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captain kirk
Joined: 29 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 5:28 am Post subject: |
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Haha, good question. Well, I was trudging to work as usual one day heading for the morning lot of kindy classes and cutting through one of those old-style large old buildings, like a 'mall' with three floors. Kind of a local, storied, conglomeration of shops and saw this weird sight on TV, all the TVs. I couldn't really figure out what it was. Like a tower and a fireball. Got to work and the paper wasn't there as it usually is. Heard about what happened and 'bothered' the boss to call the paperboy for the missing paper that day, which was too much for the boss and sent her into a resentment-slick of oil, spinning annoyed 
The kids were cracking jokes about it, those that mentioned it at all. Like it was a huge joke. I thought that was 'rather insensitive' |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 5:48 am Post subject: |
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| What bothered me more was visiting Taipei on 9-11-2004 in a hostel.. CNN was reliving 9-11 all day long.. and some Korean girls were complaining about why they were still showing all this stuff on TV all the time.. weren't we sick of it by now.. (but I think they were unaware it was the 3-year anniversary).. |
I wish I knew what was going to happen in the future too... |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 5:49 am Post subject: |
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| And on a more serious note, I was living in Japan at the time but a girl I knew remarked on how she should feel sadder about it but only felt detached, like the event was happening in a different world. |
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just because
Joined: 01 Aug 2003
Location: Changwon - 4964
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 6:46 am Post subject: |
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I missed it.
I was in China travelling through the hinterland and didn't find out about it until 4 days after it happened.
I was in Xian in a backpacker place and an American guy was talking about it. I asked him what he was talking about and he couldn't believe I didn't know. |
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gypsyfish
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 7:05 am Post subject: |
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Friends and coworkers were subdued or sympathetic.
A couple days after it happened, I was taking the escalator at one of the subways and a Korean man, about fifty, looked at me and said, "American?" I said I was and he reached over and held both my arms as we ascended. We got to the top, he nodded to me, and walked off. I think about this when Korea gets on my nerves and feel better about living here. |
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chotaerang
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Location: In the gym
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 7:31 am Post subject: |
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'Sorry to be controversial, but America abandoned afghanistan after the cold war ended after promising to help them in certain ways. Im not condoning in any way what that fu*&er did (Bin Laden) but its obvious the resentment caused. America get other people to fight their wars and then get pissed of when they realise people hate them for it'
There's no sin in being controversial but the above is typical of the sort of non sequiturs which were tossed around with reckless abandon after these thousands of Americans were murdered. Bin Laden and the 20 or so fanatics who hijacked the airplanes were no more motivated by America's lack of involvement in Afghanistan (after 1988) than they were seeking to avenge Spains defeat in the Spanish-American war.
I too wish that America (and the rest of the free world) would make and keep promises to help countries and people that need our help. However, claiming that these terrorists attacks were at all related to any legitimate grievance is to lend false credibility to Bin Laden and his ilk. |
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helly
Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: WORLDWIDE
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 9:38 am Post subject: |
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Most of my coworkers were sympathetic, asked if I knew anybody in the towers (yes, as well as one of the Americans who took down the hijackers on the plane in Pennsylvania). My boss told me to go home, call everyone I needed to, and come back when I was ready.
However, one person decided to send those Nostradamus prophecies through the company email system. Needless to say, I exploded at that and caused a bit of controversy in the office. |
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Zed
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Shakedown Street
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:39 am Post subject: |
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The adults I knew seemed disinterested in it. They certainly didn't have anything to say about it.
The children acted as though it were a joke.
What year is it, TB? |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 11:31 am Post subject: |
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| gypsyfish wrote: |
Friends and coworkers were subdued or sympathetic.
A couple days after it happened, I was taking the escalator at one of the subways and a Korean man, about fifty, looked at me and said, "American?" I said I was and he reached over and held both my arms as we ascended. We got to the top, he nodded to me, and walked off. I think about this when Korea gets on my nerves and feel better about living here. |
That��s a nice story. I like it.
I also did not hear about it until the next morning. I was only using the TV for rented movies at the time so I had let the cable service expire, and I probably wouldn��t have turned it on that evening anyway. A Korean friend called me to tell me about it and offer sympathy but her cell lost the connection before she could explain anything.
