Month: August 2015

This appeared in a Korean language textbook (with my English translation):

A puzzling question with no apparent correct answer. 

The textbook insists that there is a correct answer. The back of the book even explains “why” it is allegedly the correct answer, precluding the possibility of a misprint/typo. 

Can you guess the answer?

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According to the textbook, the correct answer is (1).

“This person is a Korean.”

He is? In what way? Born in another country. Can’t speak Korean. We can understand him to be Korean only by merit of blood ancestry. 

Consider, too, that this is a basic question, ascertaining whether you understand the simple grammar forms and vocabulary used.  The question writer, then, believes that blood obviously trumps something as flimsy as citizenship, place or birth, or even cultural affiliation and language ability!

The explanation at the back of the book flatly has it this way: “(1) is correct because the person’s parents are Korean.”

That answer is not at all intuitive to Americans. Not on a formal test question like this. No way. When taking a test, we have to think in terms of the test, which is to say in terms of the test makers, and this is a good example of that.

Interestingly, Koreans raised in Korean culture who have never lived in the West will generally apply this logic consistently, by which I mean that in the U.S. context they’ll tend to regard Whites as “Americans” and others as (at least semi-)”foreigners”, or something about like that, including Korean-Americans. (This is not to say they universally like Korean-Americans, a complicated issue in itself.) I have seen this attitude again and again from”lesser-Westernized” Koreans of all ages, including (or especially) while such people were speaking in Korean.

Koreans raised in Korea but with direct exposure to Western society, perhaps having lived in a Western country, can sing a different song and be more “politically correct” (as we’d say), but all the same will typically keep their own racial feeling close to the chest. A foreigner who worked in Korea with whom I once talked related a conversation he’d had with his boss, characteristic of the type I mean. I recall the details roughly, but I recall precisely the “punchline” (which will be the very last words of this post):

The boss was a Korean woman who had lived for years in the USA and even then spoke of moving to Canada. She’d come back to Korea and had gotten into the English education business when it was booming. Her son or daughter was in Canada at that very time, studying in university or something. This boss was complaining about foreigners in Korea — how they should go home and stop causing problems, how Korea needed to be reserved for Koreans…something about like that. “But you lived in the USA for many years, and isn’t your daughter in Canada now?” “So?” “So…I mean, you were a foreigner, too.” “It’s different.” “How is it different?” “Well — Korea is only for Koreans. The USA is for everybody.”

Who likes an angry, recalcitrant ideologue? Nobody. That’s who. 

Ideology can blind good judgement, for one thing. This is the case with a list of “best to worst presidents” put out by a prominent libertarian, Dr. Ivan Eland. The worst four presidents according to him:

The very worst: James Polk
The 2nd worst: William McKinley
The 3rd worst: Harry Truman
The 4th worst: Woodrow Wilson

The author is a “Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute.” He is prominent enough to be often invited on U.S. television news debate shows. 

I disagree with his analysis and I have to wonder if he is even arguing in good faith from these bizarre choices.

His methodology severely penalizes involvement in war of any sort, as we see in his full explanation:

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On Polk: He annexed Texas and won the entire American Southwest out to California. Far from being the very worst president, I think he’s one of the best of the “low name recognition” presidents. Would Dr. Eland prefer the USA to have never risen to continental power status? Perhaps the entirety of European settlement of North America was a bad idea from the beginning? With people like Ivan Eland at the helm, history would never move. Or, more likely, it would still move, but it would be moved by a more assertive people with a sense of its own destiny, and the Elands of the world would be swept aside, quickly forgotten.

On Wilson: If only all the belligerents had avoided the pointless nightmare of the 1914-1918 war entirely… But they didn’t. I have heard many serious people argue that a German victory would’ve been the preferable outcome of the 1914-1918 war, and this seems to be directly implied in the article, saying Wilson should’ve stayed out. A victorious Imperial Germany would not have tolerated a Marxist Russia, would’ve crushed the Bolsheviks while they were still able to be crushed, and likewise would’ve suppressed Marxist uprisings everywhere. No need for radical fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s to resist radical Marxism. No Danzig problem, no Marxist states in Europe, no World War II, not anything like we knew it. (On the other hand, the old aristocratic regimes of Europe and the Ottoman Empire did need to be swept away, and were by that war.)

On Truman. The USA suddenly found itself a world superpower in the 1940s, mostly unwillingly and unwittingly. There were a lot of rather brilliant men in the U.S. government at the time, the late 1940s. No “general war” against Communism ever occurred. International institutions were set up that last to this day. Was Truman wrong to intervene in Korea? Maybe. I have to reluctantly say that I think so. Once the commitment came, the USA couldn’t get out of it. Propping up South Korea was very expensive over the years, and I am not sure it has ever served a real U.S. interest.

The best presidents according to the same author: (1) Tyler, (2) Harding, (3) Hoover. 

This is just foolishness. These guys were not the three best. Come on.

The malcontents were out in force on June 12th, 2015 at Gwanghwamun Plaza [광화문광장] in Seoul. This was the height of the MERS Panic of 2015. The MERS virus cleared the customers out of the department stores, but alas was not strong enough to clear out Gwanghwamun’s protesters. A few of the protesters wore surgical masks. I didn’t.

