Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gord]

[Zyzyfer]

[elizabethjane]

Last year I worked in a school, part of a franchise, that had a huge picture of the towers right above the reception desk. On the anniversary of the 11th, one of the teachers at my school put up a big laminated heart covering the tops of the towers. The secretary laughed and pulled it down.

Sad.

[On the other hand]

[Seoultrader]

If the folks at our office worked with just half the creativity, sense of timing and innovation that the 9-11 operators did, I'd be a happy man.

[duanemyhre]

Wow! I don�t want to hear this before I come to Korea! This is really sad!


I wonder how this comment would go after a WTC remark.

HA�HAHAHA(Laughing along with the WTC joke). Yea� You know what is really funny! Remember when the Japanese were raping and pillaging in Korea ohh ohh and� They cut off the ears and noses of the Korean people and made a shrine in Japan. HA hahaha Yea that was REALLY funny!! I got to visit that shrine!

I wonder if that would bring things into perspective. People can be unbelievably cruel and self-centered.

[On the other hand]

Might as well just confess right now. I made a 9-11 joke in class once. I think we were discussing famous architecture or something, and I said "Well, what about the World Trade Centre", and made plane-crashing-into-building motions with my hands. This got a laugh. Fact is, though, I was making similar jokes in Canada with my friends the day after the tragedy, and they all seemed to find it amusing too. As well, I also read in THE NEW REPUBLIC about an American TV news show(20/20?) where they went to some state far from New York and talked to AMERICANS who were making 9-11 jokes. The point of the show was that people outside New York were less affected than people in New York, but I think what it really proves is that the impulse to laugh at tragedy is a universal one, and it is quite hypocritical to single out one race or culture for criticism in this regard. Then again, singling out one PARTICULAR race for criticism is pretty much what this board is all about, isn't it?

Obviously, I do not do "comfort women" jokes in my ESL classes, because I'm just guessing that Koreans are kinda sensitive about that. Then again, I would not go to New York and do 9-11 material either. Anyone who has never once laughed at a joke about something tragic can feel free to write a post telling me what a reprehensible sociopath I am. All the rest of you sensitive souls can take your love for humanity and stick it where the sun don't shine(that'd be yer nose )



[/quote]

[Seoultrader]

[Vince]

I remember the Ethiopian jokes, but I can't imagine someone telling one with an Ethiopian in the room. Not that sick jokes are okay if the victims of them aren't present, but telling them right in front of the victims is simply cruel.

I read the journal of someone who was in Korea on 9-11. She wrote that kids were on stage during a school Halloween event making jokes about the attacks, and the parents were laughing it up with no regard for the American teachers in the room. I was disgusted. If I were there, I would've grabbed my stuff and started heading for the door. When the manager asked where I was going, I would've said in simple English, loud enough for everybody to hear, "I'm sorry, but my cousin died in the attack [not true, but that's beside the point]. Enjoy the rest of the party."

[Seoultrader]

[Vince]

[duanemyhre]

[On the other hand]

On the other hand wrote:
an American TV news show(20/20?) where they went to some state far from New York and talked to AMERICANS who were making 9-11 jokes.

Duanhyhre responded:
I was in the US during the attacks and the only stories I saw about people making jokes, were Middle Eastern people.[quote]

As I said, the article describing the show was in NEW REPUBLIC, and it must have been a couple of months after the attack. I think it was the cover story that week, with some headline like "The Great Divide Between New York and the rest of America".

As for your low opinion of people who were "brought up" to laugh at jokes about people dying, in my experience most people aren't brought up that way. A taste for morbid humour seems to kick in sometime around middle school. I think most parents would instruct their children NOT to laugh at such things, which is probably good. Morbid humour can be funny, but only in the right the social context; as you say, duanmyhre, one-liners about Hiroshima would not be the order of the day in Japan. Its probably a good idea to instill a taboo against such jokes in young children, to prevent them from laughing at tragic things in the wrong situation. The taboo, I think, is generally broken down by peers in social situations free of adult supervision. As a teenager, I just knew that the nasty jokes we told at recess were not things that I'd want to repeat at the dinner table that night. Possibly an early lesson in context-appropriate humour.

[Walter Mitty]

If one were to "fight fire with fire" and shoot back with jokes about Korean tragedies, there's plenty to choose from.

No gun ri Massacre
Shin Hyo-soon and Shim Mi-sun
comfort women
years of Japanese oppression and colonial rule

But really, shooting back in kind is pointless. Even if a NK terror attack took down the DLI-63 building, South Koreans would find a way to make it different from WTC. "Oh, this is much worse," they'd say. "You Americans have no idea what it's like to have a tragedy like this happen in your country."

Hard as it may be - ignore them when they act like ignorant hick f***tards. Attitudes on things like WTC make the country look bad. If they can't relate - even on a sympathetic human level - to a massive loss of life, they can stay where they are in relation to the rest of the world. Bit players (if that) in a production they can't grasp teh scope of.

[Gord]