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The Han Breeds a New Monster: Anti-Semitism

[Update:   Little Green Footballs has a post up, and it looks like another beating for South Korea’s image, judging by the comments.  A few aren’t of much higher caliber than those on Naver, but it’s mostly a collective “WTF did Jews ever do to Koreans?“]

[Update 2:   LGF readers take note.  More troops who need our support.]

wall-of-jews.jpgThe Simon Wiesenthal Center’s reaction to  an anti-Semitic volume of the best-selling graphic  series “Monnara Iunnara” has hit the Chosun Ilbo.  My wife had sent me the Korean link yesterday, which was a day when I just didn’t have the time to write more.  There has actually been a moderate amount of coverage of this story in the Korean press.  But wait until you see the author’s explanation:

Rhie apologized for hurting Jewish feelings and said he was neither anti-Semitic nor out to criticize Jews. “I drew the cartoons based on data I gathered while living in the U.S. for two years,” he said.   

Research?  WTF?  Lee is really reaffirming, as opposed to retracting, this slander.   Is Lee actually suggesting that  he went around to the different news media organizations and performed  circumcision inspections?   Is he talking about  same media that compares a wall meant to keep out bus bombers to the Berlin Wall, which ignores atrocities in China and North Korea, and which reported Israeli attacks against Hezbollah terrorists who were rocketing Israeli  territory  this way?  I certainly had my own criticisms of some of Israel’s target selection in the past, but if  the Zionist conspiracy that this drooler claims to have “researched” exists, I can only say that it needs to start tightening up its operation, beginning with the BBC, The Guardian, CNN, and all of the wire services.  While conceding the limitations of fisking an apology I only see translated and excerpted, this sure doesn’t look like one:

Rhie added the hope that the matter will not damage relations between Jews and Koreans and promised to revise the offending parts.

This isn’t an apology to Jews.  This is an apology to  Koreans for attracting the attention of the evil Zionist conspiracy.  If that’s pretty mild comfort, the comments on one story about this (translated by Sonagi)  will turn your stomach:

“유태인은 세계의 사악한 민족” Jews are the world’s most evil race.

“포경수술한 놈들은 전부유태인이다” Circumcized bastards all Jews.

“유대인=잡종민족.. Jews are a mongrel race.

“유대인들은 인간 쓰레기들이다!!!” Jews are human trash.

“히틀러는 영웅이죠“ Hitler is a hero.

“유대인 쓰레기들을 몰살하라!하일!히틀러” Exterminate Jewish trash! Heil Hitler!

“유태인 학살 유태인도 ì±…ìž„ 있다” Jews are also responsible for the Holocaust.

“대대적인 홀로코스트를 다시 한번 해야 한다”¦. We need another large-scale Holocaust.

Pause here, just long enough to consider that this was probably written in some chatroom no more than 50 miles from a large-scale Holocaust in progress, about which no one in South Korea honestly cares.     

Safe to assume,  99.7% of  these  condom malfunctions  have seen a Jew in their bitter lives.  As Robert and others point out, you can get some pretty awful comments on Yahoo threads, too, but I’ve  never any  with the degree of  nearly unanimous venom  you see here.  I doubt that even Europe would be capable of such a display; once again, Korean views seem more in line  with those in the Middle East than with those  in the civilized world.

Until this moment, I really had never considered anti-Semitism to be widespread in Korea.  The standard-issue stereotypes  are widely held, yes.  For blacks, Hispanics, and South Asians, and sometimes for whites, it often came out as racism and outright discrimination.  In the case of Jews the stereotypes thankfully didn’t seem to have a particularly negative tint.  What I perceived (admittedly, to my face) was 90% admiration for Jews — as stereotyped —  and 10% envy.  Of course,  anyone can see  how treachous such things can be.  It’s a very fine line between “good dancers” and “good for dancing.”   Knowing how quickly hatreds coalesce on the Korean Street, I now suspect for the first time  (but without statistical evidence) that anti-Semitism has found a host in the Han and mutated into something monstrous.  It certainly sharpens the desire to disengage from such a logical vacuum. 

