Looks like a lovely weekend.
Open Thread #89
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{ 335 comments… read them below or add one }
picture’s worth more than words, and numbers do not lie,
youtube.com/watch?v=MKHHzaOheHQ&feature=subscription
Simple question. I heard a 50 year old white guy mention this casually to me,
Him: Would a Japanese businessman ever say ‘NO’?
wjk: I don’t know.
Him: He’ll never say no. He’ll say ‘YES’, and not do it. They’re notorious for that.
My question to you: Is this stereotype true?
Even if it is, I think this is another racist whiteguy I have encountered. At the moment, he’s urinating with a yellow tube coming out of his thingy.
#1,
Nice try.
Did it occur to you that the relatively small number of Asian kids being adopted in the US may have something to do with the fact that few Asian adults adopt kids?
I’m trying to find a book (in English) about Park Chung Hee’s presidency that also covers his assassination. Anybody know any good titles that I could get from a book store here in Seoul?
*I’m not certain what “trading call” means, but it seems clear the analyst doesn’t want to commit to long-term projections, which is, um, prudent.
Tom Coyner & Robert Neff,
Well, I am curious to hear what you and the other Royal Asiatic Society members thought of Professor Kim Young-deok’s “Dokdo” speech this past Tuesday? Were you impressed and informed by “his well-documented” presentation, which, of course, was backed up by his “decades-long respectable record as an historical academician”? Also, was his speech anything like the one he gave last November at U.C. Berkeley?
History and Justice – Approches to the Historical Facts and Legal Judgment of the Dokdo Island (pdf)
Finally, I am also curious to know if anyone bothered to seriously question any of his claims or did you all just give him a good old Royal Asiatic Society pat on the back and say, “Good speech, Professor.”
By the way, HERE is a recent post I have written about the 1894 French map that has been in the Korean news lately and that some Koreans are claiming shows “Dokdo and the East Sea as Korean territory” (독도 및 동해 조선령 표기).
By the way, the 1785 Japanese map Professor Kim referred to in his speech can be found HERE
The map does not show Dokdo. It shows Ulleungdo and its neighboring island of Jukdo, which is only two kilometers off Ulleungdo’s northeast shore. Dokdo (Liancourt Rocks) is ninety-two kilometers southeast of Ulleungdo. Does that little island drawn right next to Ulleungdo on the map really look like it is ninety-two kilometers southeast of Ulleungdo?
Should people really consider Professor Kim a respectable historian?
Sorry. Here is the link to the 1785 Japanese map and a link to the closeup of Ulleungdo on the map.
Damn! Link to the Closeup of Ulleungdo on 1875 Japanese map.
#5,
Since they are in possession of Korea, I’d say Korea has the strongest claim…But, in the end, it really doesn’t matter who has jurisdiction over the islets. Under international law, no state can claim jurisdiction over the marine space surrounding a rock or an islet. An islet is generally defined as a small island that is less than 1 square km. The largest of the Dodko rocks/islets is only 73000 square metres (0.073 square km).
someguyinkorea,
I urge you to look up with byungmoochung, whether or not your son qualifies or not for ROK service. You’ll be surprised. Being a half-Korean actually lets you get excused from service.
You seem to be unwilling to acknowledge racism in North America, driven mostly by white North Americans. It’s there and it’s a fact. I didn’t make that movie.
Shania Twain. If she claimed she was racially discriminated against, that would be equivalent to you claiming being racially discriminated against…by white people. You’re claming you’re part North American Native American, isn’t that the gist?
Michael Moore once asked how come Canada and Europe are more likely to provide social services versus United States. Unlike, Canada and Europe, United States has a 30%+ population of non-whites. Whether by chance or social economic situations, these minorities are the recipients of social services, rather than the 70%+ whites. This is why social services are relatively fewer in the US. US whites think they are paying for services they don’t use. They are paying for what they perceive to be ‘them’ to be using, not ‘us’. This is a very tacky issue, that only an intellectually honest person like wjk can bring up. People like someguyinkorea are unable to confront issues like this.
race matters. If you are familiar with Affirmative Action in the United States, I’d like to remind all East Asians that they are NEVER the beneficiaries of Affirmative Action.
Military service in my family.
1/ paternal grandfather never served. He was born in 1922.
2/ 1st uncle served in ROK army as medical officer. SNU MD grad. Now practicing in Staten Island.
3/ My father. Koryo University grad in law. Did not pass the ‘test’. Went into banking. Served in ROK army starting as ee-byung. The highschool diploma only guys gave him a hell of a time, he says.
4/ 3rd uncle. Paid money somewhere and dodged service. Went to Dongguk University.
5/ 4th uncle. Went to where Jun Doohwan and Roh Taewoo went. Retired as ROK Army Colonel. Wanted to be Janggun, but didn’t make it.
6/ 5th uncle. Went to SNU, grad as Pharmacist. Paid money somewhere and dodged service.
7/ Male cousins in Korea. All did their 3 to 2 years.
Mother’s side
1/ Maternal grandfather never served.
2/ Wae samchon 1,2,3. All paid money somewhere, never served.
3/ Male waesachons in Korea. All did their 2 years.
*This family was way well off relative to my father’s side.
Gerry, Hayashi was not a cartographer. The map you are referring even shows an extra island next to the Korean peninsula. Hayashi’s map is hardly what I’d call geographically accurate. Take the map for what it is.
Hayashi’s map was intented to show the close proximity of Japan’s enemies.
The island next to Ulleungdo is Dokdo. The Japanese government at this time had no maps of Ulleungdo depicting Jukdo Islet. And it’s pretty ridiculous to think he’d consider a rock 2kms distance from Ulleungdo as worthy of including on a map of Asia.
This is a Japanese map that follows the principles of all their charts of this era.
First Oki Island was always drawn as the Northwest limits of Japan.
Two islands in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) that are always excluded from Japan or drawn as Korean territory.
Gerry the French map follows in line with all Japanese maps of the era as well. The limits of the map clearly show Japan’s Okinoshimas as the Westernmost limit of Japan. There are literally hundreds of maps to support this, mostly Japanese.
How come we have to have this same discussion, again and again and again and again and again? I don’t give a shit, personally. Yes, Gerry, the Koreans are lying to us and to themselves. So what?
Who is this “wjk” guy? Surely people here are well aware that whatever he has to say needs to be taken with quite a few grains of salt.
Brendon (#12) wrote:
Thank you, Brendon. Finally, someone has the balls to admit the obvious.
Anyway, in defense of my post, the 1895 French map and Professor Kim’s Dokdo speech have been recent news items, which is why I have brought them up. Also, I am sincerely curious to hear what the RAS members here on his blog thought of Professor Kim’s speech on Tuesday night. I was also curious late Tuesday night, but I am have waited until this “Open Thread” to mention it.
By the way, I was busy until about 5:30 on Tuesday getting the medical documents I needed for my visa extention, so I did not think I would have been able to make the lecture on time since I live in an provincial city.
Also, just to put your mind at ease, I do not intend to bore the people on this blog further by continuing the same old, “boring” debate on Dokdo with “Frogmouth.” Believe it or not, I also have better things to do.
Gbevers, are you aware that Koreans are now claiming gochu are indigenous to Korea? I know, I know, it’s terrible. Maybe you could make this your new cause célèbre?
“I urge you to look up with byungmoochung, whether or not your son qualifies or not for ROK service. You’ll be surprised. Being a half-Korean actually lets you get excused from service.”
What makes you think that I care one way or another? Do I need to remind you that I volunteered to serve?
“Shania Twain. If she claimed she was racially discriminated against, that would be equivalent to you claiming being racially discriminated against…by white people. You’re claming you’re part North American Native American, isn’t that the gist?”
No, the gist is that you screwed up. Shania Twain isn’t white as you believed her to be. She’s a metis.
“Unlike, Canada and Europe, United States has a 30%+ population of non-whites.”
Actually, it’s more like 25% (18% in Canada). I really don’t like what you’re insinuating about immigrants (seem hypocritical given your origins). You need to take note that Canada was already a social democracy when most immigrants were still European.
“Military service in my family.”
Again, you prove yourself to be a hypocrite. So, no mention of your own military career? Why is it that I’m not surprised?
“Anyway, in defense of my post, the 1895 French map and Professor Kim’s Dokdo speech have been recent news items, which is why I have brought them up.”
Why would you care? Just bring up the fact that nobody can claim the waters around an islet or a rock. It trumps all other arguments.
SomeguyinKorea (#16),
I do not really kind about the legal arguments. I care about the history.
oh, please, dumbguyinkorea,
there’s a distinct reason why I mentioned her out of millions on earth.
you’re dumb as a rock.
people like you are gonna get laughed at if you claim you know what it’s like to be non-white, etc.
also, dumbguyinkorea, no Korean here except baduk, mins0306, leefr has served. Only 1, baduk, is US citizen. US navy.
80%+ of US male gyopos have not served in the ROK army. Close to 99.9%, if immigrated under age 18. As far as serving the US army, voluntarily, it’s virtually incentive driven. Zero incentives to join the ROK army.
You served a weak force that virtually guarantees no death during service. So what?
Low chance of death, but infinitely greater chance of being harassed on a daily basis, beaten up, forcibly sodomized, and/or compelled to eat a turd. Seems pretty brave to sign up for that.
#19,
Right, whatever. You’re a classic racist. You try to paint my son somewhat less Korean than he really is because he will have the option of serving in the Korean military if he wishes to and yet most of your family bribed someone to get out of it.
Served a weak force without any chances of being in danger? Harsh words coming from a draft dodger, don’t you think?
Brendon, the Koreans are lying to themselves about Dokdo?
Please elaborate, I didn’t know you have done your own original research on the matter!!
I’d really like to hear your professional analysis of the related records and maps.
When you pick up a snake, make sure you grab the right end.
“Brendon, the Koreans are lying to themselves about Dokdo?”
How often have I heard that Japan wants the rocks because it wants the natural resources that lay below the ocean floor around them? Turns out that according to international maritime law, the waters around the rocks may be international waters.
This week I found out my gym is going out of business. This is the FOURTH gym in THREE years that I have been a member of that has gone out of business. WTF.
I disagree, someguy
Korea’s Ulleungdo Island is large and inhabitable and a mere 87 clicks from Dokdo.
Large islands such as Ulleungdo are capable of generating EEZs of 200 nautical miles. Dokdo easily falls within this range. I thnk you need to study the geography of the region better.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-not-japanese-1.html
Japan’s Oki Islands are also capable of generating an EEZ however, Oki is about 157kms from Dokdo. In cases where EEZs overlap the most practical solution is to draw an equidistant line between the two points. This would easily put Dokdo as part of Korea. Dokdo should be ceded to the most proximal nation based on modern marine laws.
This whole problem originated from Japan’s flawed geographical and military basis for seizing the islets.
During the Russo Japanese War, Japan’s Imperial Navy’s Hydrographics Department Director Admiral Kimotsuki simply took a baseline measurement from the furthestmost points of Japan and Korea and declared the islands belonged to Japan. No consideration was given to Chosun’s Ulleungdo at all. This was because Japanese civilians had already swarmed Ulleungdo en masse, had stationed police and military on the island so it really didn’t make a difference then. On top of that, by 1905 Japan already had “acquired” rights to Chosun ports and adjacent waters through “treaties”
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-expansionism-politics.html
Using the political circumstances of Japan’s colonial expansionist era to draw a modern boundary between Japan and Korea won’t work.
Ladron, my friend had a membership at a gym next door. One late night around 1:00 AM I went for a stroll and the health club was doing a midnight runner with moving trucks and all. Bottom line, don’t buy more than a month membership at a health club in Korea.
dumbguyinkorea, you seem to be bad at math and ignorant of the law of where you live.
brush up on both.
actually what I told you is verifiable besides my mouth.
i don’t write the law.
ask your mother in law.
you also don’t seem to understand immigration.
gbevers,
Quit turning every thread into your own personal soapbox for your pet cause. Don’t you have your own blog?
Frogmouth-
Yes, I learned my lesson after the second one. I’m thinking about just getting some freeweights and a bench for myself, but space is kind of an issue. So, does anyone know any decent gyms somewhere between Yongsan and Jongno?
wjk, in all the time he’s polluted this largely good website with his pathetic, self-loathing, ill-informed posts has consistently shown himself to be a moronic and racist turd. Everybody knows it. Nice to read that he still can’t stop talking about other guys’ dicks. I’d far rather take my kid to the local vet when he gets sick than have that sicko so much as look at him from a distance, let alone lay a deviant finger on him.
Bevers is possibly deranged. He’s clearly a pretty bright guy, but this is a truly odd obsession. Most Koreans don’t care about Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks/seagull shit spattered pebbles as much as he does, which is nothing short of amazing. Korea has – and will probably always have – possession of the islets, most Japanese couldn’t give a fiddler’s fart, and it almost certainly isn’t an issue worth getting shit canned over. I hope he stops obsessing over this topic once he finally moves back to the States and settles down in his survivalist bunker complex in Texas.
By the way, I suspect that rumors/fabrications/fantasies of natural gas or other resources around the islets are likely about as accurate as the stories of gold-filled sunken Russian treasure ships in the East Sea/Sea of Japan that pop up in the media here every few years. In other words, total horseshit, and an even greater reason to ignore any and all things related to Dokdo.
“Ladron”, where I live there is a recreation center that is run by the gu office and runs a weight/fitness room. Perhaps you could call your local gu office and inquire about recreational facilities.
“Large islands such as Ulleungdo are capable of generating EEZs of 200 nautical miles. Dokdo easily falls within this range. I thnk you need to study the geography of the region better.”
No, I just forgot about Ullengdo being close by. In any case, it’s one more reason why this whole debate is a waste of time and energy. Besides, it was all but forgotten until Roh decided that North Korea shouldn’t be perceived as an outside threat. Why did he picked Japan over China? I’m sure you can come up with some ideas.
#26,
So, how did you get out of serving in the Korean military? Did you have to bribe a doctor to write a note saying you’re mentally incompetent?
