Check out Mike Breen’s take on the students demonstrating against US beef. Quite funny, and ultimately asks some intriguing questions. Here’s a sample:
I must confess my first thought upon being confronted with protestors last Friday night and on reading the subsequent coverage was to link their rather ill thought-through cause to other historical moments of popular stupidity, such as when people used the rails of the first train track between Seoul and Incheon as a cooling pillow in summer, with predictably distressing results.
But that would be unkind. Sarcasm will not help liberate Korea’s youth from the peculiar education that robs them of both their childhood and their faculty for critical thinking.
Read the rest on your own.
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38 Comments
It actually kinda felt like an Onion article. Especially when he started saying that the gene for mad cow disease susceptibility is also the gene that gives people the ability to speak English well. There was no warning, he just threw that out there like it was truth.
I wouldn’t care, except for the fact that 50 million people in this country believe everything they read and most of what they hear.
Mr. Breen just said everything that I have been thinking for ten years, and then some. Any chance his article will be translated into Korean?
Probably not. [sarcasm]He’s just another stupid wae-gook-saram, what would he know?[/sarcasm]
I know it’s a bit late, but that quote from actress Kim Min-Seon “I’d rather drink poison that eat American beef” seems really suspicious to me.
You see recently she has been on one of the fashion commentary shows in a special segment where she and what I believe to be a very large tranny are on a shopping trip in L.A. and Las Vegas. She seemed to be having a great time there.
Now, she should be seriously questioned if she abstained from eating beef during her trip.
I’m sure she didn’t!
A previous entry on the Marmot showed how stars like her on jumping on the bandwagon and comdemning the conspiracy of “genocide with US beef”.
They are all so full of sh*t!
They regularly enjoy trips to the States, but go on like this just to increase their popularity.
The stupid leading the blind.
People like this should not be granted tourist visas!
Also, I find it to be very ridiculous that the rumor monger stated that the first case of mad cow has been found on May 2- before US beef has even been let into the country. I guess just the idea of US beef in Korea can cause mad cow in its citizens.
Shame these idiots can’t put 2 and 2 together!
Anyway, once the beef starts rolling in there will be sensible people buying it.
The anti-American will try to make false claims of mad cow infections, but they will be dismissed. Some idiots will believe completely, though.
However, eventually most of the public will realize that these fears are unfounded.
Now would be a good time for Stars & Stripes or someone to find out and tell us how many tons of this Imperialist Deathmeat are being sold every month at US bases in the ROK.
Vulnerability to Mad Cow disease is in fact linked to the gene that controls one’s ability to pronounce English. As the sizeable population of Korean-Americans who eat American beef shows, if you can speak English you can eat beef until the cows come home.
The problem in Korea, however, is considerable because of genetic wiring that makes people say “beeper” when the brain is saying “beef.”
Haha. I spurted OJ all over my desk when I read that. That M. Breen is one funny guy.
“People like this should not be granted tourist visas!”
Visas tied to support of U.S. business interests? Let’s hope the ROK government doesn’t reciprocate.
“You dare to criticize Samsung?! No more E-2 for you!” Then they send you to China via land route, and the hungry Norlocks eat you alive.
After reading the article again, it seems to make more sense to me. I think he was trying to make the point obliquely that the only Mad Cow Disease that will ever come to Korea is already here, and that is the hysteria around US beef imports.
I gotta start saying that to people when they go crazy over this issue. “You already have the only Mad Cow Disease you will ever see.”
“A well-known actress, Kim Min-seon, spurned the students on with a claim that “I wooder rador swallow shyanider than eat American beeper.”
This is the kind of humor that is hilarious to sixth graders or drunk adults, but in print makes the writer seem like a bit of an ass. I guess it’s true what they say about the KT’s eroding standards.
he he, he he, he said beeper.
#8, maybe he is making the point because most of us who have been or are long term residents have at some point been subjected to the diatribe on the phonetic brilliance of the hangeul script and how it can reproduce any sound in any language accurately. Moreover, maybe he is sick and tired, as most of us have become, of idiots who in spite of a gazillion years of englishee training, can still not learn to drop those superfluous eu’s and ee’s from the end of pretty much every word they pronounce.
#8: I see Mike as making a point that pronunciation of English is as stupid a criteria as genes in determining susceptibility to Beef Derangement Syndrome, oops, I mean vCJD. But hey, the political correctness police are on to him! Busted!
Interesting article about the gene relating to sCJD not vCJD (among other things)
http://english.donga.com/srv/s.....8050977638
#4 “Imperialist Deathmeat”- classic!
#6 we already have enough idiots in the States. We don’t need any dipshit foreign celebrities who preach anti-Americanism to school kids coming over to enjoy some Stateside fun whenever they want to “get away from it all”!
So let’s say Lindsay Lohan or some other dumb actress was spouting off to American school kids that she would rather commit suicide than eat kimchi or use a Samsung cell phone.
She has no logical reasoning for making these statements and just spouting off senseless bullshit, but her idiot fans buy into her crap.
Do you think the ROK would be happy to have her visit Korea whenever she likes?
I know the above scenario is ridiculous, but not any more ridiculous than what these “influential” Koreans are doing.
That’s kind of scary to know. The same exact disease caused by the same prion buildup can spontaneously occur in older people. Wow, great. My brain can possibly melt spontaneously.
