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kengreen
Joined: 19 Jan 2011
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 Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2011 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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A lot of you guys want to be part of the fabric of the culture.
I don't.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I don't worry about principals, vice principals, the success of the system, the American military, etc.
Like I said.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I go home, watch television, and go to sleep.
What could be easier?
You idealists need to take a chill pill.
You're employees.
Just do what you're told and bank your money. |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:09 am Post subject: |
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| kengreen wrote: |
A lot of you guys want to be part of the fabric of the culture.
I don't.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I don't worry about principals, vice principals, the success of the system, the American military, etc.
Like I said.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I go home, watch television, and go to sleep.
What could be easier?
You idealists need to take a chill pill.
You're employees.
Just do what you're told and bank your money. |
If it were only that easy, I'm sure everyone would. Fact is, there are various 'situations' which crop up from time to time which perplex the foreign visitor. It's part of the human condition to try to figure out their root causes, i.e. the sad stae of the educational system, or why some Koreans don't seem to be so welcoming of foreigners when they (the foreigners' government) have seemingly done so much for their country (Korea). Things is, if you're so biased as to believe everything the western media and conventional scholarship spoonfeeds you, you'll never figure it out. But, yeah, if your school is halfway decent, I suppose you could just follow orders and bank your salary.
Then go home.
Then watch tv.
And go to sleep. |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:42 am Post subject: |
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@earthquakez
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| I am sure you are of Korean ethnicity and it seems your background has given you that contradictory perspective. I won't be taking this conversation further because I prefer to have it with people who are open to multifaceted aspects of history and rationalism, not simplistic notions based on resentment and nationalism. |
Ah, nothing easier to do when your ship is sinking than pull out the race card, eh? After all, it's not a debate about the facts, is it? Well, you ought to take a look at the following-
HISTORY
Bruce Cumings, 'The Korean War'
What hardly any Americans know or remember is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties... We dropped more bombs in Korea than in the entire Pacific theater during WWII.
In his new book, The Korean War, author and historian Bruce Cumings tells a "powerful revisionist history of America's intervention in Korea," writes NY Times reviewer Dwight Garner, one that promises to be a "squirm-inducing assault on America�s moral behavior during the Korean War, a conflict that he says is misremembered when it is remembered at all". It's also a book, says Garner, that "puts the reflexive anti-Americanism of North Korea�s leaders into sympathetic historical context."
Little wonder Cumings has never been a favorite of the right or those who prefer the orthodox reading of history and America's relation with the Koreas. We're pretty sure he was not invited to any of the official ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of The Forgotten War.
But if Cumings is too far left then the orthodox reading is arguably too far right -- indeed a "misremembering", as Cumings says, assuming it is remembered at all.
South Korea, also, is coming to terms with its own past; it's own history of collaboration with the enemy. And we're also beginning to learn that America has acted as both friend and enemy as well of the Korean people. Indeed, South Koreans may thank the U.S. for its involvement in the Korean war but with justifiable reservations.
From the NY Times: "Mr. Cumings argues that the Korean War was a civil war with long, tangled historical roots, one in which America had little business meddling. He notes how 'appallingly dirty' the war was. In terms of civilian slaughter, he declares, 'our ostensibly democratic ally was the worst offender, contrary to the American image of the North Koreans as fiendish terrorists.'
"Mr. Cumings likens the indiscriminate American bombing of North Korea to genocide. He writes that American soldiers took part in, or observed, civilian atrocities not dissimilar to those at My Lai. An official inquiry is needed into some of these events, he writes, for any kind of healing to begin. (He also writes that this war, during which nearly 37,000 American soldiers died, deserves a memorial as potent and serious as Maya Lin�s Vietnam memorial.)
"Among the most important things to understand about North Korean behavior then and now, Mr. Cumings writes, is the longtime enmity between Korea and Japan. Japan took Korea as a colony in 1910, with America�s blessing, and replaced the Korean language with Japanese. Japan humiliated and brutalized Korea in other ways. (During World War II the Japanese Army forcibly turned tens of thousands of Korean women into sex slaves known as 'comfort women.') About this history Mr. Cumings writes, 'Neither Korea nor Japan has ever gotten over it.'
