.
SomeguyinKorea,
Korea’s occupation of “Dokdo” does not change the fact that Korea is lying about her historical connections to the island, which should cause people to suspect other Korean historical claims, including claims about Korean comfort women and Korea’s colonial period.
Anyone who believes what Korean historians say about Korea’s history with Japan without confirming it with original documents are just stupid.
As I was saying, BS or not, I still think the possession of Dokdo is a forgone conclusion.
One thing, though. I think you might want to be a bit more cautious of what you allow in the comments section of my website. If I worked for a sneaky government organization or a corporation and I wanted to discredit your research and/or use it to flame anti-Korean sentiment, I would flood your website with hateful comments left by ‘Japanese’ readers.
Dear Japanophile gbevers of occidentalism, you can argue all you want about Dokdo but it won’t make the slightest difference. In the end the evidence clearly points to Korean ownership. Korean claims are much much stronger than the delusional claims by the Japanese.
Japanese claims on Dokdo do not go beyond the late 1890s at the earliest compared to the many centuries by the Koreans. Even Japanese documents from both the Meiji government and the Shogunate mention Korean ownership of Dokdo and its much longer claim. For example in 1869 the Meiji government reported that the Shogunate did not have any records or claims on Dokdo whereas the Koreans did.
Still not with me? The Japanese State Council in 1877 admitted to Korean ownership of Dokdo. This pretty much shoots down EVERY SINGLE Japanese (as well as your) claim on Dokdo.
#12. In a different setting and context there are people similar to you and they are called Holocaust Deniers. How dare you say such things when there are living witnesses to testify for the atrocities. Yes there probably were many prostitutes back then, given how destitute the economical situation in Korea was. But the big difference between prostitutes and Comfort Women is consent of will. That’s all that separates rape from having sex. They were held at gunpoint to do this.
These women weren’t confined to Korea, they came all over from south east asia. Even a few women from the Dutch colonies were involved. Is your doubt for Korea’s accounts of its own history is so strong to deny even their accounts? Considering that Korea was the closest and one of the first colonies of Japan under the strongest rule, it would be easy to see that the extent of their monstrous exploitation would have been the greatest here.
Try making the same allegations after you actually READ one of the testimonials. You would become sickened by the rashness of the comments you’ve made. If not, you are a monster.
“Seo intends to take on the Northeast Project and its misrepresentation of Korean history as being Chinese.”
Now all we need is for someone to take on Seo and his misrepresentation of Japanese history, as well as Takeshima.
SomeguyinKorea,
I see you were telling the truth when you wrote up above that you read very selectively in “graduate school.” Whether Korea’s occupation of “Dokdo” is ultimately determined to be legal or not is unimportant to me, but telling the truth about the history of the island is important to me.
If you were referring to my Web site (dokdo-or-takeshima.blogspot.com), then you do not have to worry because I monitor my comments section fairly carefully and will delete any comment that crosses the line one way or other.
VG866,
You can spew all the Korean Dokdo BS bait you want because I am going to take your advice and not waste my time on you.
Starcraft Gosu,
I have read some of the testimonies by some of the Korean comfort women and there were inconsistencies in their stories, which suggests they were coached. Korea tries to lump their comfort women in with the comfort women from other countries, but there was a big difference. Korean and Japanese comfort women supported Japan’s war effort while the other women did not.
I do not know this issue very well, but there were advertisements in Korean newspapers recruiting comfort women. If Japan had simply kidnapped Korean women to work as comfort women, then there would have been no need to advertise and there would have been not need to pay Korean parents for their daughters. Also, there were articles in Korean newspapers talking about Japanese police cracking down on Korean and Japanese civilian recruiters who did mislead and kidnap women, which is something that happens even today in Korea and other places.
I am not saying that all of Korea’s comfort women were prositutes, but without other supporting evidence, how do we know who were the prostitutes and who were not? An old prostitute can lie just as well as a young one, especially when she benefits from it.
Korea has been engaged in a smear campaign against Japan and has used Dokdo and the Comfort Women in that campaign. I know Korea has been lying about Dokdo, so if she could lie about Dokdo, then she could also lie about the comfort women and Korea’s colonial period.
I am a quiet, engineering guy who doesn’t usually pitch in during a political discussion. I am at the office on a Sunday evening, and wasted enough time as it is, but your gross accusations are just too much for me to just pass by.