It’s an open thread, so I think Bevers is in the right if he wants to write about whatever topic. Also, I want to be able to hear both sides of the Liancourt Rocks dispute. I have gone to the Korean Map Museum, and they made a huge copy of a historical map on the floor that was falsified. They admitted it was falsified because the original didn’t even have Dokdo on it, and they added it. There is no “disclaimer” or anything on it. Doing something like that is deliberately dishonest. PERIOD!
“#26,
So, how did you get out of serving in the Korean military? Did you have to bribe a doctor to write a note saying you’re mentally incompetent?”
Or gave the doctor’s member a tug.
Serves you right for exercising. You don’t keep buying multi-year memberships, do you?
#33,
You should see the Independence Hall in Chonan. I don’t know if they’ve pulled it, but there used to be a huge sign used a Eugenics theory to argue that Koreans are smarter (obviously not the infamous “more brains or more penis” one…The one about the brain to body mass ratio. Apparently, Koreans have big heads and small bodies(and yet I can’t find eyeglasses and hats that fit me properly)).
sign that used
#36, 37 – someguy, that shameful/racist/childish display was still there in Cheonen a few years ago. Had to do with the dimensions of a Korean skull, etc. (And I thought the term “대두” was supposed to be an insult!) Would make for great humor were it not for the fact that EVERY Korean student goes there at least once for a confirmation of Korean racial/ethnic/cultural superiority. (I use the word “confirmation” because most visitors have been indoctrinated in Korea’s version of master race ideology from early childhood.)
Aside from that wankfest/anti-Japanese excuse for a museum, Cheonan is a great little city. Nice people, lots of western creature comforts for those who want/need them, close proximity to both Seoul and the beach, etc. As an added bonus, there are a couple of really good makoli places in the hills not far from Asia’s largest bronze Buddha. Check it out!
A bribe wouldn’t have been necessary.
#38,
Yes, I remember that Chonan was quite nice. I believe it reminded me of the Cote d’Azur (many places in Korea remind me of the Cote d’Azur). One more reason why the museum was such a disappointment.
#39,
I don’t doubt it.
If you’re looking for an offbeat yet very decent film to download check out Persepolis.
Brendon – No, no multi-year memberships, and I have to exercise after discovering the Brazilian churrascaria in Seodaemun.
R.Elgin – Thanks for the advice, I’ll check it out.
Marshmallow, this is true, if Mr Bevers wants to post about Dokdo here he should be able to. I for one welcome it.
However, Mr Bevers should know he will be held to different standards here than on his so-called blog which today is simply a lobby platform for his anonymous Japanese Takeshima advocates.
A good example would be Mr Bevers’ “interpretation” of the 1837 Hachiemon incident involving Ulleungdo and Dokdo. The trial resulted in records and maps that included Japan’s policy on both Ulleungdo (竹島) and Dokdo (松島)
Here is the map from Gerry’s website related to the Hachiemon incident.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LdEVcyLsLFA/RnpTGMlMHAI/AAAAAAAAAA0/psG_nDzpnTQ/s1600-h/Yaemon_map_2.jpg
Here are two maps related to Hachiemon’s trial from Shimane’s website and a recent Korea special on KBS
Map 1.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/trespass-map.jpg
Map 2.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/hachiemon-map2.jpg
I presented both of the above maps to Gerry Bevers before however, none of will ever see the pages of his website for obvious reasons. I won’t call Gerry a liar. However, he is very creative with his “translations/interpretations” and selective with which data he presents on his blog and what gets g-filed.
If you read anything Mr Bevers posts do so with the understanding it basically comes straight off the desk from Japan’s MOFA unedited.
dumbguyinkorea, your problem is, you’re unable to understand the term ‘immigration’.
since you’re dumb, you need a lot of anecdotes to clairfy things.
1/ ‘theKorean’ probably most likely never served in ROK army, either. He IMMIGRATED.
2/ ‘Wangkon’ probably most likely never served in ROK army, either. He IMMIGRATED.
3/ ‘bumfromkorea’ probably most likely never served in ROK army/ either. He IMMIGRATED.
see? when you repeat something 3 times, even the stupidest people tend to get it.
and I didn’t make up the 1/2 blood, no serve law. You go look it up with a lawyer, the military service, any law book, an internet search right now.
every once in a while, a US male gyopo goes to Korea, makes some money there(singing, dancing, acting), and decides to go to the ROK army, in order to sustain their livelihood in Korea. This is called the ‘reverse Yoo Seungjoon effect’, and it is very, very rare. Most do not volunteer to do this, but to continue their careers that are entirely dependent on working within Korea. In rare cases that this happens to non-entertainers, they are featured and hailed by the major newspapers.
#44,
Acquiring citizenship in a foreign country doesn’t always involve giving up their citizenship in one’s country of birth. If any of you still have Korean citizenship, you might get a surprise next time you come over to visit granny.
PS. Koreans leaving Korea are emigrants, not immigrants.
#45,
I know you didn’t make it up. The government claims that the reason it is optional is because it worries these people will be victims of physical abuse and racism (I see that as an admission that the Korean military isn’t spending enough energy on the prevention of physical abuse within the ranks).
You were insinuating that my son isn’t Korean because you assume he won’t serve in the Korean military (in other words, because one of his parents isn’t Korean). That makes you a hypocrite and a racist.
correction
up citizenship in one’s country of birth
Correction…putting enough energy…
Better, but not great.
#46 (Someguyinkorea): “PS. Koreans leaving Korea are emigrants, not immigrants.”
Wrong. They are both.
#29 (globalvillageidiot): “Bevers is possibly deranged. He’s clearly a pretty bright guy, but this is a truly odd obsession. Most Koreans don’t care about Dokdo/Takeshima/Liancourt Rocks/seagull shit spattered pebbles as much as he does, which is nothing short of amazing. Korea has – and will probably always have – possession of the islets, most Japanese couldn’t give a fiddler’s fart, and it almost certainly isn’t an issue worth getting shit canned over. I hope he stops obsessing over this topic once he finally moves back to the States and settles down in his survivalist bunker complex in Texas.”
*thumbs up*
#46 “Acquiring citizenship in a foreign country doesn’t always involve giving up their citizenship in one’s country of birth”
In this case, it does. You can’t hold dual Korean – US citizenship.
Thanks to some of you, I can now type in Korean.
However, how do I toggle the (1) languages available {E/K} and (2) when I have Korean {‘KO’ on the button}, I also get a globe, the Roman letter ‘A’ and Chinese character that’s based on the hanja ‘mi’. How to I change the letter ‘A’ to the Hangul ‘ka’? I eventually find it, but I don’t know a direct method to get there.
It’s always more fun to write 각선미 than to spell it phonetically in English, you know what I mean?
Thanks,
Dodko Forever and a Day Harris
So…to all the yanks around here…how’s that health care plans looking? I guess it’d make the ones having to hop borders happy.
Shania Twain is white. She’s whiter than Seinfeild is white. And, OK, she’s part Cree (1/8?). But mostly white, which is still whiter than Jerry. And about as white as Angelina Jolie. Which is white. Else we should conclude that Angelina Jolie is not white, which is absurd.
And was there a draft here in the United States that I should be aware of? Did the Korean children moving with their families to America as immigrants decide they wanted to move in order to avoid serving? Are kyopos who don’t live in Korea and who have lives in America breaking any moral obligation if they decline to serve for 2 years for a country they’re only visiting? Obviously NO, so please shut the fuck up about this draft dodging shit.
I’m not even sure whether Shania has Indian blood in her at all. She merely claims it from her father’s side. And as far as I recall there was a controversy surrounding her when she falsely claimed to be part Ojibwan. When that was shown false (only her step father is part Ojibwan) she might have recoursed to claiming some other Indian ancestry in order to save face. She is, however, certainly of Irish and French descent.
Haha, awesome! This is the best comment in this thread. I would be great if Rushton came to Korea and extolled his brain vs penis theory.
충청남도 천안시 목천읍 is where we have our own mountain of graves.
“In this case, it does. You can’t hold dual Korean – US citizenship.”
Yes you can. Just make sure you use your Korean passport whenever you come to Korea.
“I’m not even sure whether Shania has Indian blood in her at all. She merely claims it from her father’s side. And as far as I recall there was a controversy surrounding her when she falsely claimed to be part Ojibwan.”
Her step-father is Ojibwa, her dad was part Cree.
Or rather was…I think her mother and step-dad died in a car accident.
“Shania Twain is white. She’s whiter than Seinfeild is white.”
Those cheek bones, that olive skin? Right, she’s as white as Nicole Kidman.
…they’re practically twins.
“In this case, it does. You can’t hold dual Korean – US citizenship.”
Duh, indeed you can. Those born of parents of different nationalities generally have dual Korea/other nationality. However, they have to decide upon reaching the Korean age of majority which they will retain. In any case in certain circumstances, if certain procedures haven’t been followed those who have taken anotjer nationality are still deemed to be Korean for the purposes of national service. So it is possible to come here as a foreign citizen and get pulled into the army.
“Yes you can. Just make sure you use your Korean passport whenever you come to Korea.”
Methinks you’re not actually talking about legitimate dual citizens here!!
OK, let me put it this way: If all the proper procedures have been followed, a Korean national who becomes a naturalized US citizen cannot be drafted into service when visiting Korea.
Not to mention the fact that for some they are dual nationals regardless of Korean law. For example Italians are I believe unable under Italian law to renounce their citizenship, accordingly anyone who later become Korean citizens “renouncing” their Italianness remain Italian regardless. Therefore, incidentally, liable to be pulled into the Italian army on a visit if they haven’t done their national service there.
OK, let me put it this way: there were American citizens who were pulled in only the last year, because their families did not follow the correct procedures!! We’re talking about Korean family registers here by the way, not correct US immigration procedures, so the young US citizen(s) involved had no idea they were eligible.
I’m not sure why my grandfathers, both born in 1922 did not somehow get drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army.
Ripe age to die for the Empire.
1945-1922 = 23.
One side was born with a gold spoon.
The other was supposedly an only son.
things I never asked.
Well, sucks for them. I can’t imagine the hell a kyopo would go through in the Korean army.
Shania only claims her dad was part Cree, and she doesn’t even know by how much. It hasn’t been verified. I’ve seeing some conflicting sources around.
And, yes, is there anything, really, that isn’t white about Shania? Olive skin? High cheekbones? Right. She is Irish and French, after all. I love her pretty brown/auburn hair.
I once thought Shania was from Nashville, Tennesee, a country music star or something. Could have fooled me. Not white? LOL. Sure, I’m not Korean.
come to think of it, they didn’t fight for either North Korea nor South Korea in the Korean War.
They did talk quite loud about those damn balgaengees.
that’s why there’s a class struggle in Korea.
More than half the HanNara party didn’t go to goondae, I think, roughly. But, they do talk like the most concerned patriots.
that’s why there’s a class struggle in Korea.
“Methinks you’re not actually talking about legitimate dual citizens here!!”
Look it up. It’s not clear cut.
http://www.dynamic-korea.com/consulate_service/other.php
I am ready to bet that 22 is actually a world-wide 21…
Mark my words, 2000 won per dollar by the year’s end.
That is, provided that there is no run on the bank.
It that happens, all bets are off.
“She is Irish and French…”
Whether they know it or not, most French-Canadians and French-Americans have Native American ancestors and many Native Americans have French ancestors.
It’s not a coincidence that the first coureurs des bois and voyageurs dressed like native Canadians…their wives and/or mothers were native Canadians.
I read somewhere that a British Colonel noted that the Native chiefs he met during the signing of a treaty looked, acted, and sounded French.
…Besides, French-Canadians are noticeably different in physiognomy from Frenchmen.
#74,
You seem to take for granted that the US dollar won’t collapse.
Easy answer. No draft in Korea until late 1944. In 1945 Japan was defeated, and the draft was just getting started. Hardly any Korean draftees actually saw action.
Of note: Paul Harvey, long-lived radio broadcaster has passed away at 90:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/02/28/us/AP-Obit-Harvey.html
Sad news.
#78,
Yes…You’re right on that.
In the 1930′s, the Japanese government came up with harebrained policies that were aimed at making Korean men join the Japanese military out of nationalistic fervor (Japan was planing on invading China). The policies were, for the most part, failures. For example, they had hoped that Korean young men would learn Japanese in order to prepare them to serve in the Japanese military, but few Koreans learned Japanese outside of the largest urban areas (clearly, a language can’t be forcibly spread). But, perhaps more importantly, notions of Korean ethnic nationalism were reinforced as a result of the very policies that were created to assimilate Koreans.
Having lived through a similar event in the past, I can state unequivocally that a further collapse of the won would be great for me personally as I am an exporter of services.
#82,
Good for you.
It won’t affect us one way or another because our business is neither import nor export related (my teaching job is something that I enjoy doing…and it gives my wife and I some space). Nevertheless, business has actually grown since the beginning of the economic crisis.
All this talk of Shania Twain’s ethnic heritage is fascinating. It has illustrated to me how deeply under-informed I am on the subject. Unfortunately, on the several occasions that Shania Twain and I have had incredibly hot sex, the subject of her ethnicity just never came up. But the next time we are making sweet sweet love, I will relate all of these interesting ruminations on her parentage to her.
i conclude most Canadians are NOT ‘white’. It’s a really multicultural country.
Twain is not white.
Someguyinkorea is not white.
Scores of people up there are not ‘white’, and they don’t know it.
it’s a fascinating country.
as long as we talk about Twain, let’s discuss.
what is her best track of all time?
That Don’t Impress Me Much
#28: Probably a little farther than you seem to want to go, but Eagle Fitness in Sinchon (on the main drag that runs into Sinchon from Yonsei’s frontgate) is good and stable (the gym is owned by the same owner as the pharmacy on the first floor, who also owns the entire building). I’ve been going there for three years, and I know it’s been there longer. Daily, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual payment plans. Good selection of equipment, including a very good assisted dip/pullup machine, and full range of dumbbells up to 150 lbs. Good and helpful staff, and a regular core of personable ironheads, Korean and non). There also a gym on Veggie Hill in the basement of the building about half way dwon from the Hyatt where the little side street cuts left into the hill; (name is Samwon?)
Brendon (#30) wrote:
Are your fees normally paid in dollars or won? If they are paid in won, then, as an exporter, your services should be relatively cheaper, which means you should be able to sell more, but will the increase in volume make up for the relative decrease in price? Or do you intend to hold on to your won until it recovers its value?