I’m still waiting for that “silent majority” to speak up, but I’m not holding my breath.

39 Responses

  1. Joshua,

    Having read through numerous comments on the anonymous Naver and real name Chosun Ilbo boards and having read comment threads on past stories like 9-11, I have to say that the hatred isn’t deep-seated anti-Semitism, but deep-seated resentment of any foreigners who dare to criticize anything Korean. If the NAACP had sent a letter, the boards would be full of “ggamdoongi.” Substitute Hitler’s name with Bin Laden’s and add a few lines about evil Yankee imperialism, and it’s a flashback to Korean netizens’ reactions to 9-11. The Chosun Ilbo was so disgusted it published an editorial titled “To Those Who Beautify Terrorism.”

    At the Chosun real name boards, a post that was tied for the most recommendations angrily condemned the Jews for having the nerve to put pressure on a professor in a foreign country. Hello, anybody heard of VANK? How about that Korean government delegation’s visit to the suburban Boston school district whose middle school literature curriculum included “So Far from the Bamboo Grove”?

  2. The cruel irony of this virulent counterreaction on the part of some Koreans is that if anything, Koreans (at least the sort who are so passionate about these issues) and Jews should be able to find common cause in the redress of past grievances. They were both victims of social eugenist, Axis agression during the Second World War. Of course the Holocaust was much, much, indescribably much worse, but for Korean some commenters–no matter how out-on-the-fringe they are–to say those kinds of things and thereby demonstrate the same thinking that led to the Nanjing massacre, Japanese biological experiments, and anti-Korean cultural policies…well, it’s just mind-bogglingly screwed up.

  3. Joshua, we’ve both now picked up this story and both owe a debt to Sonagi for his Naver.com translations — also to Mondello for noticing the comic books statements and translating them.

    I’ve tried to figure out the sources of this sort of Korean antisemitism, which has a non-Korean geneology (though Sonagi is undoubtedly right that this is more resentment of foreign criticism than strong antisemitism) and I have posted a bit on my blog today.

    Jeffery Hodges

    * * *

  5. A few years ago I worked at a school where a teacher was from day 1 seem to be on a mission to try to convince me to go to his church. Polite refusals meant nothing and the requests/demands became stronger from the otherwise nice guy who just couldn’t fathom that I didn’t want to saved from an afterlife in a burning hell.
    One day after a particulary trying class in an attempt to put an end to his pestering I blurted out “I can’t go to your church. I’m Jewish for f*** sake.” (I’m not.) Rather than respect my faith (as far as he knew) he then proceeded to convert me to a ‘real’ faith with a ‘real’ church at the same time reminding me it was the Jews who killed Jesus Christ. I feigned anger at this suggestion and told him to never bring up the topic of religon again. I heard from a co-worker later that the comments behind my back was that I was a Jew and therefore not to be trusted or included in the co-worker ‘circle’. A blessing in disguise actually.

  6. You know why that’s so funny? Because Lee Won Bok’s nose is more Jewish than yours!

    Or mine, for that matter!

  8. Oops. My apologies, Sonagi. We’ll make it the Elizabeth Arden Red Door. My wife makes eyes at that place … as we pass it on the way to Lowe’s.

  9. Yes, I am a hag, Richardson. : ) Although I am a Liberal Leftie Feminist Moonbat, I don’t correct netizens who use masculine pronouns or the word “guy” to refer to me.

    Brendon,

    You may be on to something with the “Jews killed Jesus” bit. Korean Christians take their religion very seriously, some so seriously that they have resorted to vandalizing Buddhist and even Tangun images.

    Although I see Korean netizen reactions as more anti-foreign than anti-Semitic, their comments were, nonetheless, anti-Semitic with praise for Hitler, references to the Holocaust, circumcision, and ‘chosen people.’