"North Korea, which is virulently anti-Japan, remains bitter and fearful of that country and of the United States. It will do whatever it can to stay out of the hands of South Korea, where leaders have long-standing historical ties to Japan.
"Mr. Cumings, in 'The Korean War,' details the north�s own atrocities, and acknowledges that current 'North Korean political practice is reprehensible.' But he says that we view that country through �Orientalist bigotry,� seeing only its morbid qualities. We wrongly label the country Stalinist, he argues. 'There is no evidence in the North Korean experience of the mass violence against whole classes of people or the wholesale 'purge' that so clearly characterized Stalinism,' he writes.
"The most eye-opening sections of 'The Korean War' detail America�s saturation bombing of Korea�s north. 'What hardly any Americans know or remember,' Mr. Cumings writes, 'is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.' The United States dropped more bombs in Korea (635,000 tons, as well as 32,557 tons of napalm) than in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. Our logic seemed to be, he says, that 'they are savages, so that gives us the right to shower napalm on innocents.' " [...]
"Witness the carnage in this passage from early in 'The Korean War': 'Here was the Vietnam War we came to know before Vietnam � gooks, napalm, rapes, whores, an unreliable ally, a cunning enemy, fundamentally untrained G.I.�s fighting a war their top generals barely understood, fragging of officers, contempt for the know-nothing civilians back home, devilish battles indescribable even to loved ones, press handouts from Gen. Douglas MacArthur�s headquarters apparently scripted by comedians or lunatics, an ostensible vision of bringing freedom and liberty to a sordid dictatorship run by servants of Japanese imperialism.'
"This year is the 60th anniversary of the Korean War�s conventional start. Even from this distant vantage point, Mr. Cumings writes, there are still multiple unpleasant facts Americans have not learned about this war, 'truths that most Americans do not know and perhaps don�t want to know, truths sometimes as shocking as they are unpalatable to American self-esteem.' His book is a bitter pill, a sobering corrective."
But from the Vietnam war, the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Iraqi invasions 1 and 2 and the ongoing war against terror and the war in Afghanistan, it would seem that unfortunately, nothing should surprise Americans anymore. |
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liveinkorea316
Joined: 20 Aug 2010
Location: South Korea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 4:18 am Post subject: |
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I have read passages from the book that Legrande talks about above.
After reading that and numerous similar ones I started to doubt the West and the way it has behaved over the last 200 years. But that was more than 5 years ago. I let that information settle and i then read some more and got other perspectives.
While there are a lot of good points made in that article Legrande you must know that it is very very left slanted.
The Korean war and its resulting consequences are no more the responsibility of the USA than they are of any other country in the West. You forget that there were more than 40 countries that fully supported the USA in the Korean War. What? England, Germany and France didn't support them you say? THOSE COUNTRIES WERE ALMOST COMPLETELY DECIMATED IN THE WORLD WAR 5 YEARS EARLIER. The fact is that the ENTIRE Western world is to blame if anyone is to blame.
Blame for what? Saving you from being dominated by Kim Jung Il? Please......go to North Korea if you want.
The reason that the USA fought in Korea and Vietnam (however ill-fated) was to protect the free world from the tyranny of fascism/communism. No other country was willing to do it not because they didn't want to bur because their people and countries were too scarred by world war 2 to want more fighting.
Complaining that the USA did not fight well or fair or even lost is to ignore the basic facts of war. WAR NEVER GOES THE WAY YOU PLAN. People die. That is the business. If you want things to go according to plan play Starcraft with the cheats enabled. In real life what if's are reserved for those people who like to sit in their chair and tell how they could have done something with thier life but as it is they have amounted to nothing. The USA acted on what they perceived to be existential threats from Fascist CHINA/RUSSIA. You have the benefit of hindsight they didn't. How did they know the Chinese would turn out to be pussies and the Russians would run out of steam?
