According to an article published in Korea Times (January 16, 2012), about 64% of Koreans surveyed were worried about possible foreigner demonstrations and riots. What will bring on these riots?
As the main reasons for conflict between Koreans and foreign nationals, most respondents cited differences in language, culture and skin color.
And while I think the differences in culture and language do legitimately contribute to conflict, the color of skin as a cause is just plain wrong. I do, however, think these other points are perhaps more telling and something that many Americans – as well as residents of certain European countries – can relate to:
In the survey, one out of every two respondents said Koreans will have difficulty in getting jobs due to the increasing number of foreigners here. Some 37 percent also believe their inflow into the job market will result in Korean wages falling.
Such concerns are more prevalent among the elderly. Over 65 percent of respondents aged over 65 think the inflow of foreigners will deprive Koreans of jobs.
About 37 percent of respondents said the increasing number will result in a decrease in welfare benefits for Koreans.
Some 36 percent also said they will cause housing problems to Koreans and 27.7 percent said they will have a negative impact on the nation’s economic growth.
Actually, this is pretty much what we read a little over three years ago when Mr. Marmot blogged about it here -which also gave us Mr. Marmot’s view on the situation – have his views changed? We have also seen some legitimate concern involving foreign gangs - Mr. Marmot posted here a little over two years ago.
As for the riots – well, we have seen foreign riots before in Korea, but they were the Chinese – as blogged about here , and here , and here, and here .
{ 81 comments… read them below or add one }
“And while I think the differences in culture and language do legitimately contribute to conflict, the color of skin as a cause is just plain wrong. ”
I definitely agree, they should have put “eyes chinkyness” instead of “skin color”, as 90% of the foreigners in Korea are also yellow.
I gotta wonder. With the strong emphasis on a technical/science/BS-type university education in Korea, I think the biggest thing Koreans need to fear…are Koreans themselves. There is a glut in Korea in the business/technical job market. And after a high priced education, many young “entitled” Koreans don’t want to step down and take a job that is beneath what they perceive as their lot in life.
I am acquainted with a guy whose Korean lady friend has two sons in their 20′s. She has paid their way through college. The younger of the two is hard working and resourceful. The elder son graduated from college and is unable to find suitable employment. He actually believes going back to school with a different major is the solution. Meanwhile, he lives at home, siphoning off of Mom in her “on the fringe” middle age years. And he is about 28-29 years old.
Meanwhile, citizens from other Asian countries are in Korea doing many of the jobs many Koreans won’t do – among them the dirty, dangerous, and difficult (a fourth “D” is demeaning) jobs or trades.
Seems no one has pride in rolling up their sleeves and doing a hard day’s sweaty work anymore. They want that office job in the high rise. I suppose it’s very much the same all over the world, though.
Thanks, Mr. Neff, for blogging this. I do hope that at some point we get Robert “immigration is not a right and multiculti sucks” Koehler’s perspective on this story too.
For mine, I believe that in any society that experiences large-scale immigration, there will inevitably be friction. Whether this amounts to rioting and demonstrations depends on the individual circuspants in the society in question.
As wiessej astutely alludes to, with the glut in tertiary (post-high school) education in Korea, and the disinclination among a majority of the young to take anything other than white collar jobs, Korea is a country that will soon be in need of immigration. Let us hope that Korea learns the lessons of Europe’s guest worker program, and doesn’t make the same mistakes.
The same is probably true for Japan, despite Matt of Occidentalism’s urging for an army of menial robots rather than any immigrant workers.
Well, Robert “immigration is not a right and multiculti sucks” Koehler’s perspective is that with a foreign population of just 3%, there’s not a whole lot to worry about yet, but I’d say that 64% has good cause for concern if they survey multiculti around the world.
Robert Koehler: what makes you say that there is “good cause for concern if they survey multiculti around the world.”?
And what makes you say that Korea will end up the same as “around the world”?
Don’t tell us Booz Allen has you digging ditches and policing up cigarette butts.
Multiculti doesn’t work. Assimilation does. Korea will do fine if the society sets about assimilating its immgrants — accommodating them in the first generation, and turning the children into good Koreans.