  10. I had one more look at Naver and have some good news and bad news. The good news is that I mistook the number of views for the number of recs. The actual number of recs for the top posts are in the teens not the hundreds. The bad news is that post calling for an investigation did get a few recs but was in the top ten. Below I’ve listed the titles for the most recommended posts at Naver:

    1. We need another large-scale Holocaust. 15 recs
    2. His Majesty Hitler would shed tears over this. 13 recs
    3. Having looked at sections of Munnara 13 recs (the commenter says it’s all true)
    4. No way should the truth be bent under pressure! 9 recs
    5. What if a Munnara volume on the Middle East were written? 9 recs (commenter says the book would expose how evil Israelis murder innocent Palestinian children.
    6. Every time I look at this article…8 recs

    This last one is very interesting. The writer says they’ve read the book and don’t see anything wrong with it. They complain that as a country with freedom of the press, Korea shouldn’t cave in to foreign pressure. The writer then makes a comparison with the recent speed-skating controversy, complaining that Korea is humiliating itself and not being independent by apologizing.

    I disagree with this commenter, but they are not hateful. I think this is an ordinary Korean expressing a view shared by many ordinary Koreans. You can read the original here:

    이런 기사 볼때마다.. 조회 131추천 82007/02/15 21:58

    sunsurii IP 121.159.xxx.6
    정말 우리나라 한심하다는 생각이 든다..

    먼나라… 는 나도 봐서 알지만, 매우 ê±´ì „í•œ 책이고 유대인 비하하려고 쓰여진게 아니다.

    설혹 비하하고 있다 하더라도, 언론의 자유가 있는 대한민국이

    유대인 말을 들어 출판내용을 바꾸는게 말이 되는가?

    이런 기사 읽을때마다 한국이 싫어진다.

    한국 빙상 여자 선수들 백두산 세레모니 했다가 중국측에 사과했단다..

    중국은 대회 처음부터 백두산이 중국땅인것처럼 온갖 홍보 다한 주제에..

    이런식으로 계속 굴욕적인 모습을 보이면,

    이를 보는 국민들은, 국가 주체성을 의심하고,

    한국을 엿같이 볼 수 밖에 없다.

    The Chosun Ilbo boards use real names. The messages don’t have titles, so I’ve briefly summarized the most recommended below:

    1. If these protests by the Jews don’t prove the book correct, what does? How can American Jews put pressure on a foreign professor in another country? I’ve lived in America myself. The Jews are lacking in humanity. The backs of their heads are smaller than the Chinese, but their (Jews) business acumen is legendary. 22 recs

    2. I don’t understand why Koreans have to apologize to the Jews. It’s all true – the media, the economy, entertainment, academia, all controlled by the Jews for their own benefit. 22 recs

    3. Professor Rhie is totally correct. We have to remember that the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union were silent while Hitler was carrying out the Holocaust. Seeing how Israel is cruel to the Palestinians, Jews need to shut their mouths. 지금이 유대인에게는 ‘대보름달’이다. 저러다 히틀러같이 독한 놈 만나면 ‘일’나는 거다. 그때도 온세상이 침묵할 것이다 (this last part sounds very ominous – maybe you could ask your wife to translate) The entire comment is here: (14 recs)

    이교수 말이 전부 다 맞다. 히틀러가 유대인 홀로코스트를 자행할 ë•Œ, 영미, 구소련이 전부 침묵했다는 것을 기억해야 한다. 유대인이 팔레스타인에게 저리 가혹한 것을 ë³¼ ë•Œ, 유대인은 ê·¸ 입을 다물어야 한다. 지금이 유대인에게는 ‘대보름달’이다. 저러다 히틀러같이 독한 놈 만나면 ‘일’나는 거다. 그때도 온세상이 침묵할 것이다. (02/16/2007 08:00:08)

  11. 지금이 유대인에게는 ‘대보름달’이다. 저러다 히틀러같이 독한 놈 만나면 ‘일’나는 거다. 그때도 온세상이 침묵할 것이다

    =

    “Now is the Jews’ “full moon” (most prosperous time), but if they meet someone like Hitler, it might be a big problem, and then, maybe the whole world will be silent ….”

