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Korean Job Discussion Forums "The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
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Cedar
Joined: 11 Mar 2003 Location: In front of my computer, again.
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 8:12 am Post subject: |
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| Nothing but some more tit for tat, really. It's not as if the vicious cycle of hatred and nationalistic numbskullery began recently. |
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itaewonguy

Joined: 25 Mar 2003
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 8:28 am Post subject: |
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good on them!! the koreans do far more than their fair share of it..
good on japan for throwing some punches back!!! wish they would do more.. koreans are ugly sometimes when they get on TV and newspapers and start hating on japan and china.... |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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| A couple of cartoonists, a publisher and 360,000 customers out of a country of about 130,000,000...I would not say this qualifies as "Japan disses Korea (and China)..." I would say it's a group of citizens practicing free speech...although it is hate speech. |
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korian
Joined: 26 Feb 2004
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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the thing that's most noticeable for me - i now live in japan after 2.5 years in korea - is that you hardly ever hear about these movements or sentiments in japan.
whereas in korea anything anti anyone is fuelled by the media, if not promoted, and demonstrations galore emerge along with every man and his dog going on about things ad nauseum, in japan you never see anything.
the best example of this was dokdo/takeshima dispute earlier this year. what a nightmare that was in korea at the time. every paper, every news broadcast, every radio programme, all day every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. demonstrations, burnt flags, severed fingers, immolation.
when i got to japan - in the midst of the drama - not one of my studnets knew what i was talking about, not once did i see it in the papers or on t.v, no-one mentioned it even in passing, and life moved along swimmingly.
in japan i'm sure the felings exist just as they do in korea regarding foreigners, or xenephobia, or hate etc etc, but it's so so nice that they are hidden behind blank faces and i don't have to deal with them or be subjected to them. |
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Hollywoodaction
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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| korian wrote: |
the thing that's most noticeable for me - i now live in japan after 2.5 years in korea - is that you hardly ever hear about these movements or sentiments in japan.
whereas in korea anything anti anyone is fuelled by the media, if not promoted, and demonstrations galore emerge along with every man and his dog going on about things ad nauseum, in japan you never see anything.
the best example of this was dokdo/takeshima dispute earlier this year. what a nightmare that was in korea at the time. every paper, every news broadcast, every radio programme, all day every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. demonstrations, burnt flags, severed fingers, immolation.
when i got to japan - in the midst of the drama - not one of my studnets knew what i was talking about, not once did i see it in the papers or on t.v, no-one mentioned it even in passing, and life moved along swimmingly.
in japan i'm sure the felings exist just as they do in korea regarding foreigners, or xenephobia, or hate etc etc, but it's so so nice that they are hidden behind blank faces and i don't have to deal with them or be subjected to them. |
Or maybe they didn't want to discuss it because they knew it was potentially embarrassing. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Established in 1994
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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| It's my impression that the Japanese are more secure in their feelings of superiority than Koreans. |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm going there this weekend for a show and there'll be a lot of Japanese and Korean and Canadian skinheads there so I'll do my best to stir up some feelings of resentment. |
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korian
Joined: 26 Feb 2004
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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korian wrote:
the thing that's most noticeable for me - i now live in japan after 2.5 years in korea - is that you hardly ever hear about these movements or sentiments in japan.
whereas in korea anything anti anyone is fuelled by the media, if not promoted, and demonstrations galore emerge along with every man and his dog going on about things ad nauseum, in japan you never see anything.
the best example of this was dokdo/takeshima dispute earlier this year. what a nightmare that was in korea at the time. every paper, every news broadcast, every radio programme, all day every day for weeks and weeks and weeks. demonstrations, burnt flags, severed fingers, immolation.
when i got to japan - in the midst of the drama - not one of my studnets knew what i was talking about, not once did i see it in the papers or on t.v, no-one mentioned it even in passing, and life moved along swimmingly.
in japan i'm sure the felings exist just as they do in korea regarding foreigners, or xenephobia, or hate etc etc, but it's so so nice that they are hidden behind blank faces and i don't have to deal with them or be subjected to them. . |
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| Or maybe they didn't want to discuss it because they knew it was potentially embarrassing |
maybe, but they were happy to discuss other potentially controversial or 'embarrassing' topics so i'm not so sure. i should have said they were rather indifferent or disinterested in any of it rather than say they hadn't heard of it.
i just think they're not as concerned in general as korea with the whole nationalist thing |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Location: England
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Would the OP be so kind as to cut and paste the article please? You need to register. |
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billybrobby

Joined: 09 Dec 2004
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 9:45 pm Post subject: |
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TOKYO, Nov. 14 - A young Japanese woman in the comic book "Hating the Korean Wave" exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of."
