Are you incapable of sticking to specifics? The issue is KOREAN nationalism and its effect on foreign visitors there… We are not discussing all Asians.
Why do you frame every issue as one of Asians vs. Western people?
You yourself have noted that the Koreans have a particularly strong nationalistic pride. This pride sets them apart, according to your own statements, from other Asian peoples. How is it that you can generalize a particular issue regarding specifically KOREANS to include all Asians?
Strange, I seem to experience the exact opposite. People in other countries, in a lot of instances, seem to think everything is relative to THEM and I’ve seen my fair share of American bashing/hatred. Maybe it’s just me though. :s
Hmmm I should say that the corrugated iron/glass shed bordello quarters (The one near the train station is huge) are worse, after all it’s huge red light districts with literally nothing but shagging shacks. I have been told that the average ramming session in those places lasts a minute, but to each their own, I say.
As for Korean girls looking like sluts, some of them, yes. But brainy ones don’t dress like that.
The companies have dress codes like Tokyo and slutty looking ones will get dirty and unpleasant glances from people in the streets. [/quote]
I didn’t say they looked like sluts - I said they looked like whores. One of the first impressions I had of Korea was one of surprise: What kind of country expects its young women to dress up as prostitutes in order to get a job? If the businesses I came into contact with the first week I was in Korea had a dress code, I’d like to know what it was. Mini-skirts, skin-tight tops, thigh-high fake leather boots, and chains were the outfit of choice at all businesses I saw.
I have been to both France and America, and I lived in South Korea for three years. I have to tell you that I have never seen any place more arrogant about its own culture than Korea.
The annoying thing about it was that it was so inexplicable. Look, let’s say I meet an Italian person who is proud of his country’s artistic heritage and believes Italian art is the best in the world. Maybe I agree, maybe I don’t, but I can at least see why he might think that. German pride in their heritage of classical music is also understandable. A French person who thinks Paris is the best city in the world has a point, even if you disagree. Chinese people who think Chinese food is the best in the world don’t annoy me, even though I prefer some other kind. It is the very fact that Koreans were so arrogant about the achievements of their culture when to an outside observer those achievements were obviously not as good as those of other countries that bothered me the most.
Examples: - I am from Canada. I have had Koreans tell me that Koreans are much better at hockey than Canadians are. - In Korea, the children of subsistence peasants look down on people from all Western countries because we have no culture. How many contributions to culture does the average peasant make? - My co-teacher, when he was trying to explain what a Jaguar was, told the students that it was a very expensive, wonderful car, just like the top-of-the-line Hyundai. - etc.
Basically, Koreans believe that in every field, Koreans are the best. Western people are just barbarians, and they don’t hesitate to tell you this.
Bababa wrote [quote]Basically, Koreans believe that in every field, Koreans are the best. Western people are just barbarians, and they don’t hesitate to tell you this.[/quote]
Yes, Korea is a country with an inferiority complex which they certainly seem to overcompensate with a demented nationalism. So you gotta ask yourself; what kind of person would be attracted to Korean-style nationalism?
I don’t know. Someone who really likes pickled cabbage??
I started this thread on Korea. I was thinking about moving there, but changed my mind because I got tied up with projects here and what people told me about the narrow-minded xenophobic attitudes that many Koreans exhibit. And the FIFA World Cup games involving Korea didn’t exactly encourage me to head over.
Ahem… I think you are conveniently forgetting the mongul invasion of China… then there is in more recent times, the japanese invasion of China, the foreign concessions, french, british, American imperialism. Chinese history books are really rather full of this kind of stuff.
What the @#$%ding 'ell do you think the May Fourth Movement was about?
In its history books, China is infact portrayed as a country at the whim of foreign aggression. Torn apart by the brutalism of imperialism and left to disintegrate at the hands of despoitc warlords who were the “running dogs” of imperialist powers. And yet, despite Chinese learning this history at school, China is a relatively lively and open country today compared with Korea.
But they do not feel bitterness, nor do you suggest it, towards foreigners. So, despite its own history, taiwan remains a relatively open and delightful place to live and work. Thus, if taiwan can see past its history, the excuse cannot be valid for korea.
When were you there? I was last there in 2003.
Next time try this:
Sort of near the Hamilton Hotel, St Ex Bistro. Tel 7952465. Run by a guy named Benjamin. Delightful, easy-going bistro. Pleasant fast service. menu changes twice a week - two mains two starters scribbled on a blackboard. I cannot recommend this place highly enough for good Bistro-style food (3 course meal for two plus wine is about KRW120,000.)
A little down the road is an OK mediterranean bistro, further on down opposite the Thai restaurant, there is Delices, a deli run by a friend of Benjamin. Up on the hill to one side of Itaewon are the diplomatic residences, with several half decent restaurants.
There are no department stores, but there are NIke shops, stores selling leather goods, and hand-made cobblers. there are some seedy bars to be sure, but then there are one or two decent English-style pubs. That is the foreign influence.
Contrast this with what Mr he pointed out:
Where there is no “foreign influence!”
So, Cornelldesi, i think you have fallen into the “Korean” trap of blaming foreigners for the bad bits of Itaewon - but not giving them credit for the good. And, as Mr he has so vividly described, the Koreans are perfectly capable of generating squalor of their own.
Finally, again shooting down you own argument, you suggest that the places where one might find good restaurants include:
Perhaps you are thinking of the little ITALIAN cafe near city hall? Or the fabulous INDIAN restaurant Dhall (Dahl, Dal?). Perhaps Ganga for a curry - or the wine bar or the IRISH pubs (westin or seoul finance centre.)