  12. You know when I put up the translations on the blog it was my sincere hope that we could get Koreans to take a serious look at the quality of the books they give their kids. I now see that I was naive in the exrtreme to expect anything of the sort to happen, at least right away. From the Something Awful forums and Little Green Footballs I’ve gotten a ton of hits from people with no real connection to Korea, and it’s become apparent to me that the way that the author, publisher and the media here in Korea have reacted to this have confirmed every negtive assumption that those people, who know next to nothing about Korea, would naturally make when seing Rhie’s book. My only hope is that by not accepting the non-apology and really pushing this abroad that we can force the country to actually face this issue.

  13. Indeed, Joe, the Koreans are very defensive about foreign criticism of the book. I find it truly ironic to hear Koreans complain about foreigners sticking their noses into a Korean book all the while seven Korean media outlets were in Boston to attend Mrs. Yoko Kawashima Watkins’ forum. We Koreans can tell American kids what to read, but you arrogant Americans have no business telling our Korean kids what to read. I wouldn’t choose Watkins’ book as a class text, but it’s not racist tripe like Rhie’s comics, and far less widely read.

  14. Sonagi, I’ve updated my blog entry based on your recent corrections. Also, I apologize for thinking that you were a man. Sexist of me, I suppose.

    Anyway, you have done a fine job, and I couldn’t have blogged on this very well without your work and that of Joe Mondello.

    Thanks to both of you — and to others who’ve contributed.

    Jeffery Hodges

    * * *

  15. Maybe the Koreans dislike the Jews because their suffering at the hands of the Nazis is more widely publicized/known than the Koreans’ suffering at the hands of the Japanese…

    I don’t know, but honestly, this material, and the reaction from the Koreans to the criticism, doesn’t surprise me at all.

  16. Yes, jealousy is part of the motivation. I don’t have a name or a link, but there is a Korean scholar? author? who claims that the Japanese colonial occupation was worse than the Holocaust because the Holocaust lasted only three years while Japan’s occupation lasted 35 years.

  18. Sonagi is right. The reaction in Korea to this is more due to anger/resentment at the nerve of anyone to criticize Korea, than to real anti-semitism. Not that this changes a thing, because it does NOT. The reality is that Korea very much has a chip on its shoulder and a large sector of its population simply cannot stomach any criticism whatsoever. Slowly that is changing, but not fast enough.

  19. Brendan et al, I think you’re on to something that some Korean Christians may be harbouring something against Jews because of what they’ve read or been taught from the Gospel of John and elsewhere in the Bible.

    This is sad, because western Christians woke up after WWII and have moved beyond old attitudes towards Jews that led to such problems. It’s well acknowledged in the west now that Jesus himself, all his disciples, and Paul were all Jewish, and saw their new faith as a fulfillment of their Judaism, rather than a refutation of it–and the friction early Christians encountered was with some Jewish leaders specifically, not with their fellow Jews as a whole. A lot of even evangelical Christian scholarship now works on understanding the Jewish context that Jesus and Paul came out of. I’m sure some Korean Christians have that kind of understanding, but I’m afraid that many may not, because the kind of modern-day discourse that western Christians have engaged in on this topic–born of necessity out of the horror of the Second World War–has likely not taken place in Korea.

    Sorry, Joshua, for the somewhat off-topic tangent here….

  20. I think I have mentioned to Joshua in Korea Liberator that anti-semitism among Koreans and Korean-Americans is pretty widespread and intense–at least rhetorically. As a result, my take on the phenomenon is less sanguine than that of Sonagi. And I would almost be tempted to insist that my view is the more accurate one, given that many Koreans, like most folks, hide their prejudices to outsiders. Among the causes of this prejudice are, I would reckon: 1) a particularly Manichean, chilliastic, and truculent form of Christianity that is popular among Koreans that see the Jews as the “murderers of our Savior” (I have been told by one Korean-American Stanford Law student that this was the justification for the Holocaust, that it was part of a theodicy); and 2) an internalization of Western anti-semitism.

    I would also correct or supplement in some part Joshua’s translation of one of the comments in question:

    “지금이 유대인에게는 ‘대보름달’이다. 저러다 히틀러같이 독한 놈 만나면 ‘일’나는 거다. 그때도 온세상이 침묵할 것이다.”

    “Now is the Jews’ “full moon” (most prosperous time), but if they meet someone like Hitler, it might be a big problem, and then, maybe the whole world will be silent ….”