Ahhh, what would it be without an off-topic snipe by the ever vigilant Brendon. Yet another quip he must have snickered so proudly at while typing. Brendon, you’re like what! 43 years old? Grow the fuck up. Jeez. Stay on topic…stay on topic…take your medication…
You mean assimilating people like you, Brendon? Why would they ever want to do that to you OR any of your progeny?
Gawrsh, I feel so clever doing the Brendon snipe.
I agree with the view that multicultu doesn’t work. A half century of Western European experience, and the mess that it’s made of the melting pot in the States is evidence enough. I wonder, though, what a polity like Korea’s, whose only raison d’tre is an ethno-nationalist one, is going to do with the immigrants everyone seems to think it needs, since that founding myth pretty much excludes assimilation (in the absence of any foci for national cohesion other than ethnicity).
#7 Assimilation doesn’t work in a racially centered society. Jews had a lot of problems trying to assimilate in the nazi society.
@#11 and #12 – Assimilation is ultimately inevitable. Ethnocentric societies ultimately open up and are diluted (in a not so bad way) by the ethnically different immigrants that come.
It may not happen in our lifetimes, but it has been moving in that direction at a sure pace (albeit glacially speaking) for centuries. The Nazi oppression of the Jews was not a failure to assimilate. it was a failure of society to reject an ideology that preyed on fear, and which ultimately placed the irrational blame for all woes on one segment of the population, the Jews. But it wasn’t just Jews. It was anyone who was markedly different and against whom blame could be easily leveled. Gypsies, gentile Poles, Slavics, mentally ill, deaf, homosexual, mentally retarded, homosexuals, transsexuals, political opponents and political dissidents – pretty much anyone they didn’t like as a group. The Jews had no problem assimilating. The problem was with the Nazi Party, which discriminated.
In centuries past, Asian countries kept their doors closed to foreigners, going so far as to even kill those who had the misfortune to wash up after ships were wrecked by storms. Eventually, sometimes by force, the doors were opened. While xenophobia continued, a more open attitude began to grow. Japan was one of the first, and its acceptance of more technologically advanced war materiel hastened its dominance in the early-mid 1900′s. Following WWI inter-racial relationships between westerners and Asians were somewhat taboo, but even Syngman Rhee had a western wife. Now, 60+ years later, walls that discouraged ethnic assimilation have withered remarkably. Inter-racial marriages and children still are often seen as novel, but the wave of progress is unstoppable in this area.
Just like the Borg said in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”: Assimilation is inevitable; resistance is futile.
Nothing about the course of history is “inevitable”, except change, and the consequences of change are as likely to be dreadful as warranting a chorus of kumbayas.
@#14 – OK…if you wish, feel free to ignore eons of human civilization. That “change” includes the gradual assimilation of societies over time by larger ones (i.e., the Incas, Aztecs, American Indians, etc., etc.) There is even evidence that Neanderthal was assimilated by Cro-Magnon man. That’s part of change.
The Aztecs, Incas and American Indians weren’t assimilated; they were exterminated.
Aren’t many modern-day Peruvians and Bolivians the descendants of Incas?
Bah, don’t form opinions based on what a newspaper article says. They tend to sensationalize these stories. Reviewing the research is not even an afterthought.
What type of questions were used? How many items were tested? How were the questions worded? What was the scale employed? What was the sampling used? How was the data collected and processed? Did the questionnaire had many questions which suggested conflict and few which suggested harmony?
I can write and administer a questionnaire in such a way that it will show that most people support some of the most preposterous ideas.
How many people do you think would strongly agree that they are concerned about demonic possession if I sample a group of people who’ve just seen the Exorcist for the first time?
Oh, Sperwer!!
The American Indians still exist. Many have remained relatively pure-blooded, but I know MANY, MANY individuals who have American Indian blood in them, who are far from being full-blooded, especially descended from the five civilized tribes (Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee and Seminole), as well as others. While many Indian customs exist, they have adopted the ways of industry, finance, medicine that belonged to the civilization/culture that defeated them. While some tribes went by the wayside and no longer exist in a pure form, many of their partial blood descendants are all over the place.
