I'm going to the park by my place this aftertoon to observe and eventually write about. Don't worry, I'll finish the "Walkin Man" post too. Sleep well...
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Thanks pal...
I look forward to hearing about your "people watching" experience at the park....is this the one with the playground equipment that's in one of your pic.'s?
I loved all your pictures of the children- they're just precious! What fun you must be having with them! I know they LOVE you! It sounds like there are more male teachers there than female....is that normal in the Korean eductation system? I know you were pretty much the "token" male teacher at JBJ! Can you compare the two schools, school experiences and children for us? Maybe you can do that in a later entry. Mom got to make a "request" so that is mine. ;)
George, this was in today's New York Times. Have you seen the movie yet? Better not go on the Han River again until they slay the "monster."
"Lest South Koreans feel left out, the Dear Leader has not forgotten them. The report indicated that about 600 short-range Scud missiles are based just 30 miles north of the paradoxically named demilitarized zone and aimed at all of South Korea’s strategic targets and industrial complexes. That’s on top of 11,200 artillery pieces, some apparently outfitted with chemical shells, ever ready to pulverize greater Seoul and its 20 million inhabitants.
So are South Koreans scared of the menace to the north? Nope. It’s summer, and they are going to the movies in droves — to scare themselves about something quite different.
“Guimul” (“The Host”) is a monster movie, and a monster hit, drawing a record audience of 6 million — equivalent to one in eight South Koreans — in its first 11 days. It’s about a child-snatching mutant that rears up into Seoul out of the Han River, spawned by toxic fluid carelessly discharged from — guess where — an American military base.
Harmless fiction? Not quite. The director, Bong Joon-ho, says he based it on an incident in 2000 when a mortician with the United States military was arrested over a discharge of formaldehyde. Though the incident was regrettable, the uproar it created was out of proportion. There was no lasting pollution, much less any monsters.
But the theme rumbles on. The United States is returning 59 military bases to South Korea, which has complained that many have unacceptable soil pollution (Washington says it’s being held to an unfair standard). The allies have been wrangling for two years about who will clean up.
Now environmental groups and anti-American partisans are milking “Guimul” for political gain, and the minister of the environment, Lee Chi-beom, says he is worried that the sentiments spurred by the movie could make it harder to reach any agreement on the bases.
There are echoes here of a 2002 case in which a United States military truck killed two schoolgirls on a narrow country road. The driver’s acquittal by a court-martial led to weeks of protests and were a major factor in the election of President Roh Moo-hyun, who let it be known that he would not “kowtow” to Washington.
While the accident was a tragedy, one had to wonder why it could incite so many South Koreans to take to the streets while the daily death toll of North Korean children from famine and conditions in Mr. Kim’s gulags sparked no such protests.
To an outsider, South Koreans seem to have a double standard in terms of threat perceptions. Having been fed propaganda for years by military regimes that painted North Korea as an evil monster poised to devour them, they now seem to dismiss even factual claims as cold war scare stories.
Many of them see North Korea as a slightly delinquent brother who needs to be cajoled into better manners. China, too, is viewed more positively than it is by most of its other neighbors. By contrast, American motives tend to be suspect, and wicked Japan can do nothing right. (The Roh administration’s first reaction to the North’s missile tests was not to condemn Mr. Kim but to criticize Japan for making “such a fuss.”)
It’s not self-evident, to say the least, that this perceived hierarchy of threats is in South Korea’s true national interest. Without reviving the old knee-jerk demonization of North Korea, South Koreans might at least be given pause by the foreign ministry report that says the regime “has made all-out efforts to bolster asymmetrical strengths at a time when millions of its people have died of hunger.”
I suppose we shouldn’t begrudge either South Koreans’ yearning for national reconciliation or their summer thrills. But maybe theycould think a little more deeply about where the real monsters are.
Aidan Foster-Carter is an honorary senior research fellow on Korea at Leeds University."
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