Baduk (#74) wrote:
The lowest the won dropped in the 1990s was somewhere in the 1700 range, and that was without $200 billion in reserves. What logic are you basing your 2000 won prediction on?
I don’t think anyone really knows what is going to happen, but I know a cheaper won is good for Korean exporters, which should mean industrial expansion and more jobs for Koreans, who will then be able to pay their bills. Korea’s price advantage should get it more market share, which may make up for a loss in overall demand.
Also, once people calm down and start looking for investment opportunities, cheap won and stocks should attact foreign investors, who will be buying won and driving up the price. In the short-term, the won may get to the 1600 range, but by the end of the year, I think it will be gaining in value.
WARNING: I do not really know what I am talking about.
#88 – Thanks for the info, but yes, it is a little bit out of my circle of motivation. Good to know, though, if I ever move to Sinchon.
here’s a gyopo’s mansae.
Baduk’s prediction could possibly come true. The US Dollar, even challenged as it is by the current spending spree, is less in the hurt locker than the currencies of some other major economies. If, for example, the European Monetary Union fell apart (imagine Germany chooses to spend its money on the German economy rather than bailing out Spain) the US Dollar would surge further.
Hey, I’m related to Yu Gwan-soon by the same 버들유씨
Dats whats up.
#89:
WARNING: I do not really know what I am talking about.
LOL. Best comment of the thread. Some (many?) of us here have already been mentally interpolating that warning into your comments for the last few years! ^^
Somewhere in a recent thread Sonagi and some others engaged in some sniping about whether culture is bred in the blood or if it is purely external, through one’s environment/upbringing.
I don’t know if it has to be an either/or situation. Maybe it is both/and? Here is an interesting clip I found today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPh4dgTaj1w&feature=channel_page
Well perhaps not the clip itself, buy the description of the clip by its poster, and the part 2 of that clip.
Have a look. For me it raises the question: if culture is all about environment/upbringing, once a transracially adopted child has been fully assimilated/culturalized, why does that person still long for a culture that is not part of it (anymore)?
In other words, why does this adoptee care that she cannot speak Korean, and why does she use such emotive words like “stole”? If she has forgotten all her Koreanness, why does it matter to her?
Brendon wrote:
What if someone decided not to bail out the US?
I remember one of my Economics professors telling our class that if worse came to worst, the U.S. could just default on all of its foreign debt because there would be no one strong enough to come and collect. I think Korea learned that lesson from Russia to a certain extent.
If the United States piles on so much debt that people start to question whether she will be willing or ability to pay it back, then people will start selling their US dollars. Right now the US is not in as bad a shape as Europe, but it looks like Obama may quickly change that.
Anyway, the US and Europe are heavily indebted, so I think there is a risk of an economic power shift away from the US and Europe to the less indebted countries in Asia, including South Korea. If we are holding won, then we may be sitting prettier than we realize.
WARNING: I do not really know what I am talking about.
Hamel,
Nice to see you. How was the Dokdo lecture on Tuesday?
Gosh you make me laugh Gerry. Sometimes you irritate me with your disingenuousness, but today you just make me laugh. Twice! Thanks for it. ^^
Hamel,
I will take your comment to mean that Professor Kim’s Dokdo lecture was not as good as you had thought it would be, right?
Anyway, I am rarely disingenous. I really was glad to see your comment so that I could ask you about the Dokdo lecture. The other RAS members on this blog are being suspiciously silent about it, just as you are.
I’ve been doing a little calculating and the numbers come to every man, woman, and child of the U.S.A. is $184.000.00 in debt. because of all this stimulus crap.
Better start working harder and start saving your money Americans.
Gerry Bevers, I read your last article about the Anyongbok records from you blog and found your article to be very misleading in many ways. You must correct these bizarre interpretations.
In your article you state that Anyongbok’s Usando was Jukdo islet which is only 2.2kms away from Ulleungdo.
http://dokdo-or-takeshima.blogspot.com/2009/02/was-ika-shima-matsushima.html
You seem to rely heavily on the direction given and ignore the other data.
You say Anyongbok’s Usando was Jukdo Islet because he said the island was to the Northeast.
Did you not read the rest?
Anyongbok said he only saw Usando twice. Jukdo Island is highly visible from at least one third all areas on Ulleungdo. It’s ridiculous to think Anyongbok only saw Jukdo twice from Ulleungdo after being there so long and often.
Secondly Anyongbok said that Usando was a days travel from Ulleungdo.
Does this island look a days travel from Ulleungdo?
http://dokdo-takeshima.com/seommok-to-jukdo.jpg
Anyongbok stated Usando was Japan’s Matsushima (Dokdo) and 50ri away from Ulleungdo. Again this distance is much too far to be Jukdo Islet. So again you are wrong from this standpoint.
On the vast and open sea it would be very easy to judge the location of Dokdo as Northeast rather than Southeast. However, to mistake an island as 2.2kms away as a full days travel and as 50ri away? Not a chance Gerry.
Gerry Bevers it’s pretty ballsy of you to take potshots at Korean historians after reading the blatant nonsence you’ve been posting lately. Clean up your act will ya?
“Look it up. It’s not clear cut.”
Not quite sure why you referred that to me. Your link just confirms what I’d already stated to tinyflowers.
My comment “Methinks you’re not actually talking about legitimate dual citizens here!!” was in relation to this, “Yes you can. Just make sure you use your Korean passport whenever you come to Korea.” which I thought was a tongue in cheek reference to all those who continue to return to korea on korean passports illegally since they’ve conveniantly never informed the korean authorities they’ve taken their spouses nationality, and thereby under korean law are no longer korean.
WARNING: I do not really know what I am talking about.
Almost as unnecessary point to make as wjk bribing a doctor to certify him as mad!!
WARNING: I do not really know what I am talking about.
Almost as unnecessary point to make as wjk bribing a doctor to certify him as mad!!
In regard to the current economic mess, the guy in the following video seems to feel the same way I feel:
Peter Schiff – Empire Collapse & The Emergence of Asia – Part 3 of 1
Peter Schiff – Empire Collapse & The Emergence of Asia – Part 3 of 2
Peter Schiff – Empire Collapse & The Emergence of Asia – Part 3 of 3
Frogmouth,
If you want to discuss Dokdo, then post to my Dokdo-or-Takeshima blog. Many on this blog are apparently tired of the discussion.
“Somewhere in a recent thread Sonagi and some others engaged in some sniping about whether culture is bred in the blood or if it is purely external, through one’s environment/upbringing.”
The nature vs nurture debate is so late 19th century.
PS. Culture is learned through a process called enculturation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enculturation
PPS. Feral children are evidence of this.
“what is her best track of all time?”
I wouldn’t know. It’s not the lyrics that I pay attention to whenever I see one of her videos.
Gerry, I’ve tried to discuss on your blog however, my handle gets highjacked. I’m sick of registering again and again. Apparently somebody on your “discussion” forum doesn’t like to hear opposing views.
Please Gerry, all of us are interested on how you can post such misleading information on your website. Also why didn’t you answer my post of number 43 and 101?
You are so horny to bash Korean historians interpretations of Dokdo material. And yet when your slanted articles are exposed as false you want to drag me back to Gerry’s playhouse to get swamped by reams of Japanese right wing propagangda? Pretty shabby.
Gerry, you brought up the issue of Dokdo. Either be accountable for the rubbish you post or shut your noise hole.
Gerry: give frogmouth a chance. It seems he can’t get a fair hearing on your blog. I find you to be quite selective in your reading too, and frogmouth has me intrigued with his questions today. I’d like to see you answer them.
As to being disingenuous: I never see you saying exactly what you mean. Except this thread in comment 14, when you affirmed what Brendon Carr wrote. You believe Koreans are lying about Dokdo to all and sundry. I have never seen you come out and say that. You always like to project an air of sunny neutrality and congeniality, but occasionally the gloves come off and the real angry man shows through.
” The other RAS members on this blog are being suspiciously silent about it”
What a joke. Gerry get over yourself. Have you seen Tom Coyner or Robert Neff posting in this thread? Try sending them a personal email if you are so eager to know. Don’t assume you are so important that they have raced home too report to you. As for me, sadly I missed the lecture due to an unforeseen meeting. I had intended to go.
Someguyinkorea: thanks for the wiki link. It’s a pity you couldn’t give any consideration to my questions, which were based on the assumption that enculturation had been completed. As I said at the beginning, I don’t know if it must be an either/or phenomenon. Perhaps it is both/and.
Frogmouth,
Again, you are full of bullshit.
What do you mean your handle gets highjacked? How could someone highjack your handle? There is no highjack button on my Blogger controls.
Are you claiming your comments get deleted? If you are, then it is not me deleting them, and I am the only one who can delete comments. I do not delete your ridiculous comments because I want people to see just how ridiculous you are. Also, my Japanese posters seem to enjoy tearing your arguments apart.
I, alone, control who can post comments, and everyone with a Blogger ID can post comments to my blog, including you. That is far different from your blog, which does not allow comments.
Frogmouth wrote:
Now, I think I see the real reason you no longer post on my blog. You do not like your silly arguments being exposed for the lies and half-truths they are. The Japanese on my blog expose your lies related to the Japanese material, and I expose your lies related to the Korean. You can’t win, can you? I guess I would also stay away if I wanted to lie to people.
Also, I think another reason you have stopped posting to my blog is that you cannot get away from all those Korean maps that show up on the right side of the blog. In other words, it is hard for you to write that Usando was Dokdo when all the Korean maps just to the right of your posts show that it was not.
People on this blog like to complain about my being obsessed with Dokdo, but they rarely say anything about your obsession. I think the reason for that is that they may think you have some kind of mental problem and cannot help yourself.
You remind me of a Korean man I saw on the subway last week. He was carrying four or five different newspapers with him and was going around to people reading newspapers and trying to engage them in conversation about different articles. However, what he was really doing was just rattling off a bunch of dates and articles he had apparently read sometime in his life, and he was doing it nonstop with all kinds of emotion in his voice, as if he was debating an article with a friend. People tried to ignore him, but he would just keep talking and would not go away. To put it bluntly, the guy was crazy, and I think you are getting very close to being just as crazy.
Hamel (#109) wrote:
You haven’t? Well, let me say it now. Koreans are lying about Dokdo.
Gerry, my “obsession” if you will is to keep you accountable for the garbage you post. Because those who frequent your “open discussion” are simply right wing Japanese lobbyists like yourself no dissenting opinion is ever voiced. The result is you actually think we believe you.
I’ve consistently posted on your blog but if my handle gets axed, so why bother?
I’ve seen the maps on the right side of your blog Gerry. I’ve studied them and I know the origins of their errors. However, you obviously don’t have the integrity to post the truth, but don’t worry I’m working on it.
Your Japanese posters tear me apart, that’s hilarious!! I’ve proven those clowns wrong more times than I’d like to mention. It’s no wonder they still refuse to give their identity, right Gerry?
Anyway nice rant above Gerry, but why can’t you answer my questions on posts 43 and 101?
Gerry Bevers, angry angry man……
@Hamel:
A few points to make:
1. Not all adoptees are like the woman in the video. None of the adoptees I knew felt they had been robbed of their heritage by being adopted into a non-Korean family.
2. Even adoptees in same race families are sometimes curious about their biological origins.
3. People in general are sometimes interested in knowing their origins. Koreans keep formal genealogical records and many Americans do as a hobby. However, for many Americans, our ancestral roots are but a trivial fact we rattle off on occasion. If we’re hardwired into the cultures of our genetic ancestors, then most Americans should, like the woman in the video, complain about their native language being stolen.
Gerry who was the fool that posted this article on your blog? Do you actually support this garbage interpretation of historical events?
http://dokdo-or-takeshima.blogspot.com/2008/12/1853-1922-kimotsuki-kaneyuki.html
This article quotes..
“In spite of Korea’s desperate pursuit for finding similarity between the 1905 Takeshima Incorporation by Japan and 1910 Japanese annexation of Korea, there is absolutely no evidence that those two incidents shared any direct connection. Incorporation of Takeshima into Shimane was nothing like a “stepstone” for the annexation, but simply a peaceful process which followed the international law…”
Seriously, I’m speechless when I read the above.
Maybe whoever posted the propaganda above should read the logbooks of the Japanese Warship Tsuhsima, eh Gerry?
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-x-files2.html
Gerry, what kind of radical rightwing nutbars are you affiliated with anyway?
Emanuel Derman:
Gerry: nice to see you with your gloves off. I can almost hear Cindi Lauper singing “I see your true colors shining through….” Actually if it is anyone who I expect to see on the subway one day, desparately trying to convince people they are wrong about Dokdo, it is not frogmouth. And if it does come to pass I will take no pleasure in it. Find another hobby, Jerry.
Sonagi: thank you for your comments, but I feel you have neither understood me nor answered my questions.
wjk,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIqff16x1LE
gbevers,
Glad to see you branch out to a different subject.
Why 2000 won? Korean banks, just like US banks or any other country’s banks, are hiding toxic assets. Koreans are known to be aggressive. Do you think they bought US treasury? NO my friend. They bought CDOs. 100%.
Now, their worths have decreased to 50% or even less. When the depositors find out about this, there is no FDIC in Korea, they will run on the bank.
To prevent this horrible outcome, Korean government will run their won printing machine till the machine catches fire from overheating.
2000 won per dollar is a conservative estimate.
SomeguyinKorea.
25%?
That is official figure. I believe 30%, when you include people who avoid the census.
For younger people, people under 18, nearly 50%. While the whites have problem making babies, we minorities are breeding like rabbits.
No jobs. And, lots of free time to screw around.
Again, Gerry, the follow-on question is So what? Columbus didn’t discover America, and George Washington didn’t throw a dollar across the Potomac. While we’re poking the Koreans, Tangun’s mom probably wasn’t actually a bear.
Sometimes nation-building mythologies are more about truthiness and less about truth. Koreans have a complicated relationship with truth anyway. We all know this. No need to go round and round and round and round and round and round all the time on the Marmot’s Hole.