As far as the Incas, from the early 1400′s tot he early 1500′s when they were interrupted by Spanish conquest, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America. True, Pizarro and his brothers virtually destroyed Incan civilization, but smallpox was the real killer. However, even today, there are Incan descendants living in Peru, as noted above, many of whom, I am sure are fully equipped with cable TV, the Internet and cell phones.
The Aztecs of Mexico were conquered, but the Aztec traditions live on today, through the people of Mexico. Their language, Nahuate, is still spoken by more than 1.5 million Mexicans, whose ancestors passed the language down through the centuries.
That there are only remnants of these three pre-Colombian civilizations is a sign of their assimilation into the western cultures who overtook them. It happens somewhat less violently these days, but it is as stoppable as a glacier….which is to say…it’s not.
So Koreans are afraid of a horde of foreigners storming in, causing riots, taking jobs and sparking a housing shortage. Are you sure this wasn’t a survey about reunification?
Granfalloon: good question! Certainly a more likely horde of outsiders to one day flood into Seoul are the future unemployed (and largely unemployable) members of North Korean military who will turn up here looking for ways to make money and a place to stay.
@ 17, 19
Yeah, I overstated that, having forgotten how the style here at the Hole is to miss the forest for the trees. If, like Webelo, one wants to think that human history can be equated to a natural geological process, and ignore the meaning of “assimilation” as a political term of art, you could say that the conquest and subjugation of entire peoples by others is some “natural” phenomenon exempt from normative assessment. Even then, though, perhaps it has to be admitted that the “assimilation” of the incas, aztecs and american indians differed not just in degree but in kind from that of , say, my maternal forbears who came to the US of their own volition and successfully (and remarkably quickly) became ordinary (ie, first class citizens)(nowithstanding the derogatory acronym stamped on their entry papers).
(oh, and just to be clear, i didn’t mean to imply any particular moral judgment by my earlier use of the term extermination).
When they are talking about skin color, they are referring to guest-workers from South East Asia and South Asia. As for the Chinese or Chinese-Korean groups, well, the assimilation sort of happened already once in modern time..a lot of Chinese people came over and opened Chinese restaurants and modified/invented Chajangmyun but they integrated into the society, although now we still have behind-your-back rumours that “so-and-so(sometimes a celebrity) is 화교”..Sometimes if they have not changed their surname (e.g. Wang, ) it’s easier to tell the origin (kind of the same in Japan and the 3rd generation zainichis where they use their Japanese pronunciation of the Korean surname, 설 into Setsu, instead of taking a Japanese Japanese name)
I guess they are more worried about men like that Chinese guy who claims “part-Korean heritage” (is it even verified?) and doing something foolish like throwing a lit bottle into the embassy of somewhere else. It’s different when you do it and when people you don’t want to associate with do it. That’s the racism part.
Sorry, Spewer –
I was simply using a metaphor to describe the slow evolution of the assimilation into the larger community and its collective influences that inevitably occurs when immigrants arrive. My own ancestors processed through Ellis Island the year it opened and settled in the American midwest. For a time, they held onto their old world ways, but eventually, the languages and customs were so diluted that even the first full American generation no longer learned the old language, and only very few of the customs that were not already also American customs. However it happens, it happens. Much less violently in this century, but it happens nevertheless. I am not even sure why you are pressing this, or why you feel childishly inclined to use the term “Webelo”. Does it somehow make you feel good? If so, by all means, continue to do so. It’s really no more than a sophomoric tactic.
Sure, history demonstrates that ethnies get mixed often and as a result of all sorts of events. It matters, though, how and on what terms assimilation occurs. Just ask an average Korean how they feel about even the less coercive efforts of the Japanese to “assimilate” Koreans, circa 1910-1945 and, again, reflect on the difference between that and the American immigrant opportunity. Only the latter imo rises to the level of assimilation in the politically specific sense of the word. If you wonder why it matters to be so “picky” about the use of words, read Orwell.