Japan was not encouraged by the West to take Korea. The West was just reluctant to get into a fight with an emerging superpower. |
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earthquakez
Joined: 10 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 5:01 am Post subject: |
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To liveinkorea - as a card carrying member of the British Labour Party since I was 15 years old, I have also read that book and numerous other books on all kinds of history including one of my pet interests which is military history.
My preference for left-liberal/social democratic politics has never blinded me to the fact that the world is an incredibly complex place. It is very easy to look at the Cold War and what came before it now and cast the Americans and capitalistic societies as the villains with the people and their Communist/leftist champions as the victims. It wasn't so simple.
I don't buy the anti American slant as a valid explanation for the history of Korea from the mid 19th century up to now. Woodrow Wilson did not support Korea's bid to be free of Japanese influence but then again, no other powers did either apart from China.
One constant I find about most Koreans when they discuss their history (with exceptions such as Korean academics who do try and approach it from multiple angles instead of the personal, nationalistic one) is the inability to take into account the energies and moving forces of the times.
Looking at the situation as it had been before the annexation to Japan which set the stage for when the US under Woodrow Wilson accepted Japan's colonisation of Korea:
A modernising Asian power jumps from feudalism to 19th century progressive development within a relatively short time after influential families send their sons to learn just what is going on in the world outside and the ruling elites generally support a shift in focus from a fading China to the west. This power ends up humiliating what was then mighty Russia militarily.
On the other hand a nearby country, having been a vassal of the fading China for centuries, is struggling to cope with the power shifts and realities of the 19th century. It is still very much feudal, has only recently abolished slavery of its own people by its own elites.
Its outdated system shows bewilderment in the face of increasing commerce conducted by emerging powers and the west. Its ruling dynasty is weak and unable to stop its Asian neighbour gaining influence because it invited it in along with China to put down rebellions by its own people. Its Empress was murdered by agents of its neighbour but some of her own subjects in the elite class also colluded with that neighbour in a bid to overthrow the dynasty and modernise this country.
The first mentioned country is Japan, the second mentioned is Korea. The scenario is what people like Wilson and other leaders saw. Why under those circumstances in those times wouldn't they have accepted Japan's annexationof Korea and then its establishing a colony?
I believe too that America and the Allies were deeply worried about the prospect of Kim Il Sung gaining power in a united Korean government, just as they were wary of Kim Gu because of his history of sponsoring what were in real terms death squads against other Koreans and Japanese civilians as well as Japanese political and military targets.
Again we have to look at it through the eyes of those involved at the time and in the context of those times. Kim Il Sung was a communist and the world had seen what had happened after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They had the grim example of Lenin, not just Stalin. How many people are aware that American financiers such as Warburg, Schiff and Morgan (there were others) actually constructed the Soviet Union's power stations, bridges, roads, gasworks etc etc?
This was not so much a conspiracy to impose Communism as reflective of the energies and movements of the times. Lenin, far from being some kind of victim of the west, was funded handsomely by Swiss money, American money and European money despite the assistance by others to the White Russian opposition. The Soviet Union was regarded in influential political circles in the west as an amazing experiment in building a people's paradise.
This illusion was shattered after the violent repression of the democratic soviet structures, the massacres of Mensheviks who believed in people power as opposed to the Bolsheviks' intentions of establishing elites as the so called 'dictatorship of the proletariat' instead of the people having the power. Millions deliberately starved to death in the Ukraine, Russian kulaks (independent farmers) massacred or left to starve, anarchists massacred, along with all who professed religious faiths, Tsarist supporters including intellectuals and artists, etc etc.
Many people think of Stalin when they think of the red terror but it was actually instigated by Lenin. Of course the US and the western powers did not want communists like Kim Il Sung influencing a united Korean government because they feared that h and his supporters would subvert the government. Given what had taken place in the Soviet Union (which signed a non agression pact with Germany initially)after the Bolshevik revolution in addition to well-founded fears about the Chinese communists, it's not hard to see why.