There is no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, but there is a depositor-protection insurance corporation here in Korea — the Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation. Conveniently enough, it’s next door to the Citibank Korea building.
The rest of your thesis seems plausible enough, though. Lucky for me, I have no money.
Brendon,
thank you for the info. I have heard that max insured is much less than $50,000.
KDIC sounds like a ghost B.S. org with no gov’t ties.
When the run on the bank starts, KDIC may go belly up first.
Like AIG.
Brendon (#121) wrote:
I think I can see why you are not a defense trial lawyer. In my mind, I can see a prosecutor standing up and saying in his opening statement, “The defendant is a liar and murder.” Next, Brendon Carr, defense lawyer, stands up and says, “So what?”
No, it’s a real organization. It’s a copycat of the FDIC. Over the years I’ve known several employees, and consulted for the organization as well. KDIC and its employees’ behavior certainly has the undeserved air of superiority that marks most government organs here. They supervise banks (and administer banks that have failed), and also have an internal think-tank working on recommendations for regulatory reform.
As you’ve heard, KDIC’s depositor protection is less generous than in the United States — I think the current standard is W40,000,000 per depositor (not per account), which in dollar terms is only about US$26,000 at current exchange rates. In the US the FDIC now insures up to US$250,000 per account — almost 10 times as much, assuming each depositor has only one account.
Now, the FDIC’s insurance fund is at an all-time low, so there really isn’t much behind the promise other than the promise. If the FDIC’s fund were to be depleted, the printing presses would be started up to print up some “money” to give FDIC. That’s the same story here in Korea; if the presses are already working overtime, we will have a problem.
But even so, as of right now the Korean fiscal position is far better than that of the United States. Korea’s experiment with ruinous social-benefit schemes only got started around 1995 or so, and didn’t really begin in earnest until 2000. There is no huge national-debt overhang as a result, so there is still time to scale back or simply not increase benefits going forward.
Brendon,
I have heard that the KDIC now insures deposits up to 50 million won, but the question is, “So what?”
So serious here. Mindlessly surfing youtube found a commercial that is kinda like the Hyundai one with screaming Japanese and German execs but turns it on it’s head. I think it’s a European commercial for the Motorola 2 making fun of screaming Korean and Finnish engineers. Hyundai wasn’t exactly original it appears…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpYLh1cit8&feature=related
Wow. Two snipes from Gbevers in 70 minutes to Brendon Carr using the “turnabout is fair play” principle with Brendon’s “so what?” rhetorical question!!
Did Brendon hurt your feelings, Gerry?
Yawn.
The way I see it, frogmouth gave you a challenge in the Dokdo department that you seem unprepared to meet.
I can still remember you arguing with Oranckay several years ago that the Korean-Korean dictionary was wrong on a definition, and suggesting how they should re-write it to conform to your understanding of Korean grammar. No matter what Oranckay told you, you were dogged to the end. You would not be told.
I wonder if you see yourself as an iconoclast, holding up the torch for freethought?
The thing is, I tend to believe that Gerry’s conclusions regarding Dokdo are correct. I just don’t care to go over it, again and again and again and again and again and again. It’s a nothing issue.
Gerry’s second So what? reinforces my point, however. Regardless of whether the deposit limit is W40,000,000 or W50,000,000, the rest of my description of the KDIC and its role in the economy applies. The deposit limit is ultimately trivia around the margins of the larger issue. That makes the W40,000,000 or W50,000,000 question as irrelevant as Dokdo-is-Korean or Dokdo-is-Japanese. Dokdo is not an island — it’s rocks. That makes it boring.
Thing is, Gerry himself admits that it doesn’t really matter.
viz: “I do not really kind about the legal arguments. I care about the history.”
He doesn’t care about who gets what NOW. He cares about who got what BACK THEN. History is a fascinating subject, and I love it, but if divorced from present reality and “legal arguments” it is ultimately of little practical import.
I have not been convinced that Bevers is right on the historical argument, but regardless of that he has ruled himself out of any relevance in today’s world.
Michael Breen’s argument that the islets are not self-sustaining and therefore not legally islands, and therefore, being closer to Korea and within Ulleung-do’s EEZ. Thus, Korea has the right to possess them.
Whatever Gerry’s arguments, it is all about HISTORY; not about what matters TODAY.
Hamel,
I don’t think Michael Breen said that Korea has the right to possess them because they are closer to Korea. Do you have the quote?
Countries can still possess rocks and atolls, but, from what I understand, they cannot use them to effect their EEZ. If the rocks are owned by Japan, then a certain radius around them would be Japanese territory. Even the US has such territories.
By the way, Hamel, I didn’t know you were so immature.
Bevers,
Regarding the right to possess Dokdo now, that would be a legal argument, and outside your spehere if interest, so I won’t go into that. Breen may or may not have said it, or I may have misquoted him, but it is not a historical argument, so of what relevance is it here?
As to my immaturity, it seems we have more in common than at first glance. But, as you so pithily quoted back to Brendan Carr, “so what?”
what happens if inflation can’t be controlled?
are we all fucked?
Problem I have with the Democrats is, they’re not just passing out stimulus money. On these bills, they’ve got riders on bills to increase, increase, increase spending.
why do they feel compelled to do that?
are they nuts?
hamel, what other username do you/did you have here on the marmots hole?
Shakuhachi: aren’t you the curious cat? You have asked the same question of tinyflowers recently. I wonder what kind of database you are keeping on your computer.
Was it my opposition to Gbevers’ position on Dokdo that has attracted your interest? I doubt it was my comments on “Secret Sunshine,” transracial adoption or English teaching in Korea that did it for you.
Perhaps you would like my real name, ID number and employer’s name and address, mate?
Don’t forget a recent photo, too.
Hamel,
I will take that as a yes, that you do/did have another ID. Pretty important information when you need to decide whether to give the commenter the benefit of the doubt, or just dismissed them as tools.
Robert: good point. I wouldn’t want to miss the chance to get the “Metropolitician treatment” done on me over at Occidentalism.
Matt mate, you can dismissed[sic] me as whatever you like.
Still, I’d love to have a few beers with you at an RSL near your home one day and discuss your views about Japan with some of the old diggers. That *would* be interesting.
Would you care to summarize my views about Japan in relation to Australia, and tell me why a veteran would find my views objectionable? If you want to say that I am unpatriotic or some sort of traitor, just come out and say it, ‘mate’.
Actually, Shakuhachi, I know nothing about your views on Japan in relation to Australia. What I do find interesting is the apparent dissonance between your respect/sympathy for Imperial Japan and your very strong patriotic Australian stance.
I am not for a minute suggesting you are unpatriotic or a traitor, but I think that a lot of RSL members (Bruce Ruxton springs famously to mind, who I once saw leading the Lord’s Prayer and omitting the line about “forgiving those who sin against us”) would have trouble reconciling those two aspects of your personality, as I do. I’d love to “tease out” those lines of thought a little and see where they ultimately converge or diverge.
Hamel,
I don’t have respect or sympathy for imperial Japan in the least. However, I don’t think that imperial Japan is some sort of bizarre entity. It was merely an interventist, imperialist power that was late to the great game.
I actually worked in the RSL straight out of my late teens, and there was a moment of silence daily. A lot of people made sacrifices, including my relatives. However, I don’t think people like Bruce Ruxton should be determining the policy of Australia towards modern Japan. If you are Australian, you must have had occassion to see old veterans (probably with PTSD) on TV saying that we shouldn’t have Mitsubishi cars in Australia, and the like.
Most of the issues between Korea and Japan stem from a period in which Japan and the British empire (including Australia) were allies of Japan. The Korea-Japan issues shouldn’t really be mixed up with WW2 issues. They really are not related.
Correction: interventionist.
BTW, just want to add something. People like Ruxton, if they got their way, would sacrifice Australia’s future out of a fetish for the past. Trade and good relations with modern Japan have helped Australia, and the country would be poorer without it. Australian governments have been ignoring the opinions of veterans ever since they came back from the war, and that is a good thing. Foreign policy cannot be run by people that are holding a grudge.
Look, I totally agree that relations good with Japan today are crucial. And holding grudges or keeping out Japanese cars is not a good idea. For the record, I have studied Japanese (for a year at Uni, mostly forgotten), once taught Japanese students and have had a Japanese boarder. I have no problems with Japan and Japanese people as a whole now.
One of the RSL greats I have a world of respect for is the late and great Sir Edward “Weary” Dunlop. Just the memory of who he was and what he did makes me a little misty-eyed. He knew the evil of Imperial Japan, but was not afraid to embrace post-war Japan — and indeed all of Asia, in co-founding the Australian-Asian Association — in Australia. I am sure that cost him some friendships, but in the end we knew he was right.
“I don’t have respect or sympathy for imperial Japan in the least.”
[scratches head] Gosh, why is it that so many of us have read you so wrong for so long? Really, Matt, I can’t figure you out. I don’t know if you’re in denial or if I am having trouble reading plain English, or if you are having trouble communicating your true thoughts in plain English.
Hamel, I really don’t have sympathy for imperial Japan. On the other hand, I do not find Japan’s annexation of Korea any more outrageous than America’s annexation of Hawaii, for example. Having historical perspective is not the same as sympathy.
Just for the record, while Netanyahu is still deciding who he wants in his government, the rockets are continuing in Israel. Classes were cancelled in Ashkelon at the weekend. No doubt a lot of the tunnels have been rebuilt.
One thing that amazes me is that it is likely the main opposition to Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition will be a party originally founded by Ariel Sharon.
“Having historical perspective is not the same as sympathy.”
Agreed. Nevertheless:
Shak, I hate to bring this back to primary school, but sometimes the simplest methods work the best. I think in next weekend’s open forum I will conduct a “hands up if you think Shakuhachi dislikes Korean men and is sympathetic and admiring or Imperial Japan” straw poll and see how it goes.
I wonder (seriously, not to be tongue in cheek or rude) how many people it would take to convince you that maybe a little self-reflection is in order.
Hamel, many people thought that Saddam Hussein had WMD, and had a role in the execution of the 9/11 attacks. There are people out there that condemn books, movies, and video games without even having seen them. So you will understand if I do not leave myself at the mercy of the mob.
Do you find it outrageous at all shakuhachi? Or wrong in any way?
It’s a curious thing, because gbevers doesn’t seem perturbed by the annexation either; birds of a feather flock together I suppose.
BTW, what’s with the profile pic?
Shak: the fallacy in your counter-argument, which I should have expected, is that few of those who believed that Sad-damn had WMD actually seen any evidence themselves. They were all going by hearsay.
On this blog and your own, however, we actually have your own words by which to size you up. And that, Matt, is a pretty big difference.
“There are people out there that condemn books, movies, and video games without even having seen them.”
Indeed. And they are fools for doing so. But we have seen your words, lo these many years.
hoju_saram: thanks for joining in. It seems the others have left it to us three Aussie to hash things out in this thread now that the weekend is over.
I think with a bit of a push we can get this open thread over 200.
I was talking to one of my colleagues today about whether working in banking is morally more justifiable than being a prostitute. This came up because of this article on the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7914639.stm
For the guys out there, if you were offered the chance to be a straight male prostitute and made enough money to buy a West End flat outright (I’m guessing that’s at least US$500,000) after ten years work, would you do it?
Eujin, good question. I have long likened conversational English teaching in Korea (and perhaps elsewhere in Asia too) for more than a certain number of years as being similar to prostitution [tongue in check mode ON]:
* after a certain period your value starts to decline
* it is a job with no or few career advancement or development opportunities (sometimes the whores can become madams, or directors-of-studies)
* it is lucrative at first but after a while becomes tedious
* easy to get into; hard to get out of
* a job anyone with the right basic skills (pulse, all body parts functioning, native English speaker) can do with ease
* plenty of demand
* the supply often comes from other countries and is often associated with breaches of immigration (and other) laws
* something people are sometimes ashamed to admit they do
* can make one undesirable as a marriage partner (look at all the personal ads that say “no teachers, please”)
any more?
I will leave the moral arguments for somebody else to make.
* you do it just for the money
* the real power lies with the bosses
* you could go freelance but it’s risky
* the punters want you, but still show you no respect
* having an STD can be a problem
* your industry is a source of endless fascination to those outside
* many others in society think you should be outlawed
I think changing the comparison from banking to English teachers was a good idea.
I liken the prospect of being private English tutor in Korea to that of being a someone’s pet dog: sometimes you’re the pet, and sometimes you’re just the dog.
Maybe, I will get three or four German shepards to patrol my perimeter. In fact, maybe I will even go into the guard dog training business.
“Worst Economic Collapse Ever”
Brendan, it’s not Korea that is territorializing Dokdo. It is the Japanese. If Dokdo Island didn’t exist Korea’s boundary would extend 120kms from Ulleungdo, case closed. If not for Japan’s policy of claming EEZs around rocks ie (Okinotirshimas) Dokdo Island would be a non-issue.
Currently Japan has the worlds 5th largest EEZ, about 15 times the size of Korea’s. I thing around half of this comes from the EEZs declared around Japan’s numerous outlying islands.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-not-japanese-1.html
Hamel, I’m glad you can see through Gerry Bevers’ charade here. How comical it is, he smugly questions the credibility of others then skulks away when his posts are scrutinized.
Matt, there is a lot of data on my website detailing the inseparability of Japan’s colonization over Korea and her annexation of Dokdo. None of this data is meant to demonize Japan. This is all in the name of the historical perspective you say we should consider.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-expansionism-politics.html
It’s one thing to hang onto lands claimed during the colonia era. It’s a far different thing to re-annex these lands a century later when the economic, demographic political situations between the two nations are worlds apart.
BTW, why do you contiually cite America’s annexation of Hawaii as if it were acceptable?
There are many these days who still insist America’s annexation was illegal. For those of us who understand the true nature of colonialism your analogy exposes your bias rather than justifies your support of Japan’s claim to Dokdo.
Brendan Carr, you tend to believe Gerry Bevers?
Great!! I’ve got some land I’d like to sell you. Hope you like gators.
# 123 gbevers
I nominate this as the post of the Year/2009, so far! gbevers replied to B. Carr. EXCELLENT gbevers!!!