Oh and btw you may presume to criticize my appellations for you after you have washed out your mouth with soap. Maybe you can’t taste it but the smell from your gutter mouth still lingers from the last time we conversed.
The choice of “Webelo” might be related to your being a neophyte here. The first stage of acceptance, so to speak. Brendon won’t even concede that level, but you’re making progress with Sperwer, is my guess. I’m not sure what level I’ve attained, not quite Eagle Scout, probably.
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeffery, You are the troop master!
To Spewer –
I see. So, you conduct moral comparisons when determining whether you yourself are on the wrong side…if you perceive someone as “more wrong”, it appears you deem yourself “right”. I wonder what level of consciousness that means you have reached…like 1.5? I hope I am as grown up as you when I reach your age.
To Spewer @#25 – So….you transitioned from disagreeing with me to agreeing with me…love it.
Over 65 percent of respondents aged over 65 think the inflow of foreigners will deprive Koreans of jobs.
About 37 percent of respondents said the increasing number will result in a decrease in welfare benefits for Koreans.
Fascinating. One wonders who they think is going to pay into the pensions of these elderly and pay for their welfare benefits when the working age population shrinks drastically (the last ten years alone have seen the number of kids entering elementary school in Seoul drop 30% from 762,000 to 535,000.
@23
“a lot of Chinese people came over and opened Chinese restaurants and modified/invented Chajangmyun but they integrated into the society”
You left out the “got lynched in the streets and had their businesses burned” part:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanpaoshan_Incident
According to Donald Clark’s Living Dangerously in Korea, there were 68,000 Chinese in Korea in 1930 (with about half being transient seasonal labourers); some 5,000 left within a week of the riots, with many following later.
I’d be curious what happened to the Chinese still living in Korea when the Sino Japanese War broke out in 1937; if they were treated anything like the Westerners from allied countries in 1941, I’d imagine they were deported – but I really don’t know.
‘Fear’ + ‘ A wave of foreigners’ = remind me of that most uncouth of cads Enoch Powell, he was a racist scoundrel too. Doesn’t Kim Tae-jong have a track record of slightly racist articles in that dreadful KT paper?
Many Koreans are nervous around non Koreans to this day, but I’ve found that to be lessening. I have friends who have children who look almost caucasian and have no problems at school. Maybe the problem is with kids who have darker skinned children? My pal who has a daughter and is a black American himself, his daughter is preschool so issues may occur, though I hope not.
I don’t have the slightest problem being a tiny minority in my area of Seoul, I’m a white guy surrounded by Koreans. Korean people I have regular dealings with are polite, friendly and hospitable. They even try and speak in English, though my Korean is better than their English in most cases.
The idea that foreigners are going to take their jobs is absurd, whilst this country is importing labour from 3rd world countries or shipping jobs abroad to China or Vietnam and many Korean university graduates want to sit in an office and drink lattes all day, or just sleep. ‘If I don’t get the dream job, I’ll stay at mum’s house’ is kind of a pathetic view on life. If anything they should be protesting Samsung and other Korean companies for shipping so many jobs to China.
As someone who has been to university myself, it’s not beneath me to work a manual labour job, I did for a while and learned a lot. I wonder how many people with the ‘dream office job’ can rewire some electrics for their house, install a new sink-toilet, re-tile a bathroom, change a plug from Korean to British on an electrical device, plaster, paint, use a cement mixer, know the difference between what kind of drill bits do what, know how to clean oil of their hands? My first boss in Korea didn’t even know how to operate a washing machine, when he was studying in NY he had someone else do all his laundry! He actually boasted about it as if it was something to be proud of.
It would be much more beneath me to be still relying upon my parent’s when I should just go out and get a job. I suggest Korean grads take those lowly paid jobs and at least learn what work is.
^parents who have dark skinned children, in the 2nd paragraph
Keith, as mentioned by others before, Koreans don’t care about tiny minority of white people amongst Koreans. It’s the flood of South East Asians, South Asians, Chinese, and even ethnic Koreans from China who are more looked upon as Chinese, rather than Koreans (I’m guessing that’s due to them being more close culturally to China and politically side with China), that are the cause for concern.
