Korean officials have banned a translation of the Marquis de Sade’s 1785 novel, 120 Days of Sodom due to pornographic content.
This via the NY Daily News:
According to the AFP news service, the Korean Publication Ethics Commission charged that the book was “extremely obscene and cruel, involving acts of sadism, incest, bestiality and necrophilia.”
Not my cup of sex, but whatever.
The review board has told the local publisher to recall and destroy all copies currently in stores.
Americans will celebrate the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week at the end of this month, so at least they’ll have something to gripe about over group luncheons at Applebees.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Korea is becoming an authoritarian-nanny state. Banning books, banning websites? The authorities will be burning books next.
I want to read it now – simply because it’s banned.
I guess that means we shouldn’t expect to see DVD’s of Pasolini’s cinematographic adaptation on sale at eMart any day soon.
And Korea comes sprinting into the mid-19th century!
Bobby, are you ‘Merican (chants of “U.S.A, U.S.A.” in the background)?
It’s not all about Applebees nowadays. The new red state fine dinning establishment of choice is now Golden Corral.
http://www.goldencorral.com/
@2 his writing is actually rather good. Banning books is Nazi or religious extremist ‘style’. Sade’s stuff is dirty stuff, but no worse than Chaucer or some parts of Shakespeare, here is a corker that really applies to how some people live here. I think the bard outdoes most. Classic literature is full of ‘rudeness’, The Canterbury Tails are rather shocking when you get the hang of what he was going on about.
So lust, thought to a radiant angel link’d,
Will sate itself in a celestial bed
And prey on garbage.
Hamlet 1.5.61-3, the Ghost to Hamlet
Gangnam Style!
Tales
#5,
That’s the one with the slogan ‘All you can trough!’ or am I confusing that one with Hometown Buffet?
Neither of those have invaded Canada yet, I think, but there are plenty of swill buckets (KFC, Taco Bell, etc) here already.
And for the record, it’s blatant censorship done by a First-World nation with a hypocrisy complex – nothing new, just disappointing that Korea would lower itself to other countries’ levels, like the ones to the north…
And Psy was on ‘Chelsea Lately’ last night, while I was an insomniac. Dude can bust a move, methinks.
OMG I thought fine “dinning” establishments was just my most hated konglishism, now I find its emigrated (note not immigrated, another of my pet hates) to mainstream america.
I hope “Grand Open” events haven’t emigrated to mainstream america too.
This should be available online (at least in English and French) since it’s over 100 years old and anyone can post it without copyright issues. Did a publisher actually bother translating it into Korean?
Keith (#7) wrote: “Sade’s stuff is dirty stuff, but no worse than Chaucer or some parts of Shakespeare . . .”
By “no worse,” what do you mean? It’s certainly far more explicit, violent, and perverse. It is well-written, but I can’t endure reading it for very long.
Simone de Beauvoir famously asked, Faut-il brûler Sade? — Should we burn Sade?. She answered her own question in the negative, but I can’t imagine her posing the same rhetorical question about Chaucer or Shakespeare.
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
the ban is just ridiculous..
Who cares about some stupid book. South Korea isn’t America, deal with it.
“Who cares about some stupid book”
People different from you, who read books instead of sitting in front of the computer between a forum and porn sites.
TheKorean2:
Please…South Korea isn’t America, but it’s not China or North Korea, either. The ethics committee can treat the book like X-rated movies. Does your government have to dictate what its adults should or should not read? I hear you scream “it’s none of your business,” but still…
Banning books is never _ever_ good.
Becoming?
“Guess what. What you’re doing is illegal. If you are living in another country besides the United States of America, I’m almost 100% positive what you are doing is NOT right!” [Source: LINK]
Oh, not this guy again…I’m afraid I’ll see him in my dreams.
Thank heavens they’re gonna burn all the books and end this menace once and for all!
…since, of course, there are no other convenient ways for a text to be distributed to the reading public in 21st-century Korea, other than ink and tree pulp in a store.
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