Brendon (#121) wrote:
Again, Gerry, the follow-on question is So what? Columbus didn’t discover America, and George Washington didn’t throw a dollar across the Potomac. While we’re poking the Koreans, Tangun’s mom probably wasn’t actually a bear.
gbevers replied:
I think I can see why you are not a defense trial lawyer. In my mind, I can see a prosecutor standing up and saying in his opening statement, “The defendant is a liar and murder.” Next, Brendon Carr, defense lawyer, stands up and says, “So what?”
Ha ha ha, LOL !!!
tbone,
You can LOL all you want, but Hamel did a number on Matt of Occidentalism as did Frogmouth on Gbevers.
LOL!
Good job hamel and frogmouth for exposing those frauds for what they are. I think Matt should just go back to the orgyfest of Imperial Japan apologists that is Occidentalism.
btw, a nice Encyclopedia Dramatica article on Matt
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Wapanese
If you want to be precise about it, sure — I will accept your words on face value that you have no sympathy on Imperial Japan. But that statement above does display a shocking lack of moral sensitivity.
Far more Koreans died as a result of Japan’s annexation than Hawaiians as a result of the U.S.’s annexation. Far more Koreans were brutally exploited as a result of Japan’s annexation than Hawaiians as a result of the U.S.’s annexation. The manner of those deaths and exploitations evinces a brutality that only a few handful of events in human history match.
It is always a dicey business to compare the relative lows of the low points of human history. But as far as Korea and Hawaii, there should be no contest. This is not to diminish what happened at Hawaii. Rather, this is a straightforward observation that anyone with a functioning moral compass makes: there is nothing more important than human life and dignity. And the debasement of human life and dignity that imperial Japan caused upon Korea occurred at a much great extent than the same that U.S. caused upon Hawaii.
Anyone with a functioning moral compass is able to form a moral hierarchy. Everyone knows stealing is bad, but not as bad as murder. Here, you put on the same level two things that clearly belong to different levels. If you equated a thief and a murderer, it is not very surprising that people might conclude you have an undue sympathy for a murderer. That’s not 100 percent correct, but it should not be a surprise.
I’m glad someone called out shakuhachi on this bullshit. Funny how he talks about “having historical perspective” in the next sentence after demonstrating the opposite.
Thekorean, it sounds like you are talking about the holocaust. You have to be kidding, right? You do know that Nanking is located in China and not Korea, right?
Shaku,
I did not say anything about the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking. Those two events clearly match (and exceed) what imperial Japan did to Korea. I know the appropriate levels to which different historical atrocities belong. You on the other hand, from what I can glean from the earlier remakr, do not appear to.
Shakuhachi, you’re clearly out of your mind to equate Japan’s annexation of Korea with America’s annexation of Hawaii. When this is pointed out to you, the correct response would be to retract that statement, but instead you proceed to put on your dancing shoes and entertain us all with your usual song and dance routine. Nanking? Holocaust? You have to be kidding, right?
The Korean (#163) wrote:
Where are the hard numbers? Where is the evidence? Why do Koreans always use such vague generalizations to descibe their colonial period?
Koreans were not Chinese. Let me repeat that. Koreans were not Chinese, yet Koreans try to lump themselves together with the Chinese, who really did suffer from Japanese brutality during the war in China, though that brutality was a 2-way street. Koreans were part of the Japanese Empire, and they were treated relatively well. Also, the Korean annexation was relatively trouble-free.
If you want to compare numbers and brutality, compare Japan’s annexation of Korea with America’s annexation of the Philippines, which took place at about the same time. The Americans were much more “brutal” than the Japanese.
Korea needed someone to come in to get rid of her slavery, her caste system, and her medieval criminal justice system. Also, Korea needed someone to introduce sanitantion, medicine, public education, and industry, and Japan was the perfect country for doing that. Also, Koreans were lucky it was Japan instead of Russia.
People can argue whether Koreans would have been able to do it on their own, but the problem was that Koreans had kept their heads up China’s ass for so long and were so backwards that it would have taken many more decades to modernize. In the meantime, how many thousands and thousands more Koreans would have continued to die from starvation and all kinds of silly diseases?
One of the Great Powers was not going to come in, anyway, and many Koreans knew that and figured that Japan was the best choice.
Correction: One of the Great Powers was going to come in, anyway, and many Koreans knew that and figured that Japan was the best choice.
Besides the Holocaust, there’s the genocide of the Armenians, centuries of mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the African continent just to name a few. Catholics in the pre-20th Century British Isles suffered under far more restrictive and discriminatory laws than Koreans under Japanese rule. My Irish ancestors fled to escape starvation and second-class citizenship enshrined in law. Most importantly, the Japanese were not the most brutal in Korean history. That prize goes to the North Korean regime.
Are we seriously going to go up to a rape victim and say “What the fuck are you crying for? At least you weren’t raped as a child and then used in some meaningless gunfights between warlords in Africa.” ’cause that’s the logical conclusion we’re heading to right now, fellas.
Sonagi,
When I say “a few handful”, I mean many more than 5 events. And I never said anything about Japan being the most brutal. Nor was I comparing Korea under Japan’s rule to any other brutality.
Sonagi, I do have a great deal of respect for you, but I am perplexed by the inability by the intelligent people here to counter-argue my argument head-on. My argument was this: Comparing Korean annexation to Hawaiian annexation is incorrect, and daring to make such a comparison shows a shocking lack of moral sensitivity. That was it. I said nothing else, because I did not wish to make any point other than the ones I made.
Or, in gbevers’ case, I guess it would be “Stop crying, you wanted to get laid some time in your life anyway…”
And gbevers, right on cue, joins shak on stage with HIS song and dance routine. A typical apologists screed if I ever read one.
@thekorean:
The statement I challenged appeared to elevate the significance of Japanese annexation of Korea more than what is supported by the historical evidence. The peculiar phrase “a few handful” implies that this period was one of the worst atrocities in human history. It was a dark period in Korean history but overall does not merit recognition as a great crime against humanity. If you have not read Hildi Kang’s Under the Dark Umbrella, I highly recommend this collection of personal stories as painting a balanced picture of Korean lives under Japanese rule.
Hey Songai, besides the fact that comparing Hawaii annexation to Imperial Japan is just plain stupid, is it so difficult for you to understand that Koreans will care strongly about what happened to other Koreans as close as their grandparent’s generation? As opposed to other atrocities committed against other nations? Do you have the chutzpah to go up to a rape victim’s child and tell her that what happened to her mother doesn’t “merit recognition as a great crime” because there are other people out there being raped and beaten on a daily basis? (No they are not exactly the same thing, but we can definitely put them in the same category considering how *normal* it is for people to care strongly about atrocities committed against their own countrymen)
Yeah ok, so this is just an internet board that everyone sort of takes as a joke. Maybe you’ll have me there.
Sonagi,
Thank you for the recommendation, but I do have a fairly balanced sense of ordinary Korean lives under the Japanese rule, not in the least because of my family history (that I would really rather not talk about.)
That said, I respectfully disagree. I daresay Comfort Women and Unit 731 do qualify as two of the worst atrocities in human history. Neither happens in Korea without Japanese annexation.
Without Korea Japan would of never gotten Manchuria. Without Manchuria, there wouldn’t have been a Unit 731.
If the subject of Japan’s annexation of Korea is that sensitive to you, then you probably don’t want to discuss it with anonymous commenters on the internet.
@theKorean:
I agree that the Comfort Women and Unit 731 were historically significant acts of brutality. Comfort Women were a henious example of international human trafficking. Unit 731 likewise involved victims from many countries, and descriptions of what went on there are horrific.
I think you mistyped when you said “Neither happens in Korea with Japanese annexation.” As you know, Unit 731 was in Manchuria and existed because of Japan’s occupation of that region of China. Most of Unit 731′s victims were POWs. The Korean POWs were likely from northeastern China, not the Korean peninsula although some were probably freedom fighters who had fled the Japanese annexation.
thekorean, sorry but what you are saying is total bunk. The annexation of Hawa’ii and Korea are comparable. There were not vast numbers of Koreans killed – that is total fantasy. The only reason that you don’t think the annexations of two independent states is that you lack sympathy for the Hawaiians, who are not your co-racialists. Sorry, but colonial Korea was not a particulary violent place, and the only remarkable thing about Korea at the time was the lack of resistance to foreign rule.
Correction – The only reason that you don’t think the annexations of two independent states is not comparable that you lack sympathy for the Hawaiians, who are not your co-racialists.
henious = heinous
@Wangkon:
It is true that Japan used Korea as a launching pad to invade Manchuria. It is also true that Japan’s military force included Koreans who participated in the occupation of Manchuria. Chinese netizens derisively note this in Korea-related topic threads in internet forums, mocking Koreans as “Japan’s dogs.” The derogatory term “Gaoli Bangzi” is thought to originate from that period as Korean soldiers were not trusted by their Japanese superiors with guns and carried sticks instead. The oppressed easily become oppressors, so it is not surprising that some Korean soldiers and POW camp guards were cruel to their charges. This does not detract from Korea’s overall status as victims of Japan’s colonial aggressions.
I have just come back to this thread after fearing yesterday evening that it might have died. Boy was I wrong!
Bevers:
“Korea needed someone to come in to get rid of her slavery, her caste system, and her medieval criminal justice system. Also, Korea needed someone to introduce sanitantion, medicine, public education, and industry, and Japan was the perfect country for doing that. Also, Koreans were lucky it was Japan instead of Russia.”
Wow! There’s a lot of stuff there to pull apart. I almost expect to hear you tell the Koreans to thank the Japanese overlords for all they did back then. But that might be a little too blatant for you.
To parse your first two sentences in that paragraph, Japan did not “come in [in order] to” do any of those things. Japan came to gain resources, territory, markets etc for itself, as all colonisers do in all times and all places. I can’t think of any nation that colonized another out of benevolent altruism – though the Japanese certainly tried to paint it that way and you are good at reviving those canards.
Any nation does what it does for reasons of national interest. Japan colonized Korea because it helped further its aims and interests. Not in order to help Korea.
Anything good that came from Japanese colonization (sanitation, increased life expectancy, educational reforms, doing away with feudalism and the ossified upper class, etc) was incidental, rather than the motivation for colonization. Do you disagree, Mr. Bevers?
Now for Shak’s turn:
“The only reason that you don’t think the annexations of two independent states is not comparable that you lack sympathy for the Hawaiians, who are not your co-racialists.”
“Co-racialists?” What a delightful word. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you would turn your browsers to google.com and do a search for the term “co-racialist.” See what context it is most often used in, and to describe whom. Matt, what kind of literature have you been reading? National Action? League of Rights?
I am not “co-racial” with Koreans or Hawaiians. I lack sympathy for the Hawaiians because I have never read about what happened there, have never been there and have never met a Hawaiian. I am sure that bad things happened there too, heck, maybe even “worse” than in Korea. I put the word “worse” in quotation marks because I am not convinced that it is helpful or intellectually worthwhile to compare colonial experiences across very different countries. I don’t believe in a hierarchy of human suffering. Take each case on its own merits and judge accordingly.
Sometimes one finds that the “violence” of colonialism is not so brute, but more insidious – regulations favoring businesses run by the newcomers, for example. Restrictions on the natives regarding what they wear/eat/do for a living, etc. Less bloodshed, granted, but no less morally repugnant.
Matthew and Gerry, clearly I am never going to change your minds. And somehow I can live with that. All I can hope to do is to counter some of your influence by standing up against the errors your espouse so avidly as truths.
Hey shakuhachi, as much as I enjoy watching you twist yourself into mental knots trying to rationalize your witless assertion that the annexation of Hawaii and Korea are comparable, the comparison just doesn’t work. Comfort women, Korean victims of unit 731, the samil movement, communist resistance fighters… Can you tell us the Hawaiian equivalents? Well, of course you can’t. Not that it matters to someone who for some unknown reason fetishizes Japanese Imperialism. Educate yourself. Do some research on Japanese atrocities. Uncle Sam should have dopped one on Hirohito’s head.
This seems to be a major copout if I’m interpreting you correctly. Your basic argument seems to be, Koreans should not be as outraged as they are now because in the grand scheme of things, Japan’s atrocity against Korea doesn’t rank up there with the absolute worst. That argument, if you are honestly trying to make it, *should* apply do that child whose mother was raped in a single violent incident, because indeed there are others who get raped more violently and frequently.
Am I misinterpreting you or would you in fact consistently make that argument?
Perhaps you are familiar with the term “weasel words“? You have already tried to imply that I am an unpatriotic traitor in this thread, and now you are suggesting I am a fascist? Give it up. When I wrote “co-racialist” I was thinking of the Korean term 동포 which is as near that meaning as anything, and it was directed to thekorean.
Well I have been to Hawa’ii. Been to Pearl Harbour, learned about the history, along with the usual tourist stuff. It is comparable to the Korean annexation, and the person that was creating a ‘hierarchy of human suffering’ was not me but the Koreans and 동포 co-racialists on this thread.
Fairly said but also not 100% applicable to Korea. By most standards the societal changes effected by Japan in Korea are more along the lines of reform than restrictions. Certainly most Koreans would have been much more restricted under the old Choson regime. Not an excuse for Japanese imperialism, but could explain why there was not more vigorous resistance to Japanese rule.
hamel,
You and me both. I think this place is a microcosm in many ways. The rest of us faff around unconvincingly getting nowhere and then, late in the day, the Americans come riding in and save the day.
You should definitely be reading Queen Liliuokalani’s book about the annexation of Hawaii. I think I may have said on here in the past that the comparison between the Hawaiian and Korean experiences is fascinating.
I’m also trying to think of somewhere that was colonized out of benevolent altruism. That’s a tough call because it’s ruled out almost by definition. It would have to be somewhere already populated, where large numbers of people went to live and took over the administration, so not just aid workers or missionaries or the occupation zones of the Third Reich. Maybe Liberia is an interesting case? The United States didn’t have much desire to control the colony for very long, it wasn’t about gaining territory or resources. It was in many ways set up for the benefit of the colonizers, if not the Africans themselves.
Another book that you and mateomiguel might find interesting is The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat.
jamais vu?
Non, non, non.
deja vu.