And bulgasari, how many more people to bring in, is enough? Remember, we’re talking about a tiny sized country which is bursting at its seams from over population.
cm,
is korea really bursting at the seams from over population? other than maybe 3 metro areas i can’t think of any part of SK that was teeming with people.
hamel @21,
i think a very simple and possibly quite effective solution to that would be to have an all volunteer military rather than conscription. because once korea is unified and the threat of war is removed, i’m pretty sure that a lot of college-educated, unemployed/under-employed korean dudes would jump at the chance to serve their country and make a career out of it.
@34
The problem isn’t now, it’s the next 10-20 years when the people who are now in their 40s and 50s start to retire and there are not enough people who are now in their 20s and 30s to replace them A) at their jobs, and B) their payments into the pension and health care.
iMe, inevitably the newcomers will want to live in Seoul and Pusan too. They’ll go wherever the most jobs are. Who can blame them?
bulgasari, in the next 10-20 years, South Korea may have to worry about North Koreans flooding in. Will there be enough room for them, by then?
The National Pledge of Allegiance now erases the word “minjok” and replaces it with “citizen”.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/04/18/2011041801112.html
@Sperwer: I don’t think I’m missing the forest for the trees. Many Amerindian groups in Central and South America retained their languages and cultures to a degree natives in North America could not. It’s the difference between the way Northern European Protestants and Southern European Catholics administered their colonies.
Or put another way, the U.S. is not likely to see its own Evo Morales.
Sperwer (#28), you mean I’ve reached that level? I suspect my leadership will soon reflect the Peter Principle, if it hasn’t already. At least I’m not a Den Mother . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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one of the things i like the most about korea is that it is very homogeneous. i think the country’s strength derives from it. and i say this as someone who resides in one of the most racially and culturally diverse cities in the world because whenever i drive through certain parts of los angeles, i feel like i’m driving through frickin’ colonies. and i hate seeing all these different groups – whether it’s koreans, hispanics, blacks or what have you – raising a fuss over a perceived slight against their community and begging/petitioning the city, county or state for more handouts. of course, this being the People’s Republic of California, everybody ends up getting screwed out of their money and resources for the greater good that isn’t.
as for korea, it was sort of unsettling for me to learn (via links provided by RN) that there are so many organized criminal cartels from china and some other asian countries. actually, i’m never surprised by those boorish chicoms because they really epitomize all that is wrong with humanity but still, i’m disgusted nonetheless.
@30
Don’t flatter yourself, grasshopper. As usual, in your pathetic webelo zeal to claim individual victory you’ve missed the point. That some have gotten mixed over time doesn’t mean that some groups assimilated with others in a manner deserving of the word or that future such events will. The vast majority of such “assimilations” were conquests and subjugations involving immense corrcion, violence and human suffering. If regarding that as a comfortable prospect because it’s just after all some unavoidable natural process gives you some peace of mind, then you are even less than I thought.
@29 i really don’t understand what you are nattering about. I simply find your presumptiousness ludicrous; i daresay it’s that quality and your utterly unearned sense of entitlement to talk down to others that also puts off others here.
To Spewer (or shall I call you Master Po) – how appropriate, though, as he too was blind. Clearly you are operating with an elevator that doesn’t reach the observation deck, so I will spell this out for you very carefully. You should stop operating under the false belief that I give a flying fuck what you have to say in condescension toward me. I hope that is abundantly clear. Continue your childish bantering, your infantile butchering of my ID here if you like, and label me a Tenderfoot for all I care – uh, ‘cuz I don’t. Better yet, if it makes you all warm and cuddly, call me Cub Scout – that’s even less advanced than Webelo, right? Ciao.
As far as I recall, the ‘Scouting’ sequence, in ascending order, is:
Preterite –> Webelo –> Cub Scout –> Tenderfoot –> Boy Scout –> Eagle Scout –> Explorer –> Pedophile –> Felon
You see, man hands on misery to man. My advice? Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.
Jeffery Hodges
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Thanks for demonstrating and confirming my suspicions re the nature of your character.
