In an article concerning President Lee’s stupid idea to sell Dokdo without asking the people, again, Michel Breen said this:
In other reaction, Japanese officials welcomed Lee's initiative. Supporters in Osaka, where Lee was born, gathered in the streets and held banners, which were not legible because they were in Japanese, a language, which this newspaper refuses to recognize.
Is this true? Are they THAT childish? Is the KOREAN times run my elementary school children?
If you read the comments that readers make you also get this “How DARE you say ANYTHING bad about Korea or it’s people” attitude, because EVERYONE knows that this is the most perfect country in the world!
I do admit that Breen does put Koreans down a few times in some of his columns, but I swear, if he wasn’t so funny while doing it then I would have stop reading after the first article.
About the US Beef protests he wrote this:
One of the notions that got the protestors out was alleged research showing that Koreans have a gene that makes them susceptible to the disease.
This misleading report, aired on the Bolshevik MBC-TV network, was particularly pernicious because it did contain a half-truth. Vulnerability to Mad Cow disease is in fact linked to the gene that controls one's ability to pronounce English. As the sizeable population of Korean-Americans who eat American beef shows, if you can speak English you can eat beef until the cows come home.
The problem in Korea, however, is considerable because of genetic wiring that makes people say “beeper” when the brain is saying “beef.”
A well-known actress, Kim Min-Seon, spurned the students on with a claim that “I wooder rador swallow shyanider than eat American beeper.” Ms. Kim, whose nickname according to my Google research is “Bambi” and who has type AB blood (don't ask me), is undergoing tests to see whether she has not already turned into a mad cow.
I finished Michael's book “The Koreans. Who they are, what they want, where their future lies.” yesterday. In the book he give the impression of admiration for the Koreans people and gives many explanations and insights that make sense. What is more, you can actually see it all around you, every day. After stating many of the amazing contradictions found with Koreans, he makes this marvelous statement in Chapter One:
This passionate mix of contradictions can be difficult for the more ordered Western mind to handle. As I have suggested, foreigners often find themselves responding in contradictory ways. They criticise Koreans a lot and yet they can’t tear themselves away from them. They might declare that there is nothing good in this country, except of course their Korean spouse, who is the most important person in their live.
Michael Breen, “The Koreans. Who they are, what they want, where their future lies.”, Page 7
I feel the same way most days. I really dislike Koreans, except for my girlfriend and her sisters and my co-workers and a bunch of my students and the lady at the place where I eat that great dish called Kimchi Jjigae and the guy at the coffee shop and…
I will close this post with a last quote from Michael Breen. In a chapter called “Then Next Generation” he says this about the Korean attitudes and behaviour:
Americans are from Mars, Koreans are from Venus.
Michael Breen, “The Koreans. Who they are, what they want, where their future lies.”, Page 253
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