Sonagi,
Yes, I did mistype that. Thanks. And you got all that from WK’s single sentence?
Shaku,
At this point, I stated my position twice and both times you failed to address it. Sure, Korea and Hawaii are comparable. I don’t dispute that. I never did. My point is that they are not equivalent. And it has nothing to do with my being “co-racialists” with anyone. In fact, I don’t even know what that word means.
Ah, no, what you stated was this –
Which is why I have been saying they are comparable.
fucking A, this is exactly why I should not write as I work.
@JW:
Human beings naturally feel more upset about bad things that happen to them and people they know as opposed to strangers, so it is understandable that Koreans weigh the Japanese occupation more heavily than people of other ethnicities.
I would not expect people of other nationalities view 9-11 the way most Americans do. In fact, since I was outside the country, I didn’t watch the events of that day unfold live like most of my countrymen and women, so I don’t have the same emotional investment as most of my fellow Americans.
It’s not a matter of understanding or not understanding. It’s a matter of relevance and perspective.
Well, it’s disappointing to see this degenerate into a symantic battle. Any two things can be “compared”, so any two things can be said to be “comparable”. It doesn’t mean that the comparison is valid, and it doesn’t mean that the two things being compared are morally equivalent, which was shakuhachi’s original assertion: “I do not find Japan’s annexation of Korea any more outrageous than America’s annexation of Hawaii”
Hey shakuhachi, funny how you bring up “weasel words” and then proceed to play a game of symantic obfuscation. Have you given up trying to prove that the annexation of Korea and Hawaii are morally equivalent? You haven’t really addressed that point at all.
LOL. I actually thought you were smoking crack.
Joke.
I don’t know why people are even talking about this shakuhatshit character.
Sonagi,
I don’t think you understood JW’s point, but I’m glad you brought up 9/11 because it makes for a good example to illustrate the argument you’re making in this thread.
You are essentially saying that people shouldn’t be outraged at 9/11 because far worse things have happened in the past “Besides the Holocaust, there’s the genocide of the Armenians, centuries of mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the African continent just to name a few.”
By your thinking, 9/11 doesn’t “merit recognition as a great crime” in light of all the worse things that have happened in the past.
JW, I personally like shakuhatshit’s avatar. Nothing says fascist chic like imperial era Japanese portraits, complete with Hitler moustache.
Perhaps you could clarify.
A word like “great” is by nature comparative. If we use the word “great” to describe an inhumane event in history, we are, by using that word, making a comparison.
I would describe 9-11 as a very bloody act of terrorism. I would not describe it as a great crime against humanity. In terms of human and property destruction, it doesn’t come close to matching the invasion of Shanghai or the firebombing of Tokyo, for example.
Heil Hitler!
Heil Hirohito!!
Long live the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere!!!!
The subject of the photo in said avatar probably says more about its user.
Shakuhachi,
You didn’t answer my question: who is the man in the avatar and why are you using it? Just curious.
wjk will like to point out that wjk was the first to correctly identify who Matt of Occidentalism was using for his gravatar, yet he in his bitterness and pettiness refused to acknowledge the credit.
the guy is Lee Wanyong, a Korean.
Yes, a Korean.
one of the few who signed the eulsa joyak.
that’s why the prick picked it up.
interestingly, his descendants have as recently as 2007, held the following positions,
1/ President of SNU.
2/ In charge of Seoul’s National museum.
this is why there is something wrong in Korea.
Sonagi,
Have you been following along at all? You took issue with thekorean’s description of the brutality of Japanese occupation of Korea, then proceeded to rattle off a list of historical crimes that you felt were greater, then claimed that the Japanese occupation of Korea doesn’t “merit recognition as a great crime”. You are essentially dimishing the crime by comparing it to much worse things.
JW asked (twice) if you would make the same argument to a rape victim by saying there are women who were raped even more brutally than the victim. Would you make that argument?
I’m asking if you would make the same argument to 9/11 widows by saying there were much worse attacks against civilians in the past. Would you make that argument?
Don’t get caught up on indiviual words here. It’s the principle that matters.
I was going to say, I can’t say WHY Shak is using it, but the guy is Lee Wan-yong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Wan-Yong
http://100.naver.com/100.nhn?docid=127294
wjk, I am pretty sure Sonagi had told people the identity of the long ago.
Hoju-Saram, it was 이 완용. He was one of the many supporters of the annexation, and IIRC, he was the Korean Prime Minister at the time.
Good to know shakuhachi uses a photo of a traitor to represent himself.
Eujin: you were right. We did push this thing over two hundred. And past noon on a Tuesday! Let’s have that beer together soon. You in Seoul? I wondered why you recommended Sacks’ book to me. I have heard of it and was familiar with its basic contents, but why bring it up here? Also, mateomiguel has not been in this thread at all, so why him?
As for recommending that I read more about the Hawaiian colonial experience, my life just isn’t long enough to read all the things I would like to. Queen L is going to have to go to the back of the queue for now.
Hoju_saram: terrible to be ignored by a “co-nationalist,” doesn’t it? I think you will find the answer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Wan_Yong
Shakuhachi: weasel words? No I didn’t use them with you. I did not imply that you were a fascist, but I do believe that you have a fascination with race and racial literature, such as the “anti-zionist” books circulated by the groups I mentioned. I have looked at your blog enough over the years to see some comments about immigration and minorities and the harm they can do to the fabric of a society.
To all and sundry: I believe firmly that comparisons of colonization/atrocities are a waste of time and energy, because then we get into the silly game of creating a hierarchy of suffering. Each case must be looked at on its own merits. Why doesn’t anybody believe me?
Shak: why do you choose to use that man as your icon?
Because Lee Wanyong is a good subject to start thinking about how and why the annexation of Korea happened, and the degree to which elements, organisations, and people in Korea wanted it or didn’t want it.
Lee Wanyong is fascinating because although he is considered a traitor now, he did not consider himself a traitor, and actually thought he was helping ensure the survival of the Korean people.
IIRC, I changed my avatar when there was talking of collaborators and traitors, and their property being taken away.
Read: Korean-baiting.
Yeah, Robert, I agree. I think Matt is a good old-fashioned stirrer. He loves to get Koreans riled up. What a pity he is not an equal opportunity stirrer, and gets the Japanese upset too.
I suppose he sees himself as some kind of iconoclast, going against the received wisdom and blazing a trail of his own.
I do wonder if some Korean man once offended Matt so much that he swore eternal vengeance on them.
Hamel, yes, perhaps we should have that beer. I am in Seoul.
That’s twice now on this thread that shakuhachi has spelt it “Hawa’ii”.
Although a lot of Western liberals who keep saying what about the slaves and the carpet bombing blah blah might disagree & though the initial motive might not have been benevolent, the British colonization of Hong Kong certainly left a lot of Hong Kong Chinese people hankering after the great things British, (incl. the passport) and not wanting to go back to being Chinese Chinese. In that sense the institution of commonwealth could be seen as a sort of benevolent leftover of colonial days – though people who are used to it and hate things British (usually British themselves)will say otherwise.
Shaku. I see your point. I am korean. There are quite a few people who are Korean including my parents and their friends who agree with some of the stuff you say about Japan, Dokdo, Comfort
Eujin, sorry, Hawaiʻi.
if Sonagi is honest, she’d admit she never did.
Yuna, did you know that Shaku in real life coaxes Korean women in Australia to sleep with him?
He writes about it, after doing it on Occidentalism.
Somehow, he never writes about his adventures with Japanese flesh. The land where ‘natural’ tits abound.
He’s a strange person. He belittles Korea and loves Korean pussy.
women etc, trust me they exist in Korea without being labeled outright as traitors when they talk amongst themselves that the south Korean state of affairs are a joke. HOWEVER, as a foreigner, you will not hear this often because confronted with outsiders with such black views like you have they tend to counter with white. And things are NEVER black and white.
so what does your criticism achieve? a white person telling an african american person that their demographic SAT scores are low again and again, is that helpful? whereas if Obama or Cosby said it it would be OK. do you not get?
constructive criticism against a nation or a people should be reserved for when they are harming people or other nations and the issues which you accuse the koreans of belong to neither.
wjk,
You can hate the people but love the pussy. Happens all the time. Have you ever had sex before?
wangkon, my Korean girlfriend and I are waiting till about sometime next year to do it.
unlike most Korean Americans, we are good looking, REAL Christians.
That explains a lot, I guess.
I suppose it is too much to ask for a link with me “coaxing” Korean women in Australia to sleep with me?
This is just like the time you were saying that I used ethnic slurs towards black people. Total lies. That makes you a vile little toad.
Am I the only one who’s getting a sick, almost masochistic pleasure out of reading what Matt and gbevers have to say? Almost exactly the same feeling I get when I turn on TV to watch Hannity, Matthews, Olbermann or O’Reilly.
@Robert
Pretty much explains just about everything, really.
Well past 200 and still several wickets in hand.
why doesn’t someone post a new blog about the media law issue dominating in the news – what the crazies had been fist-fighting over, and delve into what it means, why MB wants to push it through so badly, and why the korean press + the opposition is so against it that they have to keep shaking their fists in unison and post on youtube appealing to the world.
i don’t know how to start a post.
Eujin: Can’t do anything with cricket metaphors, sorry. A sticky wicket is all I can come up with, so to speak. How do I get in touch with you for that beer?
Shak: you have written some very lurid, prurient and some might argue misogynistic accounts on your website about your “hits” with the K-girls. No links necessary. As Heidi Klum said on a recently broadcast episode of Project Runway: “If you can’t see it then I don’t know what to say.”
Hamel, there are exactly 2, are travel stories, none involving Australia.
Yuna: for me the issue is why does the minority party decide that it is legitimate to resort to “mano a mano” debate when the majority party wants to pass a bill that it doesn’t like?
I didn’t accuse you of luring or coaxing women to Australia – that was somebody else. I simply looked at your gonzo journalist accounts and saw another dissonance.
hamel, i agree with you. but i simply wanted to know what the actual law entails & the behind stories.
it’s so much fun to get to the behind stories the hidden agenda as most addicted korean bloggers here guilty of “yok hamyunseo dalmnunda”
JK is the one who used to brag about and give details of the women he bedded while he was in Korea.
On another subject, THIS CAT looks sinister.
By the way, Korea’s Arirang News, KBS, and the Chosun Ilbo seem to be spreading more lies about Dokdo. See HERE.
Gbevers: it’s a wonder you have the energy to go on about lies about Dokdo in this threat. When you gave up responding to frogmouth above I thought your strength had flagged, but here you are again with more of same. Perhaps you’d care to go back and respond to some of the direct questions from him and me that you didn’t before.
Beave: cool cat/bat photo though! Nice one.
Hamel,
Frogmouth is a joke, and your not realizing it shows your ignorance.
bevers: 헉! [bows head] I have been told. The Beave did upbraid me and I was chastened.
Actually, what has been really good about this thread has been seeing Shaku and Bevers come close to really saying what they think, without faux Socratic questioning and “weasel words.”
I think it is clear to many of us here that both the Beave and the Shaku/Skin Flute have quite low opinions of Koreans generally, and anybody who doesn’t agree with their arguments.
Actually, I suspect that the ones who are jokes here are you two. But I will let others make up their own minds.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/local_idiot_to_post_comment_on
“HAZEL PARK, MI—In a statement made to reporters earlier this afternoon, local idiot Brandon Mylenek, 26, announced that at approximately 2:30 a.m. tonight, he plans to post an idiotic comment beneath a video on an Internet website.”
click the link to read the rest yourselves, peoples.
Hamel (#235) wrote:
I do not have a low opinion of Koreans. I like Koreans, but when it comes to their history, especially their history with Japan, Koreans often seem to throw objectivity out the window and replace it with exaggerations, half-truths or lies, and delusional supposition.
By the way, when I said you were ignorant, I meant that you were ignorant of the Dokdo-Takeshima issues, not that you were ignorant in general.
I too would like to see gbevers directly answer frogmouth’s challenges in posts 43 and 101. It shows a profound lack of intellectual honesty to simply ignore evidence that doesn’t conform to your worldview. How many pages has gbevers written on this issue? Now he can’t be bothered to answer a few direct questions?
You’re such a wanker Shaku. Nothing but a grade-D shit-stirrer who likes to style himself as some sort of champion of history.
You do the exact same thing. When we argued over the number of dead during the samil period you took the Japanese figure and refused to budge on it even an inch. How anyone who claims to be objective or pretends equitableness can’t conceive that the Japanese might have had the motivation to fudge the figures is beyond me.
And as this thread demonstrates, you also clearly can’t answer the tough questions when they’re posed to you.
This quote from you also sheds some like on how you think:
Very professional and objective.
Hoju_saram: exactly. A good old Aussie shit-stirrer.
I think though, that he seems himself as some kind of Christopher Hitchens, standing up for truth and “perspective,” not matter the cost. But really, he enjoys the muck-raking and mud-slinging far too much, laughing at the Korean men and seducing the women. Wow, what an original rebel.
The real question is, why bother?
“anyone who says on this blog or any other blog that Korea’s claim on Dokdo/Takeshima is stronger than Japan’s is either a dumbshit goofball, a Korean ass-kissing goofball, or a dumbshit, Korean-ass-kissing goofball”[sic]
I wish someone would tell which of those three things I am.
Gerry, perhaps you could damn me with faint praise again, and tell me that I am a [fill in the blanks] goofball regarding the Dokdo-Takeshima issues, and not in general?
Well I think Gerry really feels he has a mission. I believe he feels he was duped, and therefore it is his job to dis-abuse the rest of us of this illusion/fiction.
Matt I think does it mostly for shits and giggles.
“You do the exact same thing. When we argued over the number of dead during the samil period you took the Japanese figure and refused to budge on it even an inch. How anyone who claims to be objective or pretends equitableness can’t conceive that the Japanese might have had the motivation to fudge the figures is beyond me.
And as this thread demonstrates, you also clearly can’t answer the tough questions when they’re posed to you.”
as i said before ^^ yok hamyunseo dalmnun people on this blog.
how apt. this blog has a quite a few koreanfied people.
However, another expression starts with
Ddong irang nolmyeon..
