Korean Job Discussion Forums

[gypsyfish]

Ottumwa, Iowa?

[hogwonguy1979]

Gary Burghoff who played Radar in the movie was also the only person in the movie to play the same character in the tv show.

I keep telling my students MASH was NOT about Korea but more about Vietnam and war in general

[coolsage]

[Keepongoing]

The original MASH movie was a war satire to discourage enlistment in the military. After its initial showing in theaters enlistments skyrocketed? It backfired. In fact, 2 weeks after I saw it, I joined the Army and a few years later was strangely stationed at Camp Red Cloud in Uijungbu. The soldiers now refer to that era as the Wild West. My first day in my Unit I was initiated by having a plastic bag placed over my head and having those present blow a special kind of smoke into the bag. At this time the Officer of the Day for the Post came in, in fujll uniform and on duty. He sat down and smoked it with us. Drugs were rampant, soldiers would go outside the main gate and buy it in front of the MP's and no one would do a thing. One guy went in front of the CO and took some and little was done. It was also very violent and most of us carried straight razors around..oh, the violence did not come from the Koreans. Two weeks before I got in country there were big race riots there and people died. The actual MASH company that the movie potrayed, was a half mile from there. The football game was on CRC. It was an absolute year of hell.

[Daphne]

I wouldn't say this was meant to be a sarcastic post, as I'm fairly confident the majority of us who've spent more than a few days here have looked into the existentialist abyss described in the song.

The guys who originally sang the tune sounded an awful lot like the Lettermen which considering the lyrics was a gross injustice (kind of like Barry Manilow belting out a song written by Rob Zombie ) but the Manics did it a lot more justice.

[panthermodern]

[Ya-ta Boy]

gypsyfish wins the trivia prize of the day. Congrats to you.

Bonus points for spelling it right.

I would like some statistical evidence that enlistments went up after the release of MASH in '70 (?). I don't recall any sudden rush to the recruiters in my neighborhood in those days. If anything, it seems to me people had just one more reason to add to the list of why they didn't want to go to Vietnam.

When I first arrived here, I was surprised that Koreans even knew about the TV show. I was even more surprised that they disliked it. As far as I can remember, episode after episode went by without anyone pretending to be a Korean even appearing on the show. There was that woman who ran the officers' bar, but she was about the only 'Korean' on any regular basis. In my opinion, MASH was the victim of the same syndrome as "Falling Down" (Wasn't that the name of that Michael Douglas flick?) Someone somewhere at some time said it was insulting to Korea, so everyone everywhere turned against it without ever having seen it.