The article says that the study on Korean susceptibility to the disease is a susceptibility to the spontaneous one, sCJD. And its not related to getting the disease by eating meat. So it has nothing to do with US Beef imports.
# 3,
I go to a galbi jip in Orange County called Hwarosarang. The owner also owns several galbi jips in Las Vegas also. He frames all the pictures of every Korean celebrity that has eaten at his restaurant.
Song Il Gook, Jun-ho Heo, Kwon Sang-woo, Lee Deok-hwa, Kim Sun Ah and others were on his walls. I think there is a great chance if a Korean start went to LA or Las Vegas, they had LA galbi.
All of the stars visit the States because they have the finances required for a tourist visa.
You can be damn sure they’re all in Koreatown salivating over LA galbi- 100% American beef.
I bet they are just numbskulled enough to not realize they were eating it then while they are saying it’s “worse than poison” now.
It reminds me of Tom Cruise on the Today Show claiming to be an “expert” on the fraud of psychiatry: “You’re being glib Matt. I’ve done the research, have you done the research? No. I know what I’m talking about!”
Jackasses, the lot of them!
Trying to teach the wife and the sis-in-law the difference between “yi” and “i”. Both come out so far as 이. FAIL!
“Do you think the ROK would be happy to have her visit Korea whenever she likes?”
Probably not. But anyone who’d deny her a tourist visa just for expressing a dumb opinion on food is acting like a fascist and I’d call them out on that.
“I wooder rador swallow shyanider than eat American beeper.”
This intolerance ruined the article for me.
While I might have a “Canadian” accent and “pronounce” words “properly”, my mother and father don’t. They pronounce some words awkwardly, but I still know what they are saying. I have never heard Mr. Breen speak, but if he had an NYC, Boston, New Orleans, Scottish, or Indian accent, would it be cool for me to mock him for pronouncing English words differently than the “typical native English speaker”? I doubt it.
This isn’t the first time Mr. Breen has written something stupid. I remember a while back he used the word “faggoty” (or something like that) in one of his articles.
#20 - Whenever I hear or read someone caterwauling about “intolerance,” I am reminded of G.K. Chesterton: “Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.”
The young lady was foolish: she was spoon-fed a ridiculous political soundbite (and not for domestic consumption, or it would have been in 우리말), which she dutifully rattled off in a language in which she is less than adept. I have no sympathy for her.
#21 Making fun of her lack of logic and thinking would have been sufficient imho. Making fun of her pronunciation just made the article childish.
Fortunately, if you cut the flap of flesh that attaches your tongue to the bottom of your mouth, you become immune to vJCD.
Now I have to go to the fucking lot. I think I left my kah’s rites on.
“which she dutifully rattled off in a language in which she is less than adept”
I think she said it on her homepage, probably in Korean.
Someone just needs to say that kimchi is as effective against vCJD as it is againt SARS and this crisis will be resolved.
# 20,
You should pick up Breen’s book on Koreans.
http://books.google.com/books?.....&cad=0
He’s not intolerant. He usually has very descent things to say about Koreans. I think he’s just frustrated by this whole thing, which I can understand.
# 20,
You should pick up Breen’s book on Koreans.
books.google.com/books?id=tGiZMYAKIVkC&dq=breen+%2B+koreans&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0
He’s not intolerant. He usually has very descent things to say about Koreans. I think he’s just frustrated by this whole thing, which I can understand.
Exactly. Mike Breen wasn’t making fun of Kim Min-seon’s English but MBC’s “scientific” claim of a genetic link between the ability to learn English and susceptibility to Mad Cow.
Breen might be critical in that article but he is 100% right.
If I’m a racist, Breen’s a racist.
nah you are racist.
Kim Min-seon is saying she’d rather die than suck American cock, so please love her and let her make a lot of money so she can leave Korea and suck American cock. The younger generation isn’t going to fall for that.
No, you’re the racist, so wedded to outdated Korean stereotypes. Fucking idiot.
You are a prime example that disproves the Korean meme that equates learning English with intelligence.
I think Breen’s point in phonetically rendering the actress’s statement was to make it clear that someone else wrote it and she just read it off.
Most Korean people believe they’re going to be getting beef that is different than the stuff Americans usually eat. That is, the reject beef. That is why they are pissed.
You call them ignorant but I’m wondering what you foreigners are doing here if you have such little respect for the Koreans. Of course they can’t pronounce English perfectly but I’d like to hear you try to speak Korean. Seriously just leave the country. Or the world for that matter we have enough ignorance as it is.
#34: “I think Breen’s point in phonetically rendering the actress’s statement was to make it clear that someone else wrote it and she just read it off.”
Did she read it off somewhere in English? I thought it was only on her website and at a press conference, in Korean, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
@33, face it you are racist. Ironic thing is you crying about racism.
Well what do you know, you love stereotypes.
BTW that Korean meme is equating American education with class, mostly derived from the fact that American schools cost 10’s of thousands of dollars per year to goto.
So exactly how pissed are you that I am reaping the benefits of your American high education system while you’re struggling?
No, the Korean meme is thinking that Koreans who can speak English well are smarter than those who can’t. I’ve seen it played out time and again.
I reaped the benefits of the American education system by attending Cal when tuition was $1200/semester. And I’m certainly not struggling now.
I don’t believe you could trump that.
Which kyopo’s sock are you, BTW?