Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bjonothan]

How many of you were told that Josen jin is a bad word?
Have you ever looked into that?
I told my student that it isn't a bad word.
My student disagreed.
I told her that my Japanese students had told me it isn't a bad word.
She wouldn't accept it for a while.
I said that my Japanese students speak better Japanese than her.
Then she said "well, it has a bad meaning".
I then told her that the Korean people can't change their language.
The whole thing is because they were colonised when it was joson.
Because of that, it makes them feel bad about being called that.
Does anyone else find it stupid that they expect the Japanese to change it?

[Css]

Nowhere in your post does it say she expects the japanese to change it. Its perfectly acceptable for them to find the word offensive.

Did you leave something out or something?

[cobright]

How long ago was Australia a prison colony? Would it still be appropriate to refer to Australians as colonists? Prisoners? Would you refer to a S. African national as a Zulu? Or an American as a Puritan?

These titles and monikers were appropriate once. Some time ago two cultures meet and a name is derived from that meeting. In 1853 Comm Perry crashed Japans isolation and demanded trade. What were we selling? Rice. And for decades after Japans name for America was "Rice-Country".

Summary: Antiquated names that also happen to be attached to a difficult time period for someone are tacky at the lightest and offensive at the hardest. I see this term used alot the same way that children use the word "bi+ch" ("what, it's a female dog!"). An excuse to dredge up something nasty then academic their way out of any responsibility.

Yeah the term was coined in the Joson era, but now it just screams "we owned you bitches". Try walking around Nagasaki calling the people you meet "nips". See if they let you explain that the term comes from a time when Nippon was the label Americans saw on Japanese made goods.

[aphase]

I don't think its unreasonable that koreans find that term offensive. Like another poster said, it's a reminder of the past time period of when Japan colonized KOrea. I'm sure Korean's don't like remembering being colonized and mistreated by japan.

Besides, it would be totally uneccesary for japanese people to refer to koreans as Joseng Jin when they have another word for koreans. These days they call them Kan goku-jin, which is unoffensive.

[jkelly80]

You could say the same thing about the N-word.

It's just a form of the word "negro", which means "black" in Spanish. What's offensive about that?

The answer is, of course, the context in which this term was used.

[bjonothan]

[little mixed girl]

it's offensive because of the history attached to it, and because the people it's aimed at have deemed it offensive.

on japanese tv, you never hear "chosen-jin" when referring to koreans, it's only "kankoku-jin".
even when referring to north korea (called kita chousen here), they don't say "chousen-jin".

i don't get why it angers you that they are offended by it.

it's like me asking the KKK if the N-word is offensive.

(also, the rice character in the kanji for america, apparently came from a phonetic rendering of "america". ah-mei-ri-ka　亜米里加 i think that's the kanji...)

[cobright]

Not to spin wildly off-topic. But the pre-war word for America, when used to meen the USA was beikoku. Directly translated to rice-country but could have been a simplified phonetic transcription. I don't think so. It is too much of a coincidence that nearly all of the cargo the US shipped to Japan was rice. Add to that the personal reports by the earliest japanese sent to the US they report staggering expanses of rice-fields. My BA is in Japanese studies and I've seen the primary docs. For a research paper I argued that the choice of name for the USA was certainly a descriptive term. Personally I think it's more likely a bit of the two; the Japanese love word games, puns, and double meanings.

[greekvvedge]

but do the Japanese have a different word for Koreans, other than Joeson-jin?

[linky123]

It supposed to be kangkoku-jin. Kangkoku is their pronounciation of han-guk

[bjonothan]

[iknownothing]

[cobright]

[Ilsanman]

Koreans often call Japanese 족바리 and 왜놈. Both of those are offensive terms. I have little sympathy.

[cobright]