In another comic book, "Introduction to China," which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive."
Sharin Yamano/Shinyusha
In "Hating the Korean Wave," a young Japanese woman says, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!"
The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months.
In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.
They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here.
Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organization that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.
Mr. Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbors, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbors, especially China and Korea.
"I wonder why they haven't grown up at all," Mr. Nishio said. "They don't change. I wonder why China and Korea haven't learned anything."
Mr. Nishio, who wrote a chapter in the comic book about South Korea, said Japan should try to cut itself off from China and South Korea, as Fukuzawa advocated. "Currently we cannot ignore South Korea and China," Mr. Nishio said. "Economically, it's difficult. But in our hearts, psychologically, we should remain composed and keep that attitude."
The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. At the same time, the so-called Korean Wave - television dramas, movies and music from South Korea - swept Japan and the rest of Asia, often displacing Japanese pop cultural exports.
The wave, though popular among Japanese women, gave rise to a countermovement, especially on the Internet. Sharin Yamano, the young cartoonist behind "Hating the Korean Wave," began his strip on his own Web site then.
"The 'Hate Korea' feelings have spread explosively since the World Cup," said Akihide Tange, an editor at Shinyusha, the publisher of the comic book. Still, the number of sales, 360,000 so far, surprised the book's editors, suggesting that the Hate Korea movement was far larger than they had believed.
"We weren't expecting there'd be so many," said Susumu Yamanaka, another editor at Shinyusha. "But when the lid was actually taken off, we found a tremendous number of people feeling this way."
So far the two books, each running about 300 pages and costing around $10, have drawn little criticism from public officials, intellectuals or the mainstream news media. For example, Japan's most conservative national daily, Sankei Shimbun, said the Korea book described issues between the countries "extremely rationally, without losing its balance."
As nationalists and revisionists have come to dominate the public debate in Japan, figures advocating an honest view of history are being silenced, said Yutaka Yoshida, a historian at Hitotsubashi University here. Mr. Yoshida said the growing movement to deny history, like the Rape of Nanjing, was a sort of "religion" for an increasingly insecure nation.
"Lacking confidence, they need a story of healing," Mr. Yoshida said. "Even if we say that story is different from facts, it doesn't mean anything to them."
The Korea book's cartoonist, who is working on a sequel, has turned down interview requests. The book centers on a Japanese teenager, Kaname, who attains a "correct" understanding of Korea. It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; later chapters show how Kaname realizes that South Korea owes its current success to Japanese colonialism.
"It is Japan who made it possible for Koreans to join the ranks of major nations, not themselves," Mr. Nishio said of colonial Korea.
But the comic book, perhaps inadvertently, also betrays Japan's conflicted identity, its longstanding feelings of superiority toward Asia and of inferiority toward the West. The Japanese characters in the book are drawn with big eyes, blond hair and Caucasian features; the Koreans are drawn with black hair, narrow eyes and very Asian features.
That peculiar aesthetic, so entrenched in pop culture that most Japanese are unaware of it, has its roots in the Meiji Restoration of the late 19th century, when Japanese leaders decided that the best way to stop Western imperialists from reaching here was to emulate them.
In 1885, Fukuzawa - who is revered to this day as the intellectual father of modern Japan and adorns the 10,000 yen bill (the rough equivalent of a $100 bill) - wrote "Leaving Asia," the essay that many scholars believe provided the intellectual underpinning of Japan's subsequent invasion and colonization of Asian nations.
Fukuzawa bemoaned the fact that Japan's neighbors were hopelessly backward.
Writing that "those with bad companions cannot avoid bad reputations," Fukuzawa said Japan should depart from Asia and "cast our lot with the civilized countries of the West." He wrote of Japan's Asian neighbors, "We should deal with them exactly as the Westerners do."