I heard about it in the elevator on the way up to my school then next morning, more than 12 hours later. The colleague sharing the trip upstairs with me was a gyopo fellow, and when he told me about it I accused him of making a sick joke. Then he showed me the Korean Herald front page he was holding, with the photos.
The only kids to do anything weird about it that day were the kindies, and they really didn��t understand the jokes they were making. ��Hey, teach-uh! Teh-rah! Boom!�� And hand motions of planes crashing �� my Canadian co-worker frowned and that was enough to get them to cut it out.
The difficult thing for me was that I wanted to get to a phone or go online and talk to people back in the States, but I had a full day of work to do first. Naw, no one offered to let me take the day off – the school had just suffered a pair of simultaneous midnight runs, so there was no one to fill in for me – and it was the wrong time of day to talk to people on the other side of the Pacific anyway.
My biggest concern was about the ex and her family, who are from Iran and came to settle in Silicon Valley a couple of years after Khomeini came to power, largely because they had started drafting kids younger than my brother-in-law, who was 15 at the time �� they are good people and America is a better place because they went there, but I also know how bigoted people are there and I could see nothing positive that might possibly happen as a result of this event. And I thought of a movie called ��The Siege,�� in which Bruce Willis declares martial law in NYC after a much smaller sort of terror event and quickly rounds up all Middle Eastern males for detention without trial ��
All my people are in California or on the West Coast, so I wasn��t worried about their safety, except that I didn��t know whether it was the start of something bigger and that things could have been happening in other places and to people I did know while I was busy grading some homework. Yeah, it was sort of difficult to be so far from home at that time. To this day, I feel as if the rest of the people in my homeland were part of an important experience that I now lack in some way.
The Koreans friends here were mostly sympathetic and compassionate. This is what friends are all about, of course. |
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Korea Newfie
Joined: 27 Mar 2003
Location: Newfoundland and Labrador
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 12:44 pm Post subject: |
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Aussie I worked with thought it was great, and they deserved it.
Kiwi thought they deserved it, but it was terrible.
Koreans didn't seem to care.
Students thought it was great, and praised bin Laden.
Men in hof that night cheered at tv when it showed news clips of the second plane hitting.
Fools. |
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ulsanchris
Joined: 19 Jun 2003
Location: take a wild guess
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| I remember being asked if i was an american a lot after it happened. I feel that most of the people who asked were sympathetic to the suffering that went on there. |
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kiwiboy_nz_99
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Location: ...Enlightenment...
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| Posted: Fri May 21, 2004 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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I had a 12 year old private student at the time, and we did a bit of free talking. So I asked him what he'd do if he met Bin Laden, he said "I'd kill him", and I said "How?" and he said "I'd sh*t in his mouth" ... made my day ...  |
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Homer
Guest
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 4:02 am Post subject: |
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Kristsoy wrote:
The kids were mostly happy, praising binladen for killing the evil americans.
That is pretty *beep* sick, man...... |
Considering the source its also most likely untrue or exagerated.
At my school some cried others offered condolences to the two american teachers there.
The kids were as usual.
For most it was a sad day.
In the weeks that followed it faded and thats normal as it did not happen here. |
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kangnam mafioso
Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Location: Teheranno
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| i'm an american who arrived in seoul the day before 911 and ended up staying two years or so. i was teaching in a kiddie hogwan the day it happened. i found the koreans overall to be indifferent about the whole thing. the kids were making jokes, imitating planes crashing into towers with their hands and laughing. i guess they didn't understand the magnitude of what happened. it was all quite bizarre. but then again i wasn't really expecting much. most americans would be equally indifferent if some major tragedy happened in korea. most americans would be hard pressed to locate korea on a map. |
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Barking Mad Lord Snapcase
Joined: 04 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2004 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Korea Newfie wrote: |
Aussie I worked with thought it was great, and they deserved it.
Kiwi thought they deserved it, but it was terrible.
Koreans didn't seem to care.
Students thought it was great, and praised bin Laden.
Men in hof that night cheered at tv when it showed news clips of the second plane hitting.
Fools. |
I certainly don't agree with everything that America has done, but a fellow Aussie who laughs at a real tragedy (as opposed to, say, a disaster movie) is taking the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" to ridiculous extremes.
As for Koreans cheering it on en masse ... Let's just say that I would have spent the following 5 weeks giving as much money as possible to American food chains and film studios and Japanese products. 
(Though I'd like to know where in Korea Australian business has planted its flag ...) |
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