Ruminations in Korea

In an update to the piece posted by Kevin at IA,we have this:

In this article from the Daily Sports, Lee makes public his salary hopes for the first time.  He said that he needs at lease a two-year US$ 5,000,000 contract.  His agent said that if Lee does not get at least that good of an offer, Lee will cancel his plans to play in the Major Leagues.

Apparently, this figure breaks down to US$ 1.5 mil per year plus a US$ 2 mil signing bonus.  A TWO MILLION DOLLAR SIGNING BONUS????? Good grief.  What has he done in the US to warrant a two million dollar signing bonus???  Well how gracious of him to suggest that he would lower his signing bonus demands if the team raised his yearly salary to match the 2 year, US$ 5 mil requirements.

Apparently, the first round of negotiation with the Dodgers went badly with  the first offer of 3 mil over 3 years was rejected.  According to the article, the dodgers are reconsidering and expected to return with a higher offer.

The Dodgers have said that Lee’s salary demands are too high.  Gee.  Ya think?  It is reported that the Dodgers have agreed to all of the other contract terms suggested by Lee, which apparently include no minor leage ball in order to give him "many chances to do battle".

Lee, you best come down off that high horse of yours, take your hat in your hands, and beg someone to let you play on their team, no matter what the terms and salary.  Consider yourself extremely lucky that anyone would want you on their team, especially the Dodgers after they suffered from the Park pitching disaster. 

Contrary to what most Koreans think, Korean baseball players are not highly regarded in the Major Leagues. Park turned into a major gas can with the Dodgers and got the boot.  In Texas, he has not played long enough to know if he is still a gas can or not.  What…he played two innings last season, or something like that.  Hee Sup (or however the crap he Romanizes his name) got the boot to Florida, and Florida only made the trade to free up salary to get good players.  Good ol’ BK sucked so bad that he almost cost Arizona a World Series with spectacular flame outs, and he is now about be run from Boston.  Its ok to be a jackass and be Barry Bonds, but it is definitely not ok to be a jackass and suck as bad as BK does under any sort of pressure.

What do we have here, three sucky Korean players in the major leagues, one mullet-wearing hack that couldn¡¯t handle the pressure and went back home to greener pastures after about 10 minutes, and one minor leagure that likes to hurl balls at endangerd birds.  Why should the big league have any confidence in you at all Lee?

If the Dodgers offer you the bat boy job for a bag of popcorn, some roasted peanuts, a diet coke, and an autographed bat, shut up and take it.

In his comments about the following article, Marmot makes some valid and interesting points that I generally agree with.

In her Villiage Voice article, Cathy Hong discusses the Fine Young Communists, Uncle Sam Is Losing the War for Students in South

Dae Sik Yoo, the student body president of

Kyung

 

Hee

 

University

, is on the lam. Since police can arrest him anywhere but here—they’re not allowed on university grounds

This was not always the case.  Traditionally, demonstrations taking place in front of campuses would end at some predetermined time with a hefty barrage of tear gas and the riot police storming the campus and perhaps arresting a few students.  However, sometime around 1990 or 1991, there was a terrible incident where a demonstration spun horribly out of control.  A group of students took four riot police hostage.  After a lengthy standoff, the riot police decided to storm the building.  During the rescue attempt, the students poured gasoline on the cops and lit em up.  I cannot remember how many of them died.  My understanding is that largely because of this incident, and other smaller incidents, the student organization and the police came to an agreement that the police would not pursue students onto campuses and the students would drastically curtail the use of incendiary devices and weapons.

He could pass for a preppie American student. But when asked about the political opinions that got him into trouble, he sounds more like a North Korean Communist affiliate than a college student in a U.S.-allied country.

"Kim Jong Il is an outstanding leader," says Yoo. "No other country can stand up to the

U.S.

Only

North Korea

can."