    1. “대보름” is not just any “full moon,” but the first full moon of the new year.

    2. The last sentence is definitive. There is no “maybe.” So it’s both a prediction and a curse.

  21. Gawd. I just can’t believe you’re a non-native speaker. Have to run for my dictionary now….

  22. Huh?

    I am confused.

    I am actually a native Korean speaker. I was born and raised Korea–which I think I’ve mentioned in our private correspondence. In fact, my poor English grammar has to do with the difficulty in relearning the rules of grammar (e.g. no articles in Korean).

  24. Oh, oops. i totally misinterpreted you. I thought you meant you were going to “run” for your Korean dictionary to confirm my own translation of “대보름.”

    As for my English writing/speaking abilities, I think you are being too kind. In particular, the Orwell comparison is embarrassing and ironic, because he championed writing in simple prose–kinda Strunk & White-style–and would have thought my ponderous prose (full of pompous adjectives) an abomination 🙂

  25. Won Joon,

    You may have been raised in a Korean-speaking family in Korea, but you didn’t develop your educated native-like English at a hagwon or from a private tutor. I worked alongside North American PhD holding Korean professors at a Korean university, and the only ones with English comparable to yours were the ones who attended English-medium schools for expatriates like SFS.

    It’s interesting that you’ve chosen to comment here but not at the Marmot’s.

  26. Won Joon Choe wrote:

    “many Koreans, like most folks, hide their prejudices to outsiders.”

    Yes, indeed. That’s why being able to understand Korean conversations in public or peeking at Korean language online forums is such an eye-opener.

    It’s not that I doubt the existence of anti-Semitism; the insults made specific references to history, culture, and traditional prejudices. It’s that anti-Semitism is part of the bigger Wall of Korean Nationalism.

  28. It still leaks out on occasion. A few years ago, the Joongang Ilbo made the grievous error of translating this anti-American, anti-Semitic screed into English.

    https://freekorea.us/?p=2577

    Note that the new anti-Semitism is inextricably linked to anti-Americanism. And the DNA can be traced back to Ubersalzburg. Hitler worked hard to spread it to the Middle East, and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was such a fanatic believer in the Final Solution that he intervened to stop Jews from being rescued from the Holocaust. He had to flee to Egypt after the war, but he never renounced his beliefs. Arafat, Saddam, and other Arab leaders have held up the Grand Mufti as an inspiration to them. In a very real sense, the particular venom of Middle Eastern anti-Semitism, which makes little effort to distinguish itself from opposition to Israeli policies, is a direct descendent of Nazi ideology.

    With the wave of Arab immigration to Europe, that ideology is again taking root in the same soil where it flourished for so long, and among people whose hostility toward America is a longstanding product of (1) wide ideological differences on the role of goverment and international institutions, (2) unforgotten American excesses during the WW2 bombing campaigns, (3) resentment of America’s revulsion at Europe’s behavior before and during the war, (4) resentment of American protection during the Cold War, which parallels Korea’s resentment of America today, and (5) the more general resentment that American power and prosperity eclipsed Europe’s.

    I don’t deny that some — or much — of what we see in Korea today is the familiar intolerance toward outside criticism, but such a large number of pro-Hitler comments sugests the presence of something deeper. And while I don’t believe that outright sympathy for Hilter is common in Europe, I think anti-Semitism is. I suspect that Korean and Japanese anti-Semitism is mostly a borrowed European fashion adapted to local tastes, like the Au Bon Pain shops that sell those spongy, tasteless cakes, which are neither Korean nor European, but which are marketed as French. I also suspect that because it blends so neatly with North Korean apologism, anti-Americanism, and the North’s outspoken racial ideology, that the North’s operatives in the South could have some hand in it (though I have no such direct evidence).