“Korean and Japanese comfort women supported Japan’s war effort while the other women did not.”
Now you are the one making the wrong kind of lumping. How can that even be remotely true? The Koreans had nothing to be gained from this war the Japanese started. If some of them took bullets instead of your men and ran your factories, it was because that was the only way for them to survive. If this counts as “supporting” the war, the same goes for the Jews at Schindler’s factory.
“If Japan had simply kidnapped Korean women to work as comfort women, then there would have been no need to advertise and there would have been not need to pay Korean parents for their daughters.”
Like the men, Korean women were looking to sign up for jobs where they were willing to work at meager wages. In the process, some of them were funneled into the ranks of Comfort Women. Others were sold to civil recruiters by evil uncles and parents like you’ve said. But do you really think that having imbursed their relatives under a slavery contract justifies what the Japanese did to them? This was slavery of the worst kind, and the crimes the civil recruiters committed were at most petty, compared to the wrong doings of the Japanese army.
“I am not saying that all of Korea’s comfort women were prositutes, but without other supporting evidence, how do we know who were the prostitutes and who were not?”
I seriously doubt that even a significant portion of Comfort Women from Korea were prostitutes, as was the case for Japanese Comfort Women. But what your saying is equivalent to claiming that prostitutes can not be raped. Prostitutes or not, they were subject to unspeakably abject conditions which involved in some cases three dozen men a day and where the only medicine was disinfectants for ripped vaginas. Even IF they were prostitutes, do you think anyone in their sane mind would allow themselves to go through this? No amount of money will possibly compensate this. But do you think they were compensated in the middle of a war where the Koreans had to give up tin pots to make up for the lack of resources the Japanese were facing? This was sexual slavery.
Give it a rest. The Comfort Women existed. The analogy has been drawn many times before, but I’ll invoke it again. The Jews were subject to even worse atrocities by the Germans, but seemingly there is no movement by the Jews to “smear” Germany, a country where denials of the Holocaust is punishable under federal law. This is so much in contrast with Japan and her war crimininal tributes and people like you.
Ultraman?
“cautious of what you allow in the comments section of my website.”
Wow, that came out strange. I first started with, “If I were you, I’d…” but then changed it because I didn’t want to change the following sentence, which I felt was just right the way it was.
In any case Gbevers, there’s no need to be testy. I had apparently misjudged you because I was under the impression that occidentalism.org was yours. My apologies.
PS. To say I had ‘misjudged you’ is probably not the best choice of words. Misundersood is probably better.
Starcraft Gosu (Starcraft Master),
As I mentioned above, I have read some of the testimonies of Korea’s comfort women, and I remember one from a couple of years back who said that she and the other women she worked with used to to get excited and cheer when they got news of Japanese victories in the war. She excuses her actions by saying that she was young at the time and believed that she was Japanese. She said that she admitted this because she had to be honest about her feelings at the time.
There were probably many women, just like the woman I just mentioned, who thought that their service as comfort women not only benefited their families, but also their country, which just happened to be Japan at the time.
In the 1970s, Korean officials used to tell Korean prostitutes servicing US soldiers that they were also helping their country. In other words, they were told that screwing American soldiers was a patriotic act.
Also in the 1970s, I remember that Korean pimps used to lure young women from the provinces with ads in magazines promising good-paying jobs as waitresses in American clubs. When the girls arrived, they would quickly put them in debt and then was soon forced to pay off that debt by selling their bodies. If they tried to run away, the Korean police would help bring them back because they were indentured to their pimps. So even in the 1970s and ’80s, Korea had a sex slave system. That is probably one reason why the comfort women issue did not become an issue until the mid 1990s, after Korea had essentially started importing her “comfort women” from places like the Philippines.
Everybody, just ignore Mr.Bevers the Japanophile. If Japan claims the sky is theirs so Korea should stop breathing, Mr.Bevers will attempt to prove it for Japan. It’s just that Japan is a good conductor material for his anti Koreanism. It’s no use arguing with this man. In fact it’s useless arguing with someone over history because no one is going change their minds. I just wonder how Mr. Bevers is still managed to be employed in Korea when he whined to the media few months back that he was being run out of the country because of his views.
Re: the comparison of Korean and Japanese “comfort women”:
Where is the evidence that most of the Japanese “comfort women” had voluntarily chosen to be employed as sex providers at the front lines?
