Posted on 11/04/2009 5:59:19 PM PST by joey703
The point of this posting is to continue to systematically attack the notion that it is natural for two Koreas to exist and to continually eat away at all the justifications that South Koreans make in order to some how to ease their collective guilt as they lead their moderately wealthty lives as the other half of the nation continues to suffer (For more on how North Koreans continue to suffer see last week's issue of the New Yorker or what Professor Brad DeLong at UC Berkeley has noted to be last weeks "must read.")
I do this under the series of postings called Schizophrenic Han. In the past, I've already been very critical of the North-South States Period Theory that was first mentioned in the book, Samguk Yusa (a millenia after Silla had already unified the Peninsula), and which I point out has only become relevant now, as South Korean "Academia" try to come up with any and all types of excuses to justify their inaction of a unified Korean peninsula.
Now, I'm going to attack another justification that South Koreans oft like to make - that the North Korean is somehow more legitimate today as "her people" speak a more Korean or purer form of the language. I believe I even saw this on Wikipedia at one point and if I see it again, I can promise you that that will be the day I create a Wikipedia account and challenge that claim. You see, to me, this claim of a more Korean language purposely distorts history, so that mostly South Koreans can ease their feeling of collective or national guilt as they live their moderately wealthy lives and shrug aside the ongoing suffering being endured by the other half of the country.
(Excerpt) Read more at northxkorea.blogspot.com ...
So it’s the ROK’s fault that NK is an impoverished Commie hellhole?
How you all been?
Depends on what’s meant by purer. As I understand it (thanks to the Far Outliers blog), North Korean is characterized by scads of Sinicisms. To the extent that using Chinese loan words/character combos (as opposed to Western loan words) is pure, North Korean is purer.
do you have a link for this?
Well, the point of that posting is not to define what is meant by pure, but the nostalgic way in which South Koreans look at North Korea as if it’s untainted (for that, I’d think those in Yanbian would be a better example).
Nope. Read it a while back. My memory's a bit foggy, but there was a comparison between the terms for ice-skating in North Korean and South Korean. The North Korean term was just the Chinese term rendered into Korean, whereas the South Korean term was something quite distinct from the Chinese expression.
Please. It seems it’s only the older generation — to include the famed 386’ers — who are fixated on reunification and the plight of the North Koreans. I would venture to say that the younger generation — 30 and below — couldn’t care less about what goes on in North Korea.
Furthermore, it’s this guilt you describe that resulted in the completely ineffectual sunshine policies of Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Moo-Hyon. If South Korea is so torn and guilt-wracked by its prosperity when contemplating the North, why doesn’t it just surrender? Conversely, if the South wishes to save the people of the North, why don’t they begin all-out propaganda and active measures campaigns designed to result in the overthrow of the current regime up there?
No one in the South, young or old, wants to get into the discussion about what will realistically happen should the North collapse: China will immediately and militarily move in, take over at least down to the DMZ, and effectively absorb the North into the motherland. There is no way in hell China would allow a democratic Korea to sit on its border.
This guy is a monomaniacal Korean-American with little apparent experience of the reality of either North or South Korea. The poster is in fact the “author” and thus falls into the category of a “vanity” post.
And vanity is something this “Han/Joey703” has in abundance. He posts the most absurd positions and then argues endlessly with all comers never deviating from his North Korean derived line of crap.
I am of the opinion that one ought not to engage this guy on any level, it is a waste of time and effort and merely serves to feed his own illusions of relevance.
In fact, his posts ought to draw the attention of the moderator as a violation of the vanity post rules.
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That was my take on it ,, unpolluted by western words for things they can only dream about in the north.
Of course North Koreans probably have 20 ways to say "eating dirt and bugs" that the South Koreans don't have.
that’s only for ice-skating. what’s interesting is South Korea’s usage of pronouncing Asian countries with the Korean pronounciation of American names.
For example, before Vietnam was literally a Korean reading of the Chinese characters for Vietnam; now, I believe it’s a Korean reading of the English word Vietnam.
South Korea does not want North Korea to fail for now. The Sunshine Policy is Dead. People in the South do believe unification will come, but it’s just that they have are so convinced that war or collapse will not occur.
Heh, of course, China will not want a unified U.S. occupied Korean Peninsula. Does this mean this will not happen? This is 2010 and not 2100? The U.S.-ROK too also has a contingency plan (O-PLAN 5029, check globalsecurity.org).
Will the U.S. let North Korean generals sell nukes to the highest bidder? No way in hell. The U.S. would, I believe, fight a war to ensure that this will not happen.
Minor as it sounds, I think this is the kind of thing that Korea has to do in order to wean itself (and China) off the idea that Korea is part of the Chinese realm. That is, if Korea continues to be interested in remaining a sovereign state.
Heh, I don’t know if that was meant to be deliberately provocative or not. I’m of the position that losing Chinese loan words is a bad thing. But, I’m a bit confused as to what you mean in the Chinese realm.
Korea won’t be part of the Chinese realm — I’m not sure what you mean by this, Korea was never a part of China (unlike Vietnam) and Korea is one of the few places where you don’t have an ethnic Chinese places in East Asia (Japan is the other).
But, yes, there’s no way Korea will be part of the Chinese realm. Unification will only bring either (1) continued U.S. troops or (2) a unified and nuclear Korea... I don’t think the PRC would want either one ...
minus the four Han commanderies that never really controlled the peninsula. A liberal interpretation would put a quarter of the peninsula under “Han” Chinese control — some 2,000 years ago (Lolang gave out in 313 i believe)...
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