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Koreans hate Japan, but love to steal their products.
Posted on 05/18/2010 6:03:36 AM PDT by Willie Green
I was seated on a bench waiting for the subway train at Yangjae Station. Sitting next to me were two well-dressed men in their 40s. An electronic signboard kept showing '``Yangjae Station" in Korean, English, Chinese and Japanese one after the other.
One man mentioned, ``I think Chinese doesn't matter. But why Japanese?'' I felt hit hard by his myopic view of Japan. Of course, I understand why he asked so irritably.
As you well know, Korea was under Japanese colonization for 36 years, during which Japan's brutal imperialists committed atrocities against the Korean people. Since the end of World War Ⅱ Japan has never tried to compensate Korean victims at the government level and has claimed that the easternmost islets of Dokdo is under its jurisdiction.
In reality, encouraged by the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Japan deprived the Korean government of the right of diplomatic relations, seized Dokdo and incorporated it into a Japanese prefecture by issuing the Shimane Prefecture Public Notice No. 40.
To make the Korean people more enraged, Japan tries to indoctrinate its school children with its textbooks that describe Dokdo within its territorial waters. I was at a loss for words when on March 27 Minister Edano Yukio made the absurd remark, ``The Japanese invasion of the Korean Peninsula was historical necessity.'' Last year the Japanese government decided to give the wage of 99 yen (about 1,277 won or $1) to each of the seven Korean women who demanded compensation for their labor. These old ladies were mobilized in 1944 when they were young girls to work at a jet-fighter plant in Nagoya.
However, it is one thing to help Japanese tourists or businesspersons know where they are for their convenience in downtown Seoul, and completely another to harbor animosity toward the Japanese government's nonsensical claims to Korean territory and its lack of repentance on historical wrongdoing. The aforesaid Korean was refusing to differentiate these two facts.
Current international politics demands Korea, along with the U.S., keep a close relationship with Japan in terms of economy, security and diplomacy, as demonstrated by the sunken warship Cheonan in the West Sea and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's visit to Beijing.
At the same time, we must make an all-out effort to straighten out the distorted history between Korea and Japan and to build up a more powerful military alliance. All this is possible if our economic basis is sound. As of the end of February when we were engrossed in the brilliant results by the Korean athletes in Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, the monthly bilateral trade balance was in favor of Japan by about $3 billion.
But it is quite hospitable to provide a variety of information for Japanese tourists and businesspeople as most other countries in the world do the same for Korean tourists and executives. Instead of making a childish response, we must be mature enough to judge which strategy is more beneficial to national interests and the welfare of the citizens.
To be honest, there are lots of good things that we need to learn from the Japanese people. As a Korean, I also feel some emotional distance from Japan as a country but I love the Japanese people at the same time. They are kind, polite, and honest and have good, orderly manners. They try to never inconvenience anyone. Compared to their behavior, it seems to me that the Korean people appear rather rough and rustic.
Being mired in a hostage mentality of a tragic history should not hinder our courage to face facts as they are. We must outgrow an immature way of thinking.
Interesting read, but I’d bet against the guy on at least one trivia item; I doubt if Japan had any “jet fighter” plants in 1944.
Koreans are, understandably, angry with Japan for historical wrongs from 60-100 years ago.
But I can’t understand why Koreans have any positive feelings for China at all. China is the only prop supporting the wretched Kim regime, and does so because it wants a divided Korea and a pliant, dependent buffer state on its border.
One could argue that the sum and length of the abuses suffered by the North Koreans (and for which China bears a great responsibility) over the past 60 years exceeds what colonial Japan did to Korea.
PING
I can’t see why Koreans have such animosity against Japanese - they steal all of Japan’s products and rename them in Korean...
An Air Force Korean linguist colleague of mine damn near caused an international incident back in 1989 when, after a night of heavy drinking, he insulted a Korean cab driver. He asserted that said cab driver’s grandmother had “swam out to greet the Japanese ships.” That little incident not only got our Group Commander involved, but IIRC, even made it to the Base Commander.
>An Air Force Korean linguist colleague of mine damn near caused an international incident back in 1989 when, after a night of heavy drinking, he insulted a Korean cab driver. He asserted that said cab driver’s grandmother had “swam out to greet the Japanese ships.” That little incident not only got our Group Commander involved, but IIRC, even made it to the Base Commander.
I’m sure this was after the taxi driver took him on a 49 mile detour to his 5 mile trip home.
Interesting read, but I’d bet against the guy on at least one trivia item; I doubt if Japan had any “jet fighter” plants in 1944.
Wikipedia List of jet aircraft of World War II (Japan)
Although not produced in significant quantities, it looks as if the Japanese DID develop some rudimentary jet fighter capability before the end of the war.
Now LG Group is having their products made in China.
Just went through two dehumidifiers, LG and Zenith from Home depot, both made at the same plant in China. Both junk.
Okay, I was wrong. Good thing I didn’t put any money up. :)
Well, yes, the fare was in dispute. The pickup was only about 1/2 mile outside the base, and the kid knew the route home (he wasn't so drunk he couldn't see he was being suckered).
The utterance came after a long exchange of insults, but it really set off the driver. I think that, by the time it was all said and done, the driver was also banned from the base for a while (big loss of revenue for him).
I remember reading awhile back that the Japanese are most closely related biologically to the Koreans.
My old roommate in college was Korean. She was friendly with a Japanese guy in our building and I asked if she would ever go out with him. She said no way, no matter how nice he was. It would insult her mother, whose family endured hardship from the Japanese occupation.
“...... They are kind, polite, and honest and have good, orderly manners. They try to never inconvenience anyone. Compared to their behavior, it seems to me that the Korean people appear rather rough and rustic....”
To say the least.
I think those young women were impressed for other types of service.
>>Well, yes, the fare was in dispute. The pickup was only about 1/2 mile outside the base, and the kid knew the route home (he wasn’t so drunk he couldn’t see he was being suckered).
>>The utterance came after a long exchange of insults, but it really set off the driver. I think that, by the time it was all said and done, the driver was also banned from the base for a while (big loss of revenue for him).
Yeah, Korean taxi drivers are known for their cheatin’ ways. That friend of yours really knows how to insult a Korean.
Plus, here is the larger scope of things, in perspective:
You’d be surprised.
The Nazis shared a lot of technology with the Japanese, including rocket fighters and jet fighters. The Japanese may not have been able to produce a jet fighter, but you can be certain that they tried really hard. They attempted to produce copies of the Me-262 and Me-163. They also had a home-grown design, the J7W2 Shinden.
What about seaweed crackers ?
When we would go to Japan for R&R the Japanese girls would ask if the Korean girls were any good and one thing you didn’t say was yes.
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