Mr. Bevers, you are one sick man. I couldn’t care less for the island dispute between Japan and Korea. But your sophistry to justify war atrocities made me realize just how our species is characterized by forgetfulness and is doomed to repeat its past mistakes. When that time comes, I hope your children will be on the receiving end.
#26. I’ve never said that; I’ve said they were mostly prostitutes. Comfort women were composed mostly of prostitutes of various nationalities at first. Japan stopped issuing visas for their prostitutes because apparently they tarnished the empire’s image. With that and the sources of prostitutes from other countries drying up, they turned to girls from their own colonies.
Japan has a lot of gall to even contest Dokdo. One, they don’t have a case as the 1877 Japanese State Council evidence shows. But, for arguments sake, let’s imagine they did. Little dokdo does not come anywhere close to compensate for Japanese colonial subjugation. Considering the accepted practice following wars, of losers ceding territory to winners, Japan should consider themselves very fortunate. Maybe they should have been forced to cede Kyushu to Korea or China. If they think colonialism is no big deal, they maybe they should let Korea run Japan for the next 35 years. That would be something worth watching!
“I have read some of the testimonies of Korea’s comfort women, and I remember one from a couple of years back who said that she and the other women she worked with used to to get excited and cheer when they got news of Japanese victories in the war.”
Maybe they also thought Japan winning the war would result in them being able to go home. Maybe bad news from the battlefield would result in Japanese soldiers being a foul mood when they visited for their comfort fix. Maybe being a colonial wartime sex worker, in the midst of a miliary/propaganda environment, has a way of brainwashing an “employee” after a while.
Just because there were Koreans involved in the wartime sex industry and have since had a dodgy prostitution system of their own, does not mean that the Japanese have no responsibility for comfort women - and a host of other attrocities - committed on their watch. (Polish, Croatian or Ukrainian collaborators do not diminish the evil committed by their Nazi masters in WWII, do they?)
As for Dokdo, I care about those birdshit covered rocks about as much as the average Japanese (i.e. not too much!) However, the Koreans do seem to care and presently have the islets, so why not let them keep them? Koreans should avoid the temptation of biting - they own Dokdo now, so screw what anybody else says/thinks - but nothing baits a resident of the peninsula like disputing their sovereignty over Dokdo. (You are aware of this, of course.)
bevers said
“You can spew all the Korean Dokdo BS bait you want because I am going to take your advice and not waste my time on you.”
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Looks like Mr. bevers is unable to find any supporting evidence on takeshima (lower cased due to the insignificance of that name). How typical of a japanophile.
You have no case for Dokdo Mr. bevers. The Meiji government of Japan acknowledged Korean ownership of the islands in 1877 and so did the Shogunate that existed prior to the Meiji. Japanese claims on the island are barely a century old compared to the Korean claim which is many centuries old. You can argue all you want but even government records from both the Shogunate and the Meiji disagrees with you.
Currently Korea controls and occupies Dokdo like it did since ancient times so you can whine all you want about delusional non existant Japanese claims. It won’t make a difference because it’s Korean then as it is Korean now.
Your accusations on comfort women are just as ignorant and twisted. The testimonials of a couple of “uneducated” and “manipulated” (key words uneducated and manipulated) are meaningless. The Japanese government for example were able to convince the Okinawans (who were also uneducated and manipulated) to kill themselves by claiming that the Americans would rape them and then barbecue their children alive. What transpired was the Okinawan mass suicides in which scores of women and children jumped off cliffs to avoid capture by the Americans. The Japanese to this day deny both the Comfort Women Issue as well as the Okinawan mass suicides despite both atrocities being common knowledge. You can only wonder why foreign media from America to Europe to Asia are always critical of Japanese historians and their lies.
The Japanese government made lie after lie to not only justify their rule but also their brutality. When they couldn’t justify it they would deny it. This is the Japan you so blindly defend mr bevers. If you were born as a Japanese person, I’m willing to bet you would be one of those black van driving Tojo supporters.
Maybe I’m being overly cynical, but I have my suspicions that the whole Dokdo thing was trumped up by the Korean government in order to fabricated support for the public funding of oil excavation in surrounding area. Given that the Korean public is now sold on the idea of winning a symbolic victory over Japan, I’m sure the government won’t have any trouble pushing that plan through and ensuring that the lion’s share of the profits go to its favored chaebol(s).