America and the Allies had been through WW2, they had in effect liberated Korea by defeating Japan and Germany, they had experienced dealing with fascism as both a political and military reality under Hitler and his allies. They weren't prepared to do it all over again with communist-leftist dictatorships.
It is understandable that they felt it was the best strategy to oppose a communist-leftist united Korea with the Soviet Union and Chinese communists, having witnessed along with the world the utter ruthlessness of and threat that the Soviet Union posed.
The right wing Korean Government eventually made way for democratic elections but there's reason to think that wouldn't have happened had Kim Il Sung and Kim Gu controlled the post WW2 Korean government. |
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legrande
Joined: 23 Nov 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:28 am Post subject: |
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| earthquakez wrote: |
To liveinkorea - as a card carrying member of the British Labour Party since I was 15 years old, I have also read that book and numerous other books on all kinds of history including one of my pet interests which is military history.
My preference for left-liberal/social democratic politics has never blinded me to the fact that the world is an incredibly complex place. It is very easy to look at the Cold War and what came before it now and cast the Americans and capitalistic societies as the villains with the people and their Communist/leftist champions as the victims. It wasn't so simple.
I don't buy the anti American slant as a valid explanation for the history of Korea from the mid 19th century up to now. Woodrow Wilson did not support Korea's bid to be free of Japanese influence but then again, no other powers did either apart from China.
One constant I find about most Koreans when they discuss their history (with exceptions such as Korean academics who do try and approach it from multiple angles instead of the personal, nationalistic one) is the inability to take into account the energies and moving forces of the times.
Looking at the situation as it had been before the annexation to Japan which set the stage for when the US under Woodrow Wilson accepted Japan's colonisation of Korea:
A modernising Asian power jumps from feudalism to 19th century progressive development within a relatively short time after influential families send their sons to learn just what is going on in the world outside and the ruling elites generally support a shift in focus from a fading China to the west. This power ends up humiliating what was then mighty Russia militarily.
On the other hand a nearby country, having been a vassal of the fading China for centuries, is struggling to cope with the power shifts and realities of the 19th century. It is still very much feudal, has only recently abolished slavery of its own people by its own elites.
Its outdated system shows bewilderment in the face of increasing commerce conducted by emerging powers and the west. Its ruling dynasty is weak and unable to stop its Asian neighbour gaining influence because it invited it in along with China to put down rebellions by its own people. Its Empress was murdered by agents of its neighbour but some of her own subjects in the elite class also colluded with that neighbour in a bid to overthrow the dynasty and modernise this country.
The first mentioned country is Japan, the second mentioned is Korea. The scenario is what people like Wilson and other leaders saw. Why under those circumstances in those times wouldn't they have accepted Japan's annexationof Korea and then its establishing a colony?
I believe too that America and the Allies were deeply worried about the prospect of Kim Il Sung gaining power in a united Korean government, just as they were wary of Kim Gu because of his history of sponsoring what were in real terms death squads against other Koreans and Japanese civilians as well as Japanese political and military targets.
Again we have to look at it through the eyes of those involved at the time and in the context of those times. Kim Il Sung was a communist and the world had seen what had happened after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They had the grim example of Lenin, not just Stalin. How many people are aware that American financiers such as Warburg, Schiff and Morgan (there were others) actually constructed the Soviet Union's power stations, bridges, roads, gasworks etc etc?
This was not so much a conspiracy to impose Communism as reflective of the energies and movements of the times. Lenin, far from being some kind of victim of the west, was funded handsomely by Swiss money, American money and European money despite the assistance by others to the White Russian opposition. The Soviet Union was regarded in influential political circles in the west as an amazing experiment in building a people's paradise.
