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2004-07-20 China-Japan-Koreas

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Posted by Aris Katsaris 2004-07-20 00:21|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Orson Scott Card is so misinformed it's not even funny. First, he doesn't know enough about Koreans to not start insulting North Korea in front of South Koreans by quoting Chinese jokes about them. (The Chinese think of Korea as the lost province - stolen from China by Japanese invaders)*. And then he claims that South Koreans really sympathize with their northern brethren. In reality, South Koreans have about as much sympathy for North Korea as the Chinese have for the Taiwanese - all they want is the land. This is why South Koreans don't agitate for the repatriation to South Korea of North Korean refugees in China. And once the North Korean exiles show up in South Korea, they are spat upon by the South Koreans for leaving the socialist paradise up north. A number of North Koreans have actually changed course and tried applying for asylum in the US instead.

* The Chinese view is a maximalist one - anything that China has ever ruled over should, in time, be recovered for the motherland.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 1:20:47 AM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 1:20:47 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Zhang, You keep it up. Rantburg U!

Posted by Lucky 2004-07-20 1:33:31 AM|| 2004-07-20 1:33:31 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Aris, in my experience, Card is accurate in his charecterization of the veneration that the black community feels towards the NAACP, but from a strategy standpoint Bush gains nothing by continuing to empower the NAACP. He has done an excellent job in reaching out to union members without wasting his time trying to curry favor with recalcitrant idealogues. The NAACP has rejected it's roots in the Niagara Movement. Black America is in the midst of taking some powerful strides away from the NACCP agenda. IMO it would be gross mistake to grant the NAACP continued validity at teh very time that the black community is awakening.

Posted by Super Hose 2004-07-20 1:34:57 AM|| 2004-07-20 1:34:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 The Chinese view sounds just like the Mooslim view.

Posted by Brett_the_Quarkian 2004-07-20 7:55:02 AM|| 2004-07-20 7:55:02 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 "First, he doesn't know enough about Koreans to not start insulting North Korea in front of South Koreans by quoting Chinese jokes about them."

>actually, Card didn't do that. That was a story related to him by a politician who was there.

Posted by Jarhead 2004-07-20 7:59:32 AM|| 2004-07-20 7:59:32 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 The Chinese view sounds just like the Mooslim view.

It's the imperialist view -- not specifically Muslim *or* Chinese.

Posted by Aris Katsaris 2004-07-20 8:14:10 AM|| 2004-07-20 8:14:10 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Jarhead: actually, Card didn't do that. That was a story related to him by a politician who was there.

Doesn't change my point, which is that he doesn't know enough about Korea to make judgements about either North or South Korea. His use of that politician's anecdote shows that he knows even less than the guy he quoted. And that's saying a lot, given my relative ignorance about Korea - pretty much late 19th century onwards, in addition to snippets about periodic Chinese, Mongol, Japanese, Manchurian and other (nations since absorbed into the Chinese empire) invasions.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 9:46:39 AM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 9:46:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Zhangs right about them not caring. They want the Norths resources (Cheap labor/raw materials) but they don't want their financial burden and food problem. That is why the major South Korean companies opened up factories in the North. I am not sure how many people are employed in these factories, but they are immune from labor and environmetal laws in the South.

Posted by Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter) 2004-07-20 10:51:33 AM|| 2004-07-20 10:51:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#9 I think you are a bit hard on Card over Korea. True he bases everything on one politicians anecdote and data but most journalists do that, or less than that. His basic point is still solid, that there is no single base for anti-Americanism, every case is different.

I think a few of the younger Koreans would probably agree with Aris in that the US supported dictatorship a lot longer than they found acceptable. The older folks in Korea saw the true threat, how Syngman Rhee buit the poor agro South Korea into a wealthy industrial giant, and are more accomidating to the reality on the ground. The younger only saw the dictatorship.

I think Card is partially right on the NAACP thing. My gut says ignoring them was right, but I would have liked to see Bush deliver the speech scrappleface wrote.

Posted by yank 2004-07-20 11:10:57 AM|| [politicaljunky.blogspot.com] 2004-07-20 11:10:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#10 yank: I think a few of the younger Koreans would probably agree with Aris in that the US supported dictatorship a lot longer than they found acceptable.

Actually, they wouldn't - you're projecting your reasonable American viewpoints onto them. The reigning view among actual Koreans used to be that the US is merely one of the powers conspiring to keep Korea divided. Today, the view is that the US is the Great Satan trying to keep Korea down. This view is not particularly unique - it's actually quite similar to Chinese views about America. Koreans are now looking (irrationally) to their yellow neighbors to the west as being better friends than America, ignoring the fact that without Chinese intervention, the Korean peninsula would today be a prosperous unified state.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 11:36:24 AM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 11:36:24 AM|| Front Page Top

#11 doesnt the current Skor lefty view seem rather redolant of the West German Greens in the '80s? "We want reunification, and are happy to offer neutralism to get it, and its only Reagan and the Americans who are standing in the way" - which of course was not really true, and ended not really being relevant.

Posted by Liberalhawk 2004-07-20 11:42:36 AM|| 2004-07-20 11:42:36 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Earlier: Koreans are now looking (irrationally) to their yellow neighbors to the west as being better friends than America, ignoring the fact that without Chinese intervention, the Korean peninsula would today be a prosperous unified state.

And the reason for this is undiluted racialism - Koreans cannot conceive of good American intentions because (most) Americans don't have yellow skin. Chinese are viewed to be inherently more friendly towards Korean interests because they have yellow skins like the Koreans.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 12:31:13 PM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 12:31:13 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 LH: doesnt the current Skor lefty view seem rather redolant of the West German Greens in the '80s?

It's actually quite different. In Korea, blood and soil have a lot to do with it - something that the Germans got over after WWII.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 12:33:36 PM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 12:33:36 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 You make a good point Zhang Fei and I'll concede to your obviously greater knowledge on the penninsula.

The way I imagine Korean unification it can happen in one of two ways. Either through war or through peaceful means (South ends up paying to rebuild North). Either way it'll be painful and the South will be taken out of world picture for a decade or three.

Either way its better to let them handle their future on their own. I'm happy our troops are moving out.

Posted by yank 2004-07-20 3:26:47 PM|| [politicaljunky.blogspot.com] 2004-07-20 3:26:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 ZF: In Korea, blood and soil have a lot to do with it - something that the Germans got over after WWII.

By way of explanation, blood and soil is shorthand for the kinds of racialist views prominent among the Axis powers during WWII.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2004-07-20 4:02:23 PM|| [http://www.polipundit.com] 2004-07-20 4:02:23 PM|| Front Page Top

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