As those sentiments took root, the Japanese began acquiring Caucasian features in popular drawing. The biggest change occurred during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, when drawings of the war showed Japanese standing taller than Russians, with straight noses and other features that made them look more European than their European enemies.
"The Japanese had to look more handsome than the enemy," said Mr. Nagayama.
Many of the same influences are at work in the other new comic book, "An Introduction to China," which depicts the Chinese as obsessed with cannibalism and prostitution, and has sold 180,000 copies.
The book describes China as the "world's prostitution superpower" and says, without offering evidence, that prostitution accounts for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product. It describes China as a source of disease and depicts Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi saying, "I hear that most of the epidemics that broke out in Japan on a large scale are from China."
The book waves away Japan's worst wartime atrocities in China. It dismisses the Rape of Nanjing, in which historians say 100,000 to 300,000 Chinese were killed by Japanese soldiers in 1937-38, as a fabrication of the Chinese government devised to spread anti-Japanese sentiment.
The book also says the Japanese Imperial Army's Unit 731 - which researched biological warfare and conducted vivisections, amputations and other experiments on thousands of Chinese and other prisoners - was actually formed to defend Japanese soldiers against the Chinese.
"The only attractive thing that China has to offer is Chinese food," said Ko Bunyu, a Taiwan-born writer who provided the script for the comic book. Mr. Ko, 66, has written more than 50 books on China, some on cannibalism and others arguing that Japanese were the real victims of their wartime atrocities in China. The book's main author and cartoonist, a Japanese named George Akiyama, declined to be interviewed.
Like many in Taiwan who are virulently anti-China, Mr. Ko is fiercely pro-Japanese and has lived here for four decades. A longtime favorite of the Japanese right, Mr. Ko said anti-Japan demonstrations in China early this year had earned him a wider audience. Sales of his books surged this year, to one million.
"I have to thank China, really," Mr. Ko said. "But I'm disappointed that the sales of my books could have been more than one or two million if they had continued the demonstrations."
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Kenny Kimchee

Joined: 12 May 2003
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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So, earlier this year the Chinese had riots, burned Japanese cars, attacked Japanese people, attacked Japanese consulates (all with the tacit approval of the government)...
The Koreans had riots, have a thriving online "Hate Japan" community, and posted hate art made by elementary school students...
Meanwhile, two guys in Japan (one of whom is Taiwanese) write a couple of anti-Korea/anti-China manga...and this merits an article in the New York Times?
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 12:31 am Post subject: |
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So, earlier this year the Chinese had riots, burned Japanese cars, attacked Japanese people, attacked Japanese consulates (all with the tacit approval of the government)...
The Koreans had riots, have a thriving online "Hate Japan" community, and posted hate art made by elementary school students...
Meanwhile, two guys in Japan (one of whom is Taiwanese) write a couple of anti-Korea/anti-China manga...and this merits an article in the New York Times?
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Well, I'm pretty sure the anti-Japan riots in China got covered by the NYT.
As for South Korea: the lack of coverage of the schoolkids art could be indicative of a general lack of interest about what goes on in Korea. On the other hand, in North America there's an entire subculture dedicated to Japanese comic books and animation, so probably a politically-oriented comic book will get some attention. |
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Gwangjuboy
Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Location: England
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Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 3:41 am Post subject: |
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| The reality that South Korea had emerged as a rival hit many Japanese with full force in 2002, when the countries were co-hosts of soccer's World Cup and South Korea advanced further than Japan. |
What sort of a rival? The Japanese had an inferior record when compared with the Korea in footballing history. I am sure it didn't just dawn on the Japanese that Korea's national team was at least as good as their own, if not better.
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| It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup; |
Although there is no evidence that the South Korean team cheated, the reporter doesn't mention just how controversial their advance to the world cup semi finals was. Korea's game against Spain was one of the most controversial football matches I have ever seen. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003 Location: I walk along the avenue
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Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 7:10 am Post subject: |
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Quote:
It begins with a chapter on how South Korea's soccer team supposedly cheated to advance in the 2002 Word Cup;
Although there is no evidence that the South Korean team cheated, the reporter doesn't mention just how controversial their advance to the world cup semi finals was. Korea's game against Spain was one of the most controversial football matches I have ever seen.
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I wonder if the authors of that book realize how "Korean" they appear when they whine on about a questionable sporting match more than three years after it happened. |
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