It is no secret at all that

North Korea

actively supports the actions of Hanchongryun.  Part of the North Korean playbook recovered from agents specifically talks about promoting and encouraging student radicals and their anti-government / anti-US actions. That crap about no other country being able to stand up to the

US

but

North Korea

is pure NK propaganda.  It is the same kind of crap that can be read every day at this rather hilarious, crap-filled site.

South Korea

has become more conciliatory to its threatening neighbor,

Which is exactly something that I have been arguing against.

Yoo still meets with other fugitive Hanchongryun members, stealing away from the university in the predawn hours, usually in a taxi. He jokes that he feels a bit like 007. Every day, his parents ask when he’ll be arrested, and he himself concedes that capture is inevitable. Even so, Yoo remains adamant.

Yeah. He¡¯s a regular Scarlet Pimpernel.

"Kim is just another leader and not a despot or a dictator," he says. "If he really is a dictator, the North Koreans wouldn’t have tolerated that and overthrown him. They’re not that brainwashed. They must see something in the system that’s right."

When I see crap like this, I wonder whether these kids are paid to believe this, brainwashed by agents, or really believe this.  I have read reports and stories from former Russian KGB agents that say it was people, particularly students, who idealized communism, but had never seen what life in

Russia

was like because they did not know how poorly things were really functioning in the

Soviet Union

. 

If students say stupid-ass things like Yoo is saying, they should be put on a bus straight to

North Korea

.  Let them live in the North and see just how wonderful it is.  How long would those pieces of crap survive without their damned Starcraft, Pizza Hut, Levi¡¯s, daddy¡¯s car, cell phone, etc., etc., etc.

Over the past five years, young South Koreans have grown increasingly sympathetic toward

North Korea

, and their distrust of

America

has deepened.

I don¡¯t know about his.  I think it has always been sympathy for

North Korea

on the part of student radicals and other fringe students.  If it is true and there is more sympathy for the North and distrust of

America

, I place the blame squarely on the Korean media for its sensationalism and hyperbole in reporting of

America

and softball reporting on the North.

"South Koreans who were born in the ’70s and the ’80s didn’t experience the Communist threat. They are blinded by national pride and think of North Koreans as our brothers and sisters. The problem is that they mix up the regime with the people," says Jin Wook Choi, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Reunification.

EXACTLY!  South Korean youths have trouble wrapping their minds around the idea that the North are no longer their brothers. They are so far apart after 50 years of North Korean brainwashing and indoctrination.

Choi attributes the attitude among the younger generation to former South Korean president Kim Dae Jung’s Sunshine Policy. Eager to thaw Cold War tensions, Kim implemented a gradualist strategy for reconciling with

North Korea

, propping up and befriending the struggling nation with humanitarian aid and increased trade.

I really wish there was some way of getting it into the South¡¯s head, and apparently into the

US

¡¯s head, that you do not appease the whiners.  You do not comfort the enemy unless he gives you something.  Make him move first. He does not get anything until you get something.

His plan, though, also included covering up

North Korea

’s appalling human rights record and secretly funneling hundreds of millions in government money into Kim’s coffers.

Now the military can eat for that much longer.

Seoul

is a city where there’s a Starbucks on every block, where parents stress about getting the best English-language tutor for their children, and where students yearn to study abroad at an Ivy League university. It’s difficult to fathom that such antagonism exists between the youth and Uncle Sam. But the most moderate student will echo Hanchongryun’s views, that Kim Jong Il should be admired for his defiance against

America

. Even popular movies now echo the theme. One, Whistling Princess, depicts the Americans as nefarious villains blocking a star-crossed North-South couple.

Hell. Every popular movie with Americans depicts the Americans as the imperialist.  In every movie where an American adopts a Korean girl, the Korean gets sexually abused by the father. In every movie with a

US

soldier, the soldiers will rape a woman. Blah Blah Blah.  Actually things are improving in this regard.  It was not so long ago that all Americans were perceived as drug-crazed, pistol-packing, rapists with AIDS¡¦.not just in the movies.