Jeff: you know that last wasn’t aimed at you.
Spewer….All I did was confirm for you that your personal opinion of me matters a little less to me than the price of figs in Jordan. And I am very happy to let you know that, so you can simply dispense with the wasted effort in the future. You are welcome. Now, feel free to get the last post in on this issue, and then you can move on.
Jeff – the sequences is as follows:
Cub Scouts (Bobcat – Tiger – Wolf)
Webelos – a kind of bridging program between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.
Boy Scouts (Scout – Tenderfoot – 2nd Class – 1st Class – Star – Life – Eagle)
For the very interested, here as some prices of figs in Jordan: 1991-2008.
Jeffery Hodges
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Re: # 48, I stand corrected . . .
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeff: are those prices in dollarS, dinars or shekels? Adjusted for inflation? What about dates?
I think someone analogous to Evo Morales in the American context would be a white populist leader, specifically one who represents white rural and working class interests. That seems very likely in the future.
Why, because whites have been an oppressed minority in the US for several centuries? I see your point, but please reel in the analogy – it’s more misleading than illuminating. Whack-a-mole might like it, though.
That’s somewhat true. Demographics vary among the nations of Latin America, depending on how successfully the Spanish wiped out the locals through enslavement or disease, sometimes with the help of other tribes. Costa Ricans and Salvadorans are mostly of European ancestry while neighboring Honduras and Guatemalans are very mixed with distinct indigenous minorities. Indigenous groups in Chile and Argentina are practically invisible. There is no Evo Morales in the southernmost countries of Latin America, and whitish elites have a firm grip on power in Mexico, where a Mixtec Evo may someday climb to the top. Even the drug cartel leaders look Spanish, not indigenous. Descendants of the Spanish continue to pillage while descendants of the enslaved escape to the north.
Because Morales is a populist leader who champions an older population of rural and working class background, against later arrivals and elites.
In the US, the older population of rural and working class background is white. Someone like Morales in this context would be a populist leader who champions this demographic against later arrivals and elites.
Yeah, I said I saw your point. But see, isn’t spelling it out much clearer than the bogus comparison w/ Morales.
Huey Long or Father Coughlin or even William Jennings Bryan might be more fruitful and instructive analogies
While the results of this poll strike me as dubious, if they are accurate I can’t help but wonder if they’re a result of Koreans projecting themselves onto others (i.e. what would we do if we were relegated to shit jobs and treated like second-class citizens?) rather like their fears about what Yanks would do to KAs after Virginia Tech.
This is the part of the “news making” business that is so disgusting. A state-funded think tank does a survey asking people if they think immigrants are a problem. Those 1,000 people probably haven’t thought about the issue beyond what they see in the news, probably haven’t dealt with many immigrants directly, answer: “Yeah, sure.” The state-funded think tank sends its findings to newspapers, other people read that other people think immigrants are a problem, repeat process.
***
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”–usually attributed to Mark Twain
Trailer for a good movie I watched recently about immigrant workers in S. Korea. Also known as “Banga Banga”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LEtksk95ao
http://www.freekoreanmovies.net/2011/01/k-movie-bang-ga-bang-ga-2010.html
#58 – that’s strictly a projection on your part. You can take the results of this same poll and transplant it in America or Canada or Europe, and it would feel right at home. Fear of immigrants overwhelming a country is an universal trait. Besides, I know of no Koreans rioting over poor jobs and being treated as second class citizens anywhere.
#61, You mean you never heard of the 3/1 movement?
did you read it in the past tense?
I love how much time and effort Is spent by a certain person repeatedly telling us how much he doesn’t care ….
Arghaeri (#64), that because the point needs to be driven home, else nobody would take it seriously.
Jeffery Hodges
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Just to clarify, Arghaeri (#64), folks might not take the point seriously if it weren’t repeatedly driven home.
Jeffery Hodges
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I presume, Arghaeri, I need not repeat myself . . . or?
Jeffery Hodges
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#62 – not the same thing.
