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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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Zolt
Joined: 18 May 2006
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 Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:08 pm Post subject: |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
Of course, they're are(sic) exceptions but it's really a game of Russian roulette.
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With at least 5 rounds in the chamber that is. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:18 pm Post subject: |
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| genezorm wrote: |
| nicholas_chiasson wrote: |
| They'll eat this guy(the journalist) alive in a few years just wait and see. I keep shouting the difference between Korea and other countries is it sees foreigners as useful but not as real people. This is no longer an aceptable attitude in this day and age. The Korean on the street, even the young and educated, don't really care when a vietnamese 19 year old is killed, but burn candles and scream for justice when a korean teenager is runover by a tank. Defending the rights of foreigners is just NOT an issue here. And really, if they don't, they will continue to get the disrespect of the world business comunity. |
While this is true to some extent, I am reminded when two Korean girls "drowned" together in Thailand, I remember reading posts by some people on this board about how they were working in the sex industry and similar disrespectful comments. But, when an English Teacher dies in a fire, or a teenage foreigner dies in a sauna, the righteous posters of dave's esl cafe politely offered their condolences and some people of course found a korean to blame for the deaths (the ESL teacher's employer - for not giving him insurance, or the building owner - for not having a fire safe building, or the other koreans in the sauna with the teenager, or the sauna owners). |
This point has merit. But Dave's is not a collection of the classiest individuals on their best behavior. It attracts vocal, sometimes drunken venting for the frustrations of teachers often dealing with genuine adversity at work as well as culture shock to boot.
Meanwhile, the traits that Nicholas Chiassen has mentioned are endemic to offline Korean society.
I guess the best way I would explain it to a Korean is to point at the behavior of some of China's youth these past 3 or so months. I would say: 'This kind of nationalism and hyper-sensitivity you've seen from a specific generation of Chinese only recently is what I've grown accostomed to from Korea from my years of experience in Korea from a broader class of Koreans (everyone except those old enough to have lived through the Korean War).'
Its not as if foreigners do not understand why Korea would be nationalistic. We just are chagrined at the intensity, one-sidedness, extreme irrationality, and sheer magnitude of it all. |
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bookemdanno
Joined: 30 Apr 2008
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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Zolt:
P.S. Man, did I really type that? Thanks for not pointing out the obvious. Time for a Coke. |
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bookemdanno
Joined: 30 Apr 2008
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:24 pm Post subject: |
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Kuros imagined:
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| I guess the best way I would explain it to a Korean is to point at the behavior of some of China's youth these past 3 or so months. I would say: 'This kind of nationalism and hyper-sensitivity you've seen from a specific generation of Chinese only recently is what I've grown accostomed to from Korea from my years of experience in Korea from a broader class of Koreans (everyone except those old enough to have lived through the Korean War).' |
What a load of horse manure. Do you even know how Chinese students were provoked by some Koreans in Seoul when they went to view the torch relay? I know firsthand [see my buried post on this topic].
As for the condition of the posters, speak for yourself. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
Kuros imagined:
| Quote: |
| I guess the best way I would explain it to a Korean is to point at the behavior of some of China's youth these past 3 or so months. I would say: 'This kind of nationalism and hyper-sensitivity you've seen from a specific generation of Chinese only recently is what I've grown accostomed to from Korea from my years of experience in Korea from a broader class of Koreans (everyone except those old enough to have lived through the Korean War).' |
What a load of horse manure. Do you even know how Chinese students were provoked by some Koreans in Seoul when they went to view the torch relay? I know firsthand [see my buried post on this topic].
As for the condition of the posters, speak for yourself. |
I'm familiar with the China youth's newfound nationalism, and I'm not the only one who recognizes it as a real phenomenon.
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[The blogger] then details the specific anti-foreign sentiment he is hearing in his conversations (in Mandarin) with the Chinese:
● Pollution in China is the fault of foreigners. We foreigners have come here to manufacture our cheap garbage at the lowest price possible and consequently, the environment is polluted as a result. If we foreigners didn�t come here to make so much money, there would be no environmental problems in China.
● If there are quality problems with Chinese made products, it's our fault. If we didn�t come here to buy low-prices trash they not have made it, so stop complaining.
● Foreigners are only here in China for the fantastic money making opportunities that are everywhere here. Money is the driving force here, not the culture, the adventure or anything else. (This one seems to hurt the most since I have spent the last few years in a culturally rewarding but fiscally less rewarding industry specifically because I like Chinese culture. Actually most of the foreigners I know here have made very little money in China and the few that have paid dearly for it).
● Yes, China�s new labor law is a pain but a good thing since as it will help to prevent the foreign business here from continuing to exploit Chinese workers (still not sure how this will prevent this sort of thing from happening: slave labor in the Shanxi brick kilns)
● If you have a complaint or problem with something, it's probably because you just don�t like the way we do things here (and are just looking to exploit us anyways). Now there is some merit to this, but this one has shown up in some surprising situations like during quality control inspections on furniture. If it's the wrong size, it's the wrong size. What does that have to do with being a foreigner?
● China is rising. If you have an issue with this, live with it or get out. It's probably because you are unhappy with the fact that even though the West is working furiously to contain China, it's just not working. We like our government as they have made us more prosperous. |
I just saw an old college friend when I visited Beijing this weekend. He's teaching English at Wall Street English School. He told me that the things his students are telling him 'scares him.' He tends to play the Chinese apologist, and its disconcerting that even he is concerned. Open your eyes, Steve, China is changing. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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Chinese nationalism is made worse as it is racial in context. The government has successfully positioned itself the leader of the world's greatest race, in the minds of much of the younger generations.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/01/20/do2006.xml
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| The Chinese see themselves as the greatest race on earth. They used to dismiss the Japanese as obscure fisherfolk, the product, according to legend, of the union between a Chinese princess and a sea-monster. The knowledge that China has been the least successful Asian nation for about 150 years, easily surpassed by the Japanese, is an open wound. |
That wound is a potential source of racial-based anger.
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China is not a country at ease with itself. Apart from the inevitable strains associated with rapid growth and development, there are at least three others: anger, sex and fear.
The anger arises from historic humiliations. The Chinese, who think in millennia, are well aware that a century or so ago, British entrepreneurs had a different demeanour. Backed by the Royal Navy, they occupied ports, extorted concessions and forced the Chinese to buy opium.
Other great powers also trampled on China. This culminated in Japan's attempts to ravage the mainland and turn the Chinese into coolies and comfort-women. This explains the anger of the Chinese over Taiwan. To them, it is a part of China, which was turned into a Japanese colony, then an American one. We should be grateful that the Taiwanese government is now behaving more sensibly, because if it ever declared independence, China would probably go to war. |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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