In Kangnam, are you thinking of the fine-dining FRENCH restaurant L’amitie (About the only place Freddie Smith might eat in Seoul) or the Fusion place Xi’an, which takes from Chinese and other Asian cuisines? maybe you are thinking of the western boutiques for shopping - vesace, Armani, Klein. I could go on…
The main point being that the places you mention are known for their western influence. Even itaewon, as seedy as it might be, is improved by the western influence when compared to the Korean seediness.
korea has a lot to be thankful for foreign influence - not least the 37,000 (?) foreign troops who died saving them from the fate that befell N Korea.
Sure there is patriotism in these places, but it tends to be towards ideas. Therefore, the American Dream or the french revolution. However, America is a far more cosmopolitan place than Korea. Any chauvanism in America is multiplied a thousand times in korea. diversity is welcomed in the US - even celebrated; in korea, it is treated with suspicion. Korea, you see, is different - many Koreans still regard themselves as a “pure blood” race!
Absolutely not. Whenever you come across highly nationalistic country like korea, particularly when that nationalism is based on ideas of race, not intellectual principles, it speaks of the bankruptcy of their system. If you want to see what a korea devoid of foreign influence looks like, just take a look at the North.
What a pit that place is! And how lucky the South Koreans are that foreign powers saved them from that fate!!
[quote=“imyourbiggestfan”]Any chauvanism in America is multiplied a thousand times in Korea. diversity is welcomed in the US - even celebrated; in Korea, it is treated with suspicion. Korea, you see, is different - many Koreans still regard themselves as a “pure blood” race!
Whenever you come across highly nationalistic country like Korea, particularly when that nationalism is based on ideas of race, not intellectual principles, it speaks of the bankruptcy of their system. If you want to see what a Korea devoid of foreign influence looks like, just take a look at the North.
What a pit that place is! And how lucky the South Koreans are that foreign powers saved them from that fate!![/quote]
Parts of it indeed are. But his main point, unless I am mistaken, is that relative to Korea, China is lively and open… particularly open.
I’ve been to many places in China, and I’ve been to Korea. I think China is much more open to foreign ideas than is Korea.
[quote=“cornelldesi”]… I don’t want to go on cause well, none of you will listen or understand cause, well, yes, you think I am some extremist blah blah blah, go on with your fucking bantering.
Absolutely not. Whenever you come across highly nationalistic country like Korea, particularly when that nationalism is based on ideas of race, not intellectual principles, it speaks of the bankruptcy of their system. If you want to see what a Korea devoid of foreign influence looks like, just take a look at the North.[/quote]
Ummm, not that I’m disagreeing, but: Karl Marx?
I think that’s a valid point and does indeed have a lot to do with it. its hard to know whether countries have prospered most because they rejected socialist planning or because they embraced the outside world. Basically, because in most places these two things were done at the same time. Let’s just say that they benefitted a lot from both.
I would also suggest that a lot of these so-called socialist revolutions were in part nationalistic and, in some cases, even conservative in nature. Imperialism was supposed to have led to a loss of sovereignty and therefore revolutions were partly an attempt to regain national sovereignty and to a certain extent to re-establish the state institutions of the past.*
Thus, the real motivation for many of these movements was as much anti-foreignism as it was socialism. Its hard sometimes to distinguish which was the most powerful factor. But i believe them both to be significant.
*Please note “in part.” Although there is much written on the structural similarity of pre-modern Asian governments and the stalinist ones of the 20th c, this is not to ignore the fact that some of these revolutions did indeed make important social advances. For example, one of the first (if not the first) law passed by China’s new government was a divorce law.
I guess you asked me these questions and deserve an answer.
I live there (here). Or perhaps you were not speaking geographically?
Sure. Been to the hinterland as you might call it: including Sichuan, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi.
Do you mean, have I studied Chinese philosophy, literature, politics etc? Sure - and I have my own views on them. Or do you mean: can i converse with Chinese? Yes. Quite freely on pretty much any subject. Am I chinese? No.
Does this make me necessarily right or wrong? No. But I like to think my education wasn’t totally wasted.
Mao’s Revolution a case in point. After he had finally established control over China and set his quarters up in Beijing, one of his colleagues pointed out that while he had voluminous quantities of Chinese classics of philosophy and war/political strategy, he had not a single book by Marx or any other Communist thinkers on display. Mao hastily corrected the error - musn’t lose face before the Soviets.
I’ve heard the opposite, that the Koreans are re-writing their history books to say that northeastern China is originally Korean territory and the Chinese took it away from them…[/quote]
Actually, both are true. The Chinese have claimed that some ancient Chinese kingdoms are actually Chinese. The Koreans claim that their domains traditionally extend into southern regions of present-day Liaoning and Jilin provinces (areas that to this day have significant Korean minorities - the border city of Dandong is largely Korean and Korean language signs can be seen everywhere). The Koreans are correct in their claims and as usual, the Chinese claims are rubbish.
No, Chinese do not believe Korea is a Chinese territory.
Uh… am I missing something here?
[quote=“ludahai”]
The Koreans claim that their domains traditionally extend into southern regions of present-day Liaoning and Jilin provinces (areas that to this day have significant Korean minorities - the border city of Dandong is largely Korean and Korean language signs can be seen everywhere). [/quote]
Those ethnic Koreans arrived during Japanese occupation before WWII. Korean signs were put up under PRC’s ethnic minorities policy. They’ve got jack to do with ancient tribes that lived there.
[quote=“ludahai”]
The Koreans are correct in their claims and as usual, the Chinese claims are rubbish.[/quote]
You are the authority on this because…?
Just because China-bashing is everyone’s favorite sport does not make its claims “usually rubbish.” Your claims, on the other hand, having no support, is a lot more suspect than “rubbish.”