kotaji 거타지

Now and then I like to peruse the pages of one of our local free Korean-language rags (yes, London has quite a few of these already, perhaps three, maybe even four). To be absolutely honest, the thing I like about them most, and probably the reason I pick one up at all from the Korean supermarket, is the pages and pages of colourful and rather mouthwatering adverts for Korean restaurants (in amongst all the ones for English schools, hairdressers and travel agents). As an aside, I was quite surprised to find an advert in the latest issue for a Korean-style Chinese restaurant called Chinggisû K’an (”런던 최고의 한국식 중국식당”), complete with rather unappetising looking picture of plates of Tangsuyuk and Map’a tubu and a wonderfully stereotyped cartoon Chinese man.

Where was I? Ah, the even more surprising find in this latest edition of Hanin News (linguistic question: why are Koreans always saram / 사람 in Korea but reduced to in / 인 when they live abroad?) was an article on George Galloway. I have to admit I have a close personal interest here as I campaigned for George’s recent election to the seat of Bethnal Green & Bow in London’s East End on an anti-war platform. Since his election victory against the Labour Party machine on May 5th, Galloway has become even more famous internationally by taking on the US Senate committee that had accused him of taking oil from Saddam Hussein, and by all accounts (even those written by his enemies) winning hands down. I’m always interested in how British politics is seen abroad and particularly the view of my homeland in Korea (well what there is of a view, beyond believing everyone here is a ‘gentleman’). But try as I might, I couldn’t find any reaction in the Korean press to Galloway’s victory or his performance at the US senate (I think there must have been something, but I’m not picking it up on my web radar - aka Google).

Anyway, the anonymous author of the piece in Hanin News (not online unfortunately) paints a very sympathetic picture of Galloway, focusing on the way in which he has been hounded and witchhunted by the British press for daring to stand up to the British state at a time of (illegal) war. The article is in a section called “Reading British Culture” (영국문화읽기) and it interests me that the author has chosen to use the example of Galloway and the treatment he has received as a way of understanding the conservative mainstream press in Britain. Very sensibly he (she?) reserves most fire for the Sun newspaper - possibly Murdoch’s most vicious, foul, disgusting, vitriolic, filthy far-right rag. And also, funnily enough, generally supportive of Tony Blair’s Labour government.

Some brief roughly-translated extracts:

In April 2003 the Sun newspaper attacked Galloway day after day calling him a traitor and printing a headline story “We’re proud to hate you George!” Observing the attitude of reports in the British press at the time, I couldn’t help but have my doubts about the democratic press.
…
The attitude of the Sun cannot be compared to any of the domestic [Korean] media, and even under the Yusin Constitution [Park Chung-hee’s dictatorial regime of the 1970s] media opinion did not take this sort of extreme and highly emotional attitude toward those who broke the [emergency] laws.

There is one other Korean I know of who has taken an interest in the story of George Galloway - Pak Noja, who wrote a Hankyoreh column a couple of years ago on him, during the height of the anti-war movement. If I manage to find a link to that piece, I’ll post it, but right now I’m too infuriated with the Hankyoreh website to keep looking for it.

I see that Alex Callinicos (of York University, SWP and Anticapitalist Manifesto fame) last week expressed his support for the Korea University students facing punishment for their involvement in the demo that humiliated Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. He was speaking at a meeting during his recent visit to Korea and opened his speech by saying:

I want to express my warmest solidarity to the students of Korea University. Because it is extremely important today to actively confront and resist big corporations like Samsung who want to control the whole world.*

The latest issue of the Ta Hamkke newspaper celebrates what they claim is a ‘David and Goliath’ victory for the students, reporting that the University authorities decided yesterday to completely drop their plans to punish the students involved.

*God knows what he actually said, but that is my loose back-translation from Korean at least.

Apologies for prolonged absence. Been busy helping to win an election. For more commentary on the British general election I’ll direct you elsewhere.

Meanwhile a few things I wanted to blog have passed me by, so I’ll try to catch up on some of them, starting with this:

All hell broke loose last week when head of Samsung, Korea’s most powerful corporation, went to Korea University (one of the country’s top three universities) to receive an honorary philosophy degree. The Kodae students, known since time immemorial for their fiery reaction to anything smelling too strongly of capital, held a rather successful demonstration that was able to strip the Lee Kun-hee of some of his dignity by forcing a change of venue (from the intended ‘Samsung Hall’ which he had partially paid for no less) and making him scuttle out of the backdoor of the building. Oh My News, as always, was on the scene to provide some excellent pictures. There’s something on the debacle in English at Korea Times and they have the usual finger-wagging conservative editorial too, which makes good use of that favourite word ‘irrational’. (It’s quite irrational just how much this word gets used in newspaper editorials.)

Of course, this led to something of a conservative backlash against the students at Kodae, but strangely enough it also seems to have caused quite a few commentators to point fingers of blame at the big corporations themselves (chaebol) for being so corrupt and useless at PR. Another interesting outcome is that because the demo seems to have been organised by socialist group Ta Hamkke, this has focused some attention on them and they even get a mention in this Korea Times article. In response, Ta Hamkke have produced a special edition of their paper, defending the actions of the students, which you can find here. They even have a couple of translated articles in English on their newly revamped English website.

It seems that the student protestors have a hit a deep vein of well-deserved dislike and distrust toward Korea’s glorious business leaders, but of course this is not something unique to Korea by any means.

Protestors hold up a mock degree certificate reading “Doctor of Labour Repression”

This is priceless. The North Korean government tries satire and actually does something worthwhile for once (although they had to spoil it by being just a tad sexist).

Actually the reaction of the good ‘ole reactionary Chosun Ilbo is even more priceless:

The sketch, it observed sarcastically, was littered with “gems of totalitarian wit”.

The paper accused the radio station of attacking Ms Rice “in
terms that more enlightened societies would consider manifestly sexist”.

An enlightened, feminist Chosun Ilbo? Well I never.

While the first two sections are purely philosophical, the next two enter into the realms of religion and mythology. The style matches the content. Instead of sharp, clear, and concise definitions, we find the habitual indulgence in “historical” quotations from the classics. It was customary in the tracts of the time to prove everything by biblical sayings. The Buddhists themselves were fond of relying on biblical authority as a heavy defense weapon against their Confucian opponents. Section 3 (questions 25-27) treats of the like quality of spiritual power in the holy sages of antiquity, the argument being conducted in somewhat unconvincing metaphors. Finally, in the fourth section (questions 28-30), Fan Chen attempts to come to grips with the problem of the relation between human and supernatural beings, a problem that arises from the double meaning of shen: “soul” or “spirit,” and “spirits” in the sense of supernatural beings. But he gives confused and evasive answers to the opponent’s questions, the opponent having meanwhile been converted to the belief in the mortality of the soul. On the one hand Fan argues that the ancestral cult has a merely educative value – a point of view that comes very close to Confucianism in its original form – and uses the same arguments as Wang Ch’ung against ghost stories about evil spirits, while on the other he acknowledges the existence of dark spirits and only denies the possibility of men changing into spirits. This is the contradiction – whether conscious or unconscious is an open question – upon which Fan’s materialism founders.

The last section is no longer a discussion. The opening question on the application of the mortality theory is merely a prelude to the great peroration on the harmfulness of Buddhism. Fan Chen here expounds his own beliefs, which combine Taoist naturalism and Confucian social views. He states his preference for the well-being and happiness of the human family on earth over salvation in the next world. To be contented with one’s lot and resigned to one’s fate are what maintain the upper and lower parts of society in a permanent state of balance

Source: Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, (Yale university Press, 1964) pp262-3.

Part one
Part two
Part three