Gwanghwamun was once the core of downtown Seoul. That was a long time back, when Seoul had a single, identifiable downtown — until around the mid-20th century. Today, Gwanghwamun is home to plenty of office space, a few government agencies, and has been molded into a tourist center. You’ll find museums, monuments, and the main former royal palace (Gwanghwamun is the name of south gate of the main palace). The U.S. embassy is there. The huge Kyobo bookstore is there.

The most interesting thing about Gwanghwamun, to me, though, is that by today it is a central place for South Korean malcontents to gather and hold their signs, shout their slogans, and annoy passersby. My impression is that the malcontentry has increased in the 2010s over what I recall in my first times there in 2009. The “malcontents” are of all sorts, most often in the guise of Christian religious extremists and far-left political protesters.

I got some good pictures of two particular protesters that day and can “profile” them a little:

(1) “U.S. Military, Get Out!”

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A snapshot of the South Korea Far Left. Here we have an anti-American, implicitly-pro-North-Korean protester (being explicitly pro-NK is illegal), holding vigil in front of Gwanghwamun’s gleaming golden King Sejong The Great statue. 


The protester kept his head down. You see him and his sign at the very bottom right of the first picture. The same man and his sign are fully visible in the second picture. (The U.S. flag waves in front of the U.S. embassy across the street.) Here we go: 

The sign’s contents with my translations:

탄저균 반입 THAAD 배치 미군은 이땅을 떠나라! 메르스 확산 6.15 부정 박근혜정권 퇴진하라! 
U.S. Military, Get Out of Our Land! We Don’t Want Your Anthrax and THAAD Missiles!
Park Geun-Hye Regime, You Can’t Control MERS! Resign Now!

자주통일과민주주의를위한 코리아연대
The Korean Solidarity Organization for Independent Unification and Democracy

The slogans come from two recent news stories, neither of which I was much aware of. First story: “Live Anthrax Accidentally Shipped to S Korea and US Labs“. The second story references the debate on whether a U.S.-made anti-missile defense system called THAAD should be deployed in South Korea or not.

I wrote above that the Gwanghwamun of the 2010s is a big tourist draw. This was a good Friday afternoon, but the place is remarkably empty. This was the several-week-window when MERS changed a lot. We see only a single pair of tourists and can count eight yellow-vested policemen. These police are all around, and in my impression much more visible than before. (The U.S. embassy is right across the street and the ambassador was slashed by a would-be assassin a few months ago.)

(2) “Stop the Seorak Mountain Cable Car!!”

Another protester at Gwanghwamun that day, a ways to the south.

This man’s sign says this (with my translation):

설악산 케이블카 반대!!
Stop the Seorak Mountain Cable Car!!

I had no idea, but it seems there is a plan to construct a cable car to the very highest summit of Seorak Mountain [설악산], in addition to a lesser cable car than already exists (which doesn’t go to the summit). Seorak is perhaps South Korea’s most famous mountain. I must say I agree with the protester. A lunkering cable car up to the summit would detract from it all. This is a common sort of development in Korea, and I expect it will likely go forward.

Here is another recent protest against the new Seorak Cable Car I find online:

At left, the small sign says:

망가지 버린 자연환을 우리아이들에게 물려줄 수 없습니다.
Ruined Nature Cannot be Passed Down to Our Children.

The Seoul protester was standing at the highest foot-traffic area of Gwanghwamun Plaza, right in front of the intersection (once the busiest automobile intersection in the country). Admiral Yi Sun-Shin overlooks this intersection:

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Alas, this is not a hard movie to analyze, I think. 

The message is that the nuclear arms race had a distinct kind of insanity to it, with no possible winners, and further that nuclear war scenarios can easily, and actually will inevitably, encourage insane thinking. The one general (George C. Scott) who pleads with the president to go all-in with a nuclear first strike when they realize they cannot recall the bomber with the damaged radio system, he does actually seem to be right with his argument. He argues that it’s better to go with a first strike to knock out most Soviet capacity, and lose 20 million Americans killed, than sit and wait and lose 150 million Americans killed. His reasoning, it seems to me, is both correct and insane at the same time.

It’s been a long time since 1964. 

I don’t think there’s been much fear of generalized nuclear annihilation in a long while. When my political and cultural awareness were coming into focus, around the mid-1990s, I recall a little of that, left over from the Cold War days, but it was by then rapidly fading. I don’t think people born in the 1990s ever saw any of it. 

In the world of the 2000s-2010s, at most there has been a low-level fear of a single, rogue mini nuclear attack by an Islamic-State-like group on a particular enemy city, but that would be a small tragedy in the grand scheme — nothing like the kind of mutual extinguishing of industrial civilization that a general ICBM nuclear exchange would’ve meant in the Cold War, as parodied in Strangelove. 

This fear belongs to another era. And yet, the nuclear missiles are still there. Thousands of them…

I liked the movie very much, especially the acting of George C. Scott and Peter Sellers. I learned, after looking up the movie online, that Peter Sellers played three parts. This may be the first time I’ve ever seen him. He was a British comedic actor. He is long dead now.

I saw this movie for the first time last week thanks to a website called BnW Movies (which shows copyright-expired movies mostly from the 1910s-1940s for free. Strangelove, from 1964, is the latest-produced movie on the site.)