I tend to agree with nayaCasey in #59… the fact that people fear that immigrants will steal their jobs doesn’t mean that immigration always causes unemployment (for example). If there are riots and demonstrations, that would be news. If welfare is under strain from economic migrants, then investigate the benefits system. But asking some old ajjoshi (the most suspicious/hostile group in the poll) if they are worried about too many foriegners coming to Korea does seem a bit pointless.
Jeff – (concerning #64)
It’s the people who believe they can offer unsolicited advice on how one ought to conduct one’s self ( when they are themselves as guilty or more guilty of violating said advice) who really have a problem understanding the concept. They are a bit too Narcissistic to actually believe that sometimes their words are valueless to some people. They misinterpret repeated declarations of this apathy as exactly the opposite of what the declarations genuinely are trying to convey. Then they write comments like a “certain person” wrote at #64.
Now, I may be wrong in assuming that the “certain person” who wrote the comment @#64 was referring to a “certain person” writing comment #70.
However, operating on that assumption – it isn’t that a “certain person” doesn’t care about ANYthing certain other people write. It may be that the “certain person” writing @#70 simply doesn’t care about the opinions of certain people for whom he has little or no personal respect. The “certain person” writing comment #70 actually respects comments made by certain “tenured” individuals who post here; however, the speakers are unplugged, so to speak, when some of those same people presume to instruct on an etiquette to which they themselves fail to adhere. And that was exactly the point being made @#43 and #47.
#69 – after what’s happened in Europe and America (all the racial strife, riots, violence, etc), can you blame the old Ajoshi for thinking that the same thing will happen in Korea if the immigration control is taken off, and there’s a significant increase of angry, under classed people from other poorer Asian people? (Korea’s version of the Mexicans?) So does this really sound far fetched?
cm #71
If controls on immigration are being removed, that would be news. The point I was agreeing with was (I think) asking people if they are afraid of too much immigration, reporting it and using this as an argument against immigration seems a bit too circular.
My own experience of growing up in one of the more integrated/diverse areas of South London makes it hard for me to dismiss immigration as a purely negative phenomenon. That aside, if there are problems, report on those, not what people think will happen. I am sure there is plenty of research just waiting to be done on immigration, employment and social cohesion in Korea.
72 : Yeah but Korean searchers are paid to study what is wrong outside Korea, or what is wrong with Apple, or what the Japanese/Chinese will invent next to harm Korea, they’re not paid to study and find solutions to actual Korean problems.
Wiessej, I don’t follow these comment threads very closely and usually stick to making jokes — harmless ones, I hope, though I’m sometimes taken seriously and snapped at.
Sometimes, I am serious, though more often so on my own blog.
When I first got involved in internet discussion, I was overly earnest and took insults very seriously. I’ve since learned not to care . . . much. I wasted time responding to attacks. I don’t do that any more. People like or they don’t — that’s their business. At most, I make a joke in response.
Life is too short to be unhappy.
Jeffery Hodges
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Jeff –
You’re right. Life is too short to be unhappy. Trust me, though, I am far from that. That I respond as I do should not be interpreted as an indicator that I take things “personally” or am in some way negatively affected. I would have to have sincere respect for someone before they could “hurt my feelings”. If someone I think is a total douchebag, or I think they try to hold me to a standard they don’t hold themselves to – and criticizes me for it…the last thing I will be is angry or unhappy.
“if i think they try to hold me to a standard they don’t hold to themselves. …”
Mirror, mirror on the wall what other hypocritically self-righteous distortiond did you display today to Sir whack-a-mole?
To Jeff: See what I mean @#76? Does this guy read? Wait…yes, he does…it’s the comprehension part that’s not quite right. Oh, well…
Now, I am “sir whack-a-mole”??? Good Lord….methinks someone had far too many PLFs with a 6th point of contact.
Actually, me too.
Recent immigration to northeastern American cities like NY over the past 30 years has actually contributed to the general richness of life, imho. But the US is not small, nor is it the homeland of a homogenous and very self-aware minjok.
There goes Brendon sniping again…no doubt he “Google’ed” “PLF” to find out what it even means…good job, Brendon..TOPIC!!! Take your meds…
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