The heroine who led the fight against Japan’s insidious plot to get the Library of Congress to dump the name “Tok island” in favor of “Liancourt Rocks” has been unveiled by the Chosun Ilbo: she is University of Toronto Korean Studies librarian Hana Kim. After firing off emails to fellow librarians of Korean collections in several countries and notifying Korean government agencies, she burned the midnight oil last weekend composing a persuasive eight-page letter to the Library of Congress:
“My one-year-old son Ari had a fever during the weekend, but I couldn’t take him to the hospital and only gave him a fever remedy, because I was busy reviewing materials on Dokdo and writing the e-mail,” she told the Chosun Ilbo.
The original Korean version is here. Out of curiosity, I peeked at the short comment thread to see if any Korean netizens were critical of Ms. Kim prioritizing telling the national library of a foreign country which name to use rather over seeking professional medical care for a sick child. Commenters bestowed warm praise on the patriotic librarian.
24 Comments
Sorta beat you too the punch…
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/.....ent-171349
to… not too.
Oh my god
Sonagi,
Are you heaping sarcastic scorn on the woman or are you just emulating The Onion?
Hummmm… sometimes The Onion heaps sarcastic scorn…
She may be a bad parent who neglected her son’s health for a stupid political issue but she more than makes up for it by being a sexy librarian MILF.
미친년
NK,
Are you kidding me? Are you talking about the small pic in the Korean language version or the larger one in the English edition? Cuz the one in the Englisn version is heavily photoshoped. Her face has obviously been Gaussian blurred (or radial blurred) and her hair went through the unsharpen mask via magnetic lasso.
Underneath all that digital tweaking are crooked teeth and a very unremarkable face. But hey, she’s a librarian so she doesn’t have to look like a race model I guess.
Also, I call bs on the quote about her kid dying from typhoid. No doubt the kid was sick, but me thinks she juiced up the story when the Chosun Ilbo reporter had her on the phone to make it sound all the more dramatic.
Reminds me of that protester mum who, it is said, used her baby in a pushchair to “halt the water cannons” during the beef anti-beef demonstrations:
Donga link
At least there appear to be some criticisms of her behaviour in that article.
Ridiculous. She ranks up there with Britney Spears for “Mother of the Year”. If the Library of Congress needs to tell the librarian to shut the fuck up and stick with Liancourt rocks in the Sea of Japan, only logical thing to do.
It’s all about priorities:
Not Important
Children killed and mutilated on Korea roads.
Chaebol owners stealing from the average Korean.
Women who have no option except prostitution.
Millions of North Koreans dying from starvation.
Very Important
Imaginary deaths from eating meat.
Low quality English Teachers.
The name of the Sea of Japan.
Some barren rocks in the middle of the sea.
One wonders why there is so little respect for Koreans.
Well, Korean readers need to realize that normal Canadian parents don’t rush to the hospital every time a kid gets fever.
Who wants to waste 2 hours in the waiting room only to be made to feel like a total idiot by the doctor as he/she tells you that a couple of Tylenol would have sufficed?
#5 Netizen Kim…Your comment made click on the link…however I think you’ve lowered your standards wherever you are. Unless you have a thing for librarians.
Re: #10
Agreed. I’ll also totally believe she juiced up her story “oh, look how hard I worked and how much I sacrificed for 우리나라 !” for the reporters. Heck, knowing Korean “journalists” (if you can call them that), I would not be surprised if they juiced it up.
Just last month, our daughter was running a fever, but we didn’t take her to the doctor until about a day later (when she was still running a fever), due to the fever being low-grade and Tylenol bringing it under control. Just a few months before that, she ran a slight fever, and a couple of doses of Tylenol kept it under control for its duration of about 24 hours.
So, while it’s hard to say whether she’s actually a bad mother or not, I can easily fault her and/or the Korean press for choosing the wrong way (risking your child’s health) to demonstrate one’s patriotism/nationalism.
Is it just me or does the face seem like it does not belong with the hair or neck? I had trouble focussing like it was a magic eye puzzle.
The sick child part could be totally fabricated by the reporter, too.
I wouldn’t think doing a nationalistic mission for a foreign government would be viewed as kosher by the university.
Tsk, tsk. I should know better than to take at face value any quotes that appear in the Korean media. The sick child and few other patriotic-sounding quotes probably are inspirations of a creative mind.
Because it’s perfectly acceptable to go after foreigners in Korea who involve themselves with “domestic matters” like the FTA or candlelight vigils, I don’t think it’s too out of line to let child services in Canada know about this woman. We must correct this foreigner’s behavior. After all, how a foreign government decides to call disputed territory IN ENGLISH is a domestic matter and not the business of a foreigner.
Brian is right. Foreigners have no jurisdiction over domestic matters! If Korea continues to maintain that the U.S. should refer to the Liancourt Rocks as Dokdo, the U.S. should withdraw its ambassador immediately!
Lol so the choice is between a horribly nationalism-blinded mother and a manipulative media? Either way, jesus H. christ…
A manipulative media that thinks a mom letting her feverish kid wail while she types away at the computer about Dokdo is a good thing.
Hey, at least we now have an answer when Koreans tell us “Korean parents love their children more than western parents”.
Re: “A manipulative media that thinks a mom letting her feverish kid wail while she types away at the computer about Dokdo is a good thing.”
Maybe the same (kind of) journalist who thought showing pictures of parents using their toddlers/babies/infants as human shields at the violent MadCow2008 protests on the front lines was a good thing.
Meanwhile, in other news, another Japanese schoolchild dismembered their parents with a hatchet…
My bet is, she complained about the kid being sick while she was working, and the press twisted that into a noble sacrifice.
Or, she was able to take time off of work to send the petitions and info out because she was home watching the sick kid.
At any rate, she contributed to a collection of essays on Korean feminist criticism, so she sounds cool enough.