I have no idea why this book was recommended to me, because I haven’t been in on this thread at all, but I’ve actually read that book about 10 years ago. It was indeed fascinating and I add my recommendations to it. I also eagerly look forward to the day when my brain is so fried that I also mistake my wife for a hat.
Gotta get married first tho. And all these hats are so damn expensive…
mateofmiguel, if you’ve read the book you’ll know that people believe, say and do all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. Sacks is a professional so he doesn’t get to use the scroll button.
but i like wjk’s comments – they are very lyrical and the style is free-flowing, non-apologetic and always poetic.
@tinyflowers and JW:
The rape victim analogy doesn’t work for a couple of reasons:
1. The rape victims I know don’t talk much about their past experience. It was mentioned once in the context of a conversation.
2. Rape victims themselves don’t make implied comparisons describing their victimhood as part of “a few handfuls” of brutal crimes in history. The media will use comparative or superlative language if something about the crime stood out, such as if the victim was tortured or killed in a particularly violent way.
Gerry Bevers your latest article on “your” blog totally both misleading and simply incorrect
Here you and your lobbyists wrote, the signpost related to the Hachiemon Incident in 1837 had nothing to do with Dokdo Island.
http://dokdo-or-takeshima.blogspot.com/2009/03/1837-japanese-sign-to-be-auctioned-off.html
It is true that the signpost in Hamada did not mention Dokdo. However, the records and maps related to the Hachiemon’s triall do in fact show Japan considered BOTH Ulleungdo and Dokdo to be Chosun land.
Remember, Hachiemon’s Trespassing incident was the whole reason the wooden marker was fabricated to begin with.
See the records and maps below.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-takeshima-incident.html
Gerry Bevers you and your Takeshima lobbyists have to stop lying about Dokdo.
wjk: “He’s a strange person. He belittles Korea and loves Korean pussy.”
A person’s choice of a partner has to do with compatibility, not race or nationality. Why is it that people like you always drag things down to that level?
WangKon936:”wjk, You can hate the people but love the pussy. Happens all the time. Have you ever had sex before?”
Bingo. I find that that’s a large part of the problem with these self-loathing racial-obsessive types. The self destructive hatred is compounded by the inability to form a cohesive opinion. I am quire proud of my sock puppets for illustrating these points.
@Sonagi
At this point, I think you’ve overstepped the boundary of the debate at hand. The hypothetical victim’s actions after the incident does not in any way change the significance of the incident itself. And some rape victims do talk about their experiences (also speaking from personal acquaintances) – and even if they were blabbermouthing, oversensationalizing drama queen, that does not make the original incident of rape any less significant in any way.
Frogmouth,
The documents of the trial did not say that Dokdo was Korean land. You are only assuming that from the maps drawn by the Japanese fisherman involved. If the Japanese government had considered both Ulleungdo (Takeshima) and Liancourt Rocks (Matsushima) to be Korean territory, then why didn’t they say so, and why was only Takeshima (Ulluengdo) listed in the ban?
The fisherman testified that it was suggested that he pretend to go to “Matsushima” (Liancourt Rocks), but to go to “Takeshima” (Ulleungdo) instead. That is more evidence that Matsushima (Liancourt Rocks) was not considered Korean territory, at least, by the people involved.
You do not know why the fisherman drew Ulleungdo and Takeshima in red. They may have been drawn in red to show which islands were involved, or they could have been drawn in red to show where Japanese fishermen were no longer allowed to travel after the incident since the fisherman considered using an excuse of going to Liancourt Rocks to go to Ulleungdo, instead. However, you cannot just assume that the maps meant that Liancourt Rocks was Korean territory.
As usual, you make wild assumptions and conclusions and leave out important evidence. For example, why didn’t you write anything about what the sign banning travel to Ulleungdo actually said? Why didn’t you say that the ban only listed “Takeshima” (Ulleungdo), not “Matsushima” (Liancourt Rocks)? Anyway, I think I already know the answer to those questions.
By the way, you may be interested in a new post I just finished:
“‘Difficult to confirm’ if Korea Burned Ulleungdo Inspection Documents”
Correction: You do not know why the fisherman drew Ulleungdo and Liancourt Rocks in red.
*Sigh* Oh good LORD, gbevers! Give it up already! What do you hope to gain repeatedly talking about your slanted view on history? You’ve already lost a job out of it…what do you hope to gain from this except to bore people to death and make enemies in the very country you call home?
Even if what you say is true and that Korea took legitimate Japanese territory when it took Dokdo (which I don’t believe at all, though I wish it were true), so what? Spain had legitimate ownership of the Louisiana territory. What, should the US give it back because Napoleon of France illegitimately gave Spanish territory to the US government in 1803?
I mean, EVEN IF your argument that Japan owned Dokdo centuries ago were even true….SO WHAT????
And don’t bring up the beginning of the twentieth century when Japan took Dokdo because soon after, Japan took the entire Korean peninsula. What are you gonna say next, that Koreans have no legitimate claim on the Korean peninsula itself because it was effectively under Japan’s control in 1910??
Get a life, dude.
JK,
I liked it better when you just posted about your sexual exploits in Korea, rather than your posting silly comments about almost everything I write on this blog.
Well, just about everything you write on this blog IS about Dokdo, gbevers.
My sexual exploits? Pray tell when this was, gbevers. Do you mean 10 years ago at the Korea Times when you were proven wrong repeatedly about others when it came to Dokdo, supposed Korean collaboration by the general population with the Japanese in WWII, and when you used to moan on and on about your ex-wife and how you would sing to her “You lost that loving feeling” right before she left you? or when you didn’t have your contract renewed by the Korean airline you worked for (anyone else notice a sketchy professional history when one takes into consideration gbevers’ not having his teaching contract renewed but blaming Koreans for this everytime?) or how you enjoyed the sight of the stewardesses in the skimpy outfits? Yes, you did write all this, gbevers.
I can go all day with details of 10 years ago and what we wrote, gbevers, if you wish to continue this. Shall we continue?
Gerry, the man is question was not a fisherman, Hachiemon was a merchant. He did not receive permission to voyage to Ulleungdo or Dokdo. Those who were involved either ill-informed on the status of Ulleungdo and Dokdo or Hachiemon received tacit (assumed) permission.
The maps you refer to weren’t just drawn by Hachiemon, they were copied by others who also recorded the incident.
Gerry didn’t you read the related historical documents to the Haheimon trial?
Here it states.
“…Recently after reviewing Azuya Hachiemon’s illegal trespassing on 竹島-Takehima (Ulleungdo). He is known to be in the fuedal domain of Matsudaira Yasuto, in 石州 Hamada,. but having no permanent residence. All of the others involved were severely punished along with Azuya Hachiemon, to the right. As to the island on the right, people from (伯耆) Yonago City used to voyage there but it has been banned since the Genroku Era, during which it was ceded to the Chosun government. Voyaging to foreign lands is strictly forbidden. From now on, the island on the right (Dokdo) is prohibited as well. Although it has been declared before that voyaging ships are not to come in contact with foreign vessels, once again, from this time forward sailing far out to sea must be avoided. This message must be written on a board and be displayed to inform our people everywhere…”
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-takeshima-incident.html
Gerry, I wrote on my article why the signboard had no explicit travel ban stated to include Matsushima (Dokdo)
First Dokdo was a barren rock known as being void of trees and fresh water. Even the records detailing Hachiemon’s trial show Japanese knew no profit could be had from going there. Secondly Dokdo was five days return in very heavy seas.
The related maps to the Hachiemon trial show Ulleungdo and Dokdo coloured the same as Korea. The related documents show the travel ban extended to Ulleungdo and Dokdo and stressed that foreign travel was prohibited. It’s clear the Japanese declared Dokdo as Korean land by these records.
Your article? Nice diversion but I’m not biting Gerry.
What’s your comment count record Robert? You must be getting up there…
I wuz here
Let’s
set
a record!!
JK,
At Asiana Airlines, one of my many duties, as the only foreigner working there at the time, was to conduct English interviews of applicants for new flight attendants and pilots. I did the interviews togeher with a Korean manager. The Korean man I did my interviews with during my first two years at Asiana was very professional and nice, but he was replaced by a sexually immature jerk in my third year at Asiana. The man had recently come back to Korea after getting an MBA degree in New York, so his English was pretty good, but he was nothing but a low-life, butt-kissing philanderer.
The jerk was my immediate boss, and our relationship started out all right, but it soon became apparent that the guy was a rude, crude, sexually immature jerk (like you, JK) who would often make sexually implicit comments to the flight attendant trainees. I tried to ignore it until one day during an interview with a female flight attendant applicant, who was wearing a white sweater, the jerk asked the girl if she wore that sweater so that we could see how big her breasts were. I quickly changed the subject by asking another question, but after the girl left the room, I yelled at the guy and told him I did not want to work with him anymore if he were going to continue to ask those kinds of questions.
A few months later, the jerk was put in charge of deciding whether my contract should be renewed, and he decided that I should not. I was not rehired even though I was a popular instructor and had worked hard for that company. Unfortunately, his boss was new to the department and was his drinking buddy and the object of his butt-kissing, so he trusted the jerk’s opinion.
Anyway, things finally catch up with people, and I heard from a female employee at Asiana, who also knew that the guy was a sexually immature jerk, that he was soon afterwards fired from the company.
By the way, I was also fired from another job in Korea, by an American boss, for supposedly doing outside translation work for another translation company. It did not matter that I had told my boss about the outside work and that he had given me his tacit approval since our company did not have much translation work at the time and I was working on a commission basis under a consultant visa. Nevertheless, when our boss from Japan came to visit, he informed me that I was fired.
You are right. I have not had much luck with jobs in Korea.
I just got back from a vacation to Florida. What’s been going on here?
NetizenKim, rough summary of the most important elements in this thread.
1 – wjk never got laid.
2 – Beavis got fired one too many times in Korea.
3 – I think this is the longest running thread ever.
No, I think the record is like 900 something.
Hey, I’m going to Florida for Spring Break next week!
Since apparently Mexico is out of the picture…
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090226/ap_on_re_us/spring_break_mexico_danger
Frogmouth (#258),
You did not mention anything about “the sign” banning travel to “only Takeshima,” which was what I was talkng about.
Yes, I read the documents, and they did not say that Liancourt Rocks (Matushima) was Korean territory. In fact, they tell us that Matsushima (Liancourt Rocks) was not included in the original travel ban to Ulleungdo in the 1690s.
Let’s look at the quote you posted:
First of all, “on the right” means “previously mentioned.” They use that expression because they wrote from right to left, and so uses “to the right” to refer to something previously mentioned in the writing. I cannot read the Japanese, but I know that is how Koreans use the phrase.
The following is from the quote:
The above quote was referring to Ulleungdo (Takeshima), which was “ceded to the Chosun government” in the 1690s. Now lets look at the next part.
Notice that it says, “from now on,” and “as well,” which means that travel to Matsushima (Liancourt Rocks) had not previously been banned. The quote goes on to say the following:
Notice that the above quote said, “from this time forward sailing far out to sea must be avoided.” That was referring to islands like Liancourt Rocks, which they considered “far out to sea.” Also, notice the phrase “from this time forward,” which means there had not previous been a specific travel ban for “islands far out to sea.” Therefore, the red on the map was probably indicating places on the east coast of Japan that Japanese fisherman were no longer allowed to travel, not only because some were not Japanese territory, but because islands like Liancourt Rocks were “far out to sea.”
Again, the above quote only mentioned Takeshima (Ulleungdo) as being “ceded to Josun.” Matsushima (Liancourt) was referred to separately. Therefore, your analysis and conclusion is wrong, as usual.
900 something?! Holy Mackerel, what was THAT all about?
I’m guessing Dokdo.
I happen to be a major fan of the show Flight of the Concords.
And in the latest episode, one of the guys sings in Korean karaoke. I would have never expected it. Here’s the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shP1IRGigbo
LOL That was quite random.
Quite true though. Love can be as sweet as 갈비 at times. X-D
gbevers, for a guy with a lot stinking conviction about the matter, that was a pretty shady, iffy response.
I’m beginning to think twice about all the time and energy you’ve spent on this. Or maybe you are as good as it gets. Historians are such losers. Especially the amateur ones.
#267 Hey, I’m going to Florida for Spring Break next week!
Where? Daytona Beach?
The record, ironically, was the thread announcing Gerry’s termination, followed closely by Virginia Tech. Both were around 500. I’m not going to look them up, though, cuz there is no chance y’all are gonna stretch this one out anywhere near that long. G’nite.
#266
I know a KA guy who’s 37 and never got laid. Brainwashed by the church, he’s determined to be a good Christian and save it for marriage, just like wjk says. He’s also a classic momma’s boy. His idea of asking a girl out on a date is asking her to go with him to a prayer meeting but only after a couple months of beating around the bush.
The church is doing a hell of a job in turning a generation of KA guys into a bunch of confused, idiotic, dickless wonders.
Gerry Bevers, that was the most limpdick excuse for a clear document you’ve ever dreamed up. You are really off your game today. It’s good to see others on this thread such as abcdefg can see through your (not-so) slick double-talk.
The Shogunate’s travel ban on far away lands had been in place for centuries before 1837. Even in the 17th Century, those Japanese who traded with foreign nations needed special voyage passes to fish or trade outside of Japan.
Your response is such a lame excuse, others on this thread such as abcdefg can already see through your facade.
The travel ban to Dokdo was not issued in 1695, this is true. Again as I’ve said knowing the nature of Dokdo Island’s distance, prevailing currents and lack of water and shelter it’s like issuing a ban on travel to a parking lot in the middle of the Sahara Dessert.
We know for sure when the Japanese declared Ulleungdo as Korean territory in 1695, the also stated that Dokdo (Matsushima) was not Japanese as well.
See the related documents here.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-tottori.html
So we know with certainty Japan had no claim to Ulleungdo and Dokdo starting in 1695.
As the document I posted shows, Japanese authorities, instructed those in Hamada to issue a travel ban to both Ulleungdo and Dokdo. Whoever posted the sign neglected to follow the direct orders of Japan’s leaders. The maps related show the colour of Ulleungdo and Dokdo as red. The phrase “as well” means the status of Matsushima (Dokdo) becomes the same as Takeshima (Ulleungdo).