"You would think KATUSA troops would be understanding of the

U.S.

, but after coming out of it, 90 percent of KATUSA felt negative about the U.S. Army," Woo says. "The sergeants had this ‘

America

is No. 1′ attitude.

Well, NO CRAP!!!!  What do you expect, KATUSA GUY??? It is the US Army!  What? They are going to have an

America

sucks attitude?  They are going to say,

America

is no. 2???  I am sure the Korean military never has a Korea No. 1 attitude. 

"Maybe it is dangerous for

North Korea

to have nuclear arms. I think, though, when reunification happens, their nukes will be our nukes and give us a higher international standing."

Will someone please inform this loser that

North Korea

wants unification too¡¦.on their terms, with the South joining them in the North Korean paradise.  The North has no intention of unifying on the South terms.  Why am I even mentioning this?  It is so obvious that it is stupid to even talk about it.

The younger generation largely supported President Roh last winter when he rode the anti-American tide, promising that he had "no intention of kowtowing to the

U.S.

"

Roh had no idea what he was talking about at the time.  After he took his place in the sun, he got a big, healthy dose of reality and saw that his position was utterly ridiculous.  What started out as a campaign platform of not needing the

US

has turned into a plea not to go anywhere.  Be careful, kids.  You may get what you ask for and you may not like it.  Just ask the

Philippines

.

North Korea

’s violent crackdowns at home counted for little here. "The

U.S.

has been giving false propaganda about the North," said one Catholic university student. "There is no proof that the North commits human rights violations. I think the

U.S.

is misbroadcasting information about

North Korea

killing its own people."

This is exactly why I absolutely hate talking politics here.  How the hell do you counter a statement as stupid and ignorant as that?  There is absolutely nothing you can say to change that attitude or to enlighten that shallow, darkened, little brain.

In April, the UN Commission on Human Rights passed a resolution calling on the

Pyongyang

government to give full access to international investigators so they could follow reports of torture in prison camps.

South Korea

failed to show up for the vote. South Korean officials also discourage the few thousand North Korean defectors from speaking about their harrowing experiences under the regime.

SHHHHH!!!!!! Do not talk about it and it will go away. Do not forget that this is the same country that would not let the Dali Lama in because

China

said no.

Activists who try to denounce Kim Jong Il for human rights violations complain that South Korean government officials have sabotaged their efforts. Human rights activist Norbert Vollertsen, a German, once spent 18 months in

Pyongyang

working for Doctors Without Borders and witnessed the devastating effects the famine and gulags have had on North Korean citizens. Now residing in

South Korea

, he complains that he is followed and harassed and says surveillance is so strict, he feels like he is in

Pyongyang

again.

For a good piece in support of the assertions made by other Korean bloggers that neither the North nor the South wants reunification, read this piece by Dr. Vollertson.  Poor guy.  He gets stomped by South Koreans and North Koreans within the space of a few days.

Over all, Ms. Hong¡¯s piece was, in my never to be humble opinion, a fluff piece full of such incredibly obvious positions and statements, that it did not even need to be published.  While she had some valid points, she seems not to recognize or understand that the protests took a shift away from the problems of democracy and valid anti-government toward anti-Americanism after the 1980 Kwangju Massacre and was solidified after the anti-Roh Tae Woo riots of the the late 1980s.  That began the shift from conceiving

America

as an ideal to

America

as an individual. Thus, what was once, I hate

America

because . . ., has now become I hate Americans because . . .

Demonstrations are nothing new here.  Some of the greatest demonstrations took place and in the mid and late 1800s.  It is not a matter of new or old, left or right, communist or democratic.  It is a cultural shift brought about by, ironically enough, more freedom, changing times, changing perceptions of history. Where the bad old days of pre 1980 Korea is fresh in the minds of people in their 40s and 50s, most of today¡¯s college students were not even born in 1980.  Elvis and Lennon were both dead long before the new student radical was even conceived.  What was it that Shakespeare said about History repeating itself?