This illusion was shattered after the violent repression of the democratic soviet structures, the massacres of Mensheviks who believed in people power as opposed to the Bolsheviks' intentions of establishing elites as the so called 'dictatorship of the proletariat' instead of the people having the power. Millions deliberately starved to death in the Ukraine, Russian kulaks (independent farmers) massacred or left to starve, anarchists massacred, along with all who professed religious faiths, Tsarist supporters including intellectuals and artists, etc etc.
Many people think of Stalin when they think of the red terror but it was actually instigated by Lenin. Of course the US and the western powers did not want communists like Kim Il Sung influencing a united Korean government because they feared that h and his supporters would subvert the government. Given what had taken place in the Soviet Union (which signed a non agression pact with Germany initially)after the Bolshevik revolution in addition to well-founded fears about the Chinese communists, it's not hard to see why.
America and the Allies had been through WW2, they had in effect liberated Korea by defeating Japan and Germany, they had experienced dealing with fascism as both a political and military reality under Hitler and his allies. They weren't prepared to do it all over again with communist-leftist dictatorships.
It is understandable that they felt it was the best strategy to oppose a communist-leftist united Korea with the Soviet Union and Chinese communists, having witnessed along with the world the utter ruthlessness of and threat that the Soviet Union posed.
The right wing Korean Government eventually made way for democratic elections but there's reason to think that wouldn't have happened had Kim Il Sung and Kim Gu controlled the post WW2 Korean government. |
Hey, Earthquakez, nice reasoned-out reply. It is apparent that you have investigated these things to a certain depth.
Where I feel your argument is somewhat lacking is in your insistence that Kim Il Sung and Kim Gu were the only alternatives. As in the article, there were others like Mr. Cho who were framed and made to disappear by Sygnman Rhee. Syngman Rhee with his repressive policies showed himself to be no less venal , prone to violence, and unilateral than Kim Il Sung and Kim Gu.
Another thing is your apparent reluctance to face up to the facts of the Great Game and the realities of the modern military industrial complex; western powers don't enter into other nations' affairs out of purely altruistic motives, and will engage in any and all underhanded behavior to secure their geo-political and economic interests as flatly stated by the US State Department. To refresh your memory-
"We have 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of the population," noted George Kennan in 1948, then Director of Policy Planning of the Department of State. "Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about... human rights and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power power concepts. The less we are the hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."
Honestly, I don't know how much clearer the true motives for engaging in wars with third world countries in the post-WW II era can be made. |
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sirius black
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
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| Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 4:03 pm Post subject: |
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| kengreen wrote: |
A lot of you guys want to be part of the fabric of the culture.
I don't.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I don't worry about principals, vice principals, the success of the system, the American military, etc.
Like I said.
I go to work. I teach English. I get paid.
I go home, watch television, and go to sleep.
What could be easier?
You idealists need to take a chill pill.
You're employees.
Just do what you're told and bank your money. |
LOL...gotta admit you're pretty much right. The school system lost all credibility for me when I quickly realized my job was based mostly on my pic. I'm no prize and would have loved to see what the pics of the other candidates. I've told friends who were considering to come or changng jobs that the pic is the most important thing to work on. Get the best pic possible. Smile, etc. |
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NohopeSeriously
Joined: 17 Jan 2011
Location: The Christian Right-Wing Educational Republic of Korea
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| Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 9:58 pm Post subject: |
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| legrande wrote: |
If it were only that easy, I'm sure everyone would. Fact is, there are various 'situations' which crop up from time to time which perplex the foreign visitor. It's part of the human condition to try to figure out their root causes, i.e. the sad stae of the educational system, or why some Koreans don't seem to be so welcoming of foreigners when they (the foreigners' government) have seemingly done so much for their country (Korea). Things is, if you're so biased as to believe everything the western media and conventional scholarship spoonfeeds you, you'll never figure it out. But, yeah, if your school is halfway decent, I suppose you could just follow orders and bank your salary.
Then go home.
Then watch tv.
And go to sleep. |
True. It is our duty as foreigners living in South Korea to question the South Korean government, society and schools. |
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