  29. The multilingual google queen is back. While searching on a completely unrelated topic, I found this:

    “MONICA LEWINSKY, MOSSAD’S BEST AVAILABLE OPERATIVE WHO SUCCESSFULLY FORCED CLINTON TO BOMB IRAQ.”

    in the middle of a long webpage about the Zionist US conspiracy to destroy the world:

    http://www15.ocn.ne.jp/~oyakodon/meanwhile_j.htm

    The author, Richard Koshimizu, appears to run a toiletries and packing supplies company:

    http://www15.ocn.ne.jp/~oyakodon/

    The anti-jewish page is not directly accessible from the commercial main page.

    I don’t think I’d want to buy sanitary napkins from this guy. It’s another WFT, isn’t it? Why would this successful business owner in Japan stash 9-11 Jewish conspiracy theories online?

  30. At the bottom of the linked page, I found two links – a dead link to a Yahoo groups and a valid link to a Japanese main page with the same ideas in different format with lots of Japanese text. The fellow thinks that Koizumi is controlled by the Jews also, and that Jews were behind the problems with the Japanese national postal savings deposits. This Japanese fellow hates the secret brotherhood of Jews who are destroying the world, but he sees some striking similarities between Jewish and Japanese culture and traditions:

    http://www15.ocn.ne.jp/~oyakodon/doc4.htm#djf

  32. Sonagi wrote:

    “It’s interesting that you’ve chosen to comment here but not at the Marmot’s.”

    I am these days more wary of posting on the Marmot when it comes to controversial topics that generate 200-plus comments for the following two reasons:

    1. Because there are so many comments, whatever I write will be drowned out by the volume of commentary anyways.

    2. In case my comments did not escape notice, I would be attracting nationalist trolls with whom I will have to waste time going blow-by-blow with–given my usual dissents from the Korean group-think positions. And it’s just not worth wasting your afternoon or evening trying to refute someone like Baduk.

  33. By the way, I remember that the Blogger named the Metropolitician once put up an interminably long and controversial post about how late 19th century and early 20th century Korean nationalism was heavily influenced by European racialism and eugenicist movement. I wonder if some anti-semitism filtered via that path to contemporary Korean intelligentsia?

  34. Makes sense, Won Joon.

    I could barely make small talk in Japanese, but I can read it pretty well. Took classes in the evening for nine months at Yonsei’s FLI. A foundation of grammar plus knowledge of Chinese characters through the study of Japanese and Chinese enables me to cope with Japanese text.

    BTW, our new friend Richard has his own blog:

    http://richardkoshimizu.at.webry.info/

    He introduces his blog as a forum to examine the “self-inflicted” terror of 9-11, reexamine the Cold War, the origins of the Aum Shinrikyo subway gas attack (you mean the Jews were behind that, too???), and global power.

    I clicked on several entries, and thankfully, he seems to be talking to himself. No comments on any threads. In the top right menu is a friends’ list. The poor guy has no online blogging friends yet.

  35. Your reasons for avoiding the pit of 200+ posts makes sense. TPD has a policy of closing a thread at 100.

    Our Japanese businessman and Jew hater Richard Koshimizu has a blog:

    http://richardkoshimizu.at.webry.info/

    which he introduces as a forum to examine the “self-inflicted” terror of 9-11, the Aum Shinrikyo subway gassing (you mean the Jews were behind that, too???), re-examine the Cold War and the (future) war to end all wars, and global power.

    I clicked on several posts and thankfully, he seems to be blogging to himself because there were no comments. At the top right is a friends’ list, and the poor guy doesn’t have a single friend in the blogsphere.

  37. Just a little more on Richard Koshimizu and then I’m finished.

    He does have friends. He’s part of a Japanese-foreign 9-11 conspiracy network called World Forum.

    You can read about it here:

    http://yumikikuchi.blogspot.com/2006/10/911-truth-international-conference.html

    and see the guy using high-tech visual aids to support his theories:

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8249834850366562921

    My elementary classroom is equipped with a Smartboard and all he can manage is a poster pad!

    Okay enough googling on this guy.

  38. Sonagi

    Thanks Sonagi for your very interesting connection between this moron(koshimizu) and Kikuchi.

    In the japanese net, Kikuchi became somewhat famous because of her radical positon against USA and her almost creepy reasonings.

    Know I am convinced that she is a moron.

    Very interesting.

    tomojiro

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