In other words, Japan’s leaders extended the travel ban on Matsushima (Dokdo) because they deemed the islets as foreign (Chosun) the same as Ulleungdo. The Japanese government issued a specific order to ensure their nationals would not circumvent the travel ban to Korean lands. The red colour is there for a reason Gerry and your excuses simply don’t wash.
http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/dokdo-takeshima-incident.html
NetizenKim,
I am not a practicing Christian, but there is nothing wrong with being a virgin when you get married or wanting to marry a virgin. With all the diseases in the world today, I am surprised that there are not more people setting such standards.
Many of the “dickless wonders” these days are guys with dicks ruined by disease. If a man has AIDS, he will not be making any healthy kids or enjoying safe sex without a condom, so he might as well be dickless when it comes to having his own family.
Frogmouth (#277) wrote:
Finally, you are making some progess.
Good night.
Ouch for Barry Manilow
@NK
I respect those of us who choose to be virgin until they’re married (that takes a lot of self-control), such as a good friend of mine who is a practicing muslim and had plenty of opportunities to significantly shift the Arizona demographics in 2040
37 though? That’s a little excessive. That’s Steve Carell-excessive.
Hm, the flow slowed. Time for Americans to the rescue!
Just gotta think of something self perpetuating, um, like…
WBC is coming up. Can Ichiro and Team Japan repeat? Or will Americans finally stop bitching up and start playing like men?
You and others are misreading my views. I never said the Japanese occupation wasn’t significant. In fact, I described it as a “dark period in Korean history.” I merely challenged theKorean’s vague quantitative comparison that only a “few handfuls” of events in history were more brutal than Japanese rule of Korea.
The rape victim metaphor, which I’ve read many times before on this blog, just doesn’t work at all. A rape of a specific individual is not something debated in public unless either the individual is well-known or there is something unusual about the case. Historical events, on the other hand, are debated. Thus, if someone makes direct or implied comparative, superlative, or evaluative statements about the Japanese occupation in a public forum like a blog, it is appropriate for others to respond.
You still have a while to go before setting a record here:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2006/12/31/foreign-teacher-sacrificed-to-the-dokdo-gods/
511 comments.
Damn, this gravatar thingy was fuckin hard to figure out. What a process for a goddamn profile pic.
testing
I hear that new pitcher Darvish for Team Japan is naaaaasty. Dude looks like the Japanese Randy Johnson but much prettier and just as nasty.
gahdamit why won’t it werk
Have you waited at least 24 hours for Gravatar to approve your image?
Oh…shoot. Will they approve a picture of Chucky?
I’m trying to face my demons.
24 hours to approve a profile pic?! These friggin people have got to be kidding me.
There are two kinds of people in the world — those from California, and those who wished they were from California.
Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md69zCJKD1c
DLB
@JW
It seems to work now. So your demons are homicidal dolls, huh? I’ve been there, brother.
@Sonagi
Well, I’d definitely agree that there have been a more traumatizing events in human history than the Occupation – what I’m wary of is the implied or perceived effect of marginalizing the event in face of the “greater” events of the past. Sorry if I misread your assertions, but I guess that’s exactly what I’m wary of. And I’m not married to the rape analogy… other crimes can just as easily replace it as substitute because the whole point of using that analogy is to demonstrate that both psychological and tangible trauma must be measured before evaluating an event.
Tragedies should not be compared to each other in such fashion because it seems to me that the fact that such event has occurred is far more pertinent than the statistics of it. This isn’t to say I want to equalize the tragedies, but that such task cannot be logically done – it’s almost non-sequitur, as if to ask whether Apples or Oranges make the best ingredients in a tuna sandwich. This is why I cringe when I see Occupation being compared to the Holocaust… of course, even with the Unit 731 under consideration and if I accept that hierarchical structure of tragedies is legitimate, Nazi Germany still easily beats the Imperial Japan for the Fucking Assholes of the 20th Century Award.
It’s just that such rhetoric can be easily abused by the likes of someone up there, who is essentially using the “She secretly liked it” defense (sorry to go back to rape, but that one really fit, so…). My paternal grandfather’s family, maybe, but my maternal grandfather’s family sure as hell didn’t like being occupied.
DLB, so which of the two kinds of people was that commercial made for? I assume it was paid for by the taxes of the first ones.
Yup. But we can afford it!
DLB
PS. Unfortunately, a lot of our taxes also get redistributed to the loser fly-over states whose own local economies are pretty, well, unimpressive, but that’s another story.
Oh Dear…
I smell an approaching shitstorm.
oh dear. Eujin, we need you to come and give me a hand to flip this one over 300.
Interesting that the longest thread in Marmot’s history should be a Gerry centered one, and he has been so important in helping us drive this thread as far as it has gone, too.
As to your debate with frogmouth, it is very interesting. In my absence of any real reading knowledge of Japanese/Chinese I am not able to look at the documents in their original languages, so all I have is you two to go on. You both make some interesting arguments. I don’t really know what to think regarding the historical issues, but as Gerry pointed out earlier, they are completely irrelevant to today’s legal questions. That is probably why these issues don’t keep me up at night.
I do think it was unfortunate that JW chose to raise Bever’s previous marriage; I don’t think that is fair game. But Gerry, if you will make ad hominem comments about people’s sex lives, they may occasionally strike back. In fact I feel like I have seen that exact same interchange between you two happen before on another thread.
Staying a virgin till you are married? Hmm, I will leave that for another day, or create a sock puppet to handle it.
This is one of the biggest loads of shit ever shoveled by a Californian. The bank bailouts and mortgage-relief nonsense now going around in America are a direct transfer payment from those “loser fly-over states” to reckless Californians — who, by the way, seem to be fleeing California in ever-increasing numbers seeking refuge in flyover country.
And your new tourism commercial? You can afford it? California reported a US$16 billion budget deficit in February 2008, and in February 2009 the red ink piled up to US$42 billion. Which deficit, by the way, I fully expect the Governator to request yet another Federal bailout to cover.
Get over yerselfs, Californians. You suck, literally — you’re sucking the rest of the country dry.
Brendon, where would you rather live, Cali or Taxachusetts?
Those are my only choices? No Texas? Between California and Taxachusetts, I’d spring for California, of course. The weather is way nicer. But I’m from neither place and don’t really like either of ‘em. Given my druthers, since Missouri is not exactly a hub of international commerce, I’d probably move to Dallas.
If the Communist Party weren’t so strong in Seattle, that place would be almost perfect.
300!
Matt, still here? I thought you had left us after the storm in a b-cup about your sexual anecdotes.
Dammit I wanted the 300!
Hamel, I am not going to get into the gutter with you. Make all the comments you want about what you think is my sex life. I will not be responding in kind.
Hey gang! I just found that Korea.net is having a fun little online competition to find people’s favorite images of Korea, and for each entry they will donate one US dollar to UNICEF to help underprivileged kids in other countries.
Here is the link: http://korea.net/event/event_200902/koreanet_event.asp
Go help a worthy cause! ^^
@295,
Some serious repercussions need to be brought up against that San Diego pilot.
If I were that Korean man, I’d probably entertain the idea of viciously murdering that pilot. Just a thought. See, I have no church making me a “dickless wonder,” that is for sure.
my father’s friend gave up a good office job in Korea to work a liquor store in the US. He made a small fortune from it. But, he worked like a robot. So did his wife. The 3rd leg was some other Korean guy. They had a bullet proof glass fortress covering their cash counter. And I saw a decent caliber revolver visible under the counter. They raised 3 daughters, one of whom I fancied once. Mr. S was one of the most decent human beings I have ever met in my life time. I think I’ll mail him something nice in the near future.
I laugh when I say this, but a a convenience store is a convenience store. He didn’t have a 7-eleven. It was just a liquor store. One time, he and I went to K-Mart. He bought some breakfast cereal boxes on sale. When he got back to his liquor store, he put a certain markup on it, and placed it on his shelf.
Hey, K-Mart is not open for you at 11pm, and you won’t get out of there as fast as a liquor store.
don’t see it that much in the East Coast or US midwest, but one of the staple works of immigrant Koreans in Los Angeles is selling booze, cigarettes, and gas station store items to the public at difficult hours. Maybe it’s because everyone drives there. Every liquor store is not just a liquor store, but also a gas station convenience store. Although they don’t sell gasoline.
# 295,
Oh shit. Just what the poor guy wants to hear. The “treasure of our nation” could of avoided the disaster. Himself and his Marine ground controllers just had to be macho and try to land a crippled plane into an airfield 10 miles away…
People responsible for this have to be prosecuted to the maximum extend of the law. What if that F/A-18 crash landed into the high school that was nearby instead of just a couple of houses?
COULD HAVE, you persistent mouthbreather.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2009/03/176_40501.html
“Jimmy Lin, a Taiwanese representative in Korea, persisted in doing it and mastered Korean, a language he only began to learn in college.
“I watched about 130 movies in one year,” he said in Korean during an interview with The Korea Times last week. ”
130 movies a year! That is impressive. I don’t even know if I could name 60 Korean movies, let alone find a video/DVD store that held all 130 movies. Good for him. I found watching movies and downloading movie scripts was helpful to me when learning Korean. Ah, the enuthusiasm of my younger years, how to get it back?
# 308,
Do we need to use perfect grammar in the comments section also???
Brendon is right.
California has a huge hand in this economic disaster.
California’s home prices were among the highest in SPECULATION during the massive increase in home ownership.
Californians, especially the southern ones, DRIVE from age 16 to age 85. To go ANYWHERE. They’re sucking up gasoline consumption.
LA’s freeway system is the #1 congested road system in the US. I don’t miss one moment of it.
In an unrelated note,
‘Koreans take pay cuts to stop layoffs’–wsj.com
A rare free article?
read the comment section. There’s a comment about race relations from people I suspect are white Americans.
abcdefg: I agree with your attempts to stamp out this egregious grammatical mistake, but to label wangkon a persistent mouthbreather for it? That smacks of spite or a personal grudge.
I remember my primary school teachers back in the early 80s trying to stop native Australian born kids from saying “[modal] of” without much luck. A “student of the Bible”/”Christian teacher” (and perhaps unordained pastor) who writes and comments frequently at the Korea Times, consistently uses that erroneous construction. When I upbraided him for doing so, he said it was not important.
I agree that good grammar is nice, but as a general descriptivist (not a prescriptivist) I would love to see a survey of the Corpus to see how common could of/would of/should of constructions are, and from when they became commonplace in spoken and written English.
i always wondered how they do the illustrations on the wall street journal. I doubt they’re photographs. Is it an artist drawing?
Hyundai loses the least in the US auto market.
What happens when Hyundai has to honor its ad promise?
Is this all covered enough with ‘insurance’?
US should consider making it a law that highschool kids would be required to take school buses, and the DMV refusing to grant driver’s licenses to 90% of those under 21.
this will make things a lot better.
Wangkon is the most inoffensive person on this blog, abcdefg. Not sure where the “mouthbreather” remark came from.
Besides, where’s the 동포애?
@ hamel
I think abcdefg is being humorous.
Oh, but I’m being most logical and not spiteful. Only mouthbreathers could commit such a grammatical mistake and Wangkon is a persistent commiter of that very mistake.
See.
Robert, by 동포애 do you mean co-racial love that I supposedly lack for Hawaiians?
Maybe that “Christian teacher” is WANGKON.
Yeah…humorous. *Walks away and whistles into the night*
correction – “co-racialist”. Gotta get the quotation right. Still working. Not very precise when I work.
thekorean, 동포애 sounds like “co-racial love” to me, so you were right the first time.
abcdefg,
You are not my English grammar teacher so I don’t need to listen to you.
Haha, now that’s funny.
abcdefg: wow. It seems you have a real issue with Wangkon, beyond that grammar mistake.
I correct it where I see it, but (usually) without the bad grace to insult the utterer.
On a positive note, did you (all) know that you can contribute in this online event up to ten times, forcing the Korean gummint to donate 10 bucks (US) to UNICEF?
http://korea.net/event/event_200902/koreanet_event.asp
Wow~!
Has anybody here seen anything approaching 130 Korean movies? (에로 not counting)
Mouthbreather…most awesome new word for me (of course I am aware of the dumbass staring with his mouth open, which is why this is a delightful addition to my vocab).
Thanks
aware of the *image* of the dumbass that is.
abcdeg, don’t kill me, i don’t share your grammar nazi worldview
love the Super H Mart, dongpo.
#297. This one almost got past me.
Sorry, Brendon, but California has paid far more in federal taxes to the feds than it has received back every year since at least 1967, which is the earliest data I can find. Even worse, since 1986 has been among the top five states with such negative returns among all the states in the Union, in the process giving a whole new meaning to the term “welfare state” to describe those fly-over states that you champion and I loath.
This imbalance is only going to increase with the latest round of deficit financing, and is certainly NOT going to result in poor slobs in Kansas and Alabama and bumfuckArkansas seeing their taxes suddenly transferred to California, unless their moronic governors decide to intentionally play it that way.
As for California’s current deficit, it would disappear if we got back from the feds as much as we pay out every year. But that’s still cool, ’cause even though my home has lost serious bank in value over the last couple of years, I still get to wake up every morning and NOT have to look out the window and say, “Fuck, it’s not a hangover, I really do live in Korea!”
Cheers,
DLB
From which
orificedictionary did you pull the word “commiter”? It does not appear in the online dictionaries of either Merriam-Webster or Oxford.*Walks away and whistles into the night*
You are correct that poor states in the deep south, Appalachias and upper plains are the real federal welfare states. However, according to this document, California became a net payer in 1986. My home state of Michigan, land that the Reagan 80s forgot, has been a net payer since forever. It finally slipped out of the top ten in 2001 because unemployed people don’t pay taxes.
At the risk of resuscitating the never-ending Dokdo “debate” or David Barch’s Californian megalomania, I’d like to urge everyone to get the bank run started now: FDIC’s out of money, and the US government, also out of money, is starting up the printing presses for FDIC.
We’re fucked.
Chicken little!
Or maybe not. The Bank of England has just announced it will create 165 billion dollars of new money as “quantitative easing.”
Mugabe, your strategy is catching on.
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