Only one month after arriving in America, the legendary Dokdo Riders have finally made a newspaper.
Despite having spent a month in the Los Angeles area, the dedicated young men of Korea appear to have not been able to get even a sniff of publicity for their worthy and noble cause. However, the tide has changed. On April Fools Day, the San Francisco Chronicle has finally taken notice and carried an article about our intrepid adventurers.
How fares it for these brave, courageous and valiant knights aboard their trusty (?) Hyosung Mirage 250cc iron horses?
On matching motorcycles they came, with lots of leaflets. The newly launched “Dokdo Riders” rolled into Berkeley on Friday, and if you don’t know what “Dokdo” means, you’re obviously not Korean.
Five guys on tiny, little bikes handing out leaflets is not going to get noticed. To get noticed, you need to be more, have more, and do more.
This does not draw attention:
Something like this does:
Where are the other patriots? Dokdo Riders of the world unite! If you’re going to do it, then do it right. Nobody outside of Korea and Japan knows/cares about Dokdo because no one has brought it to world’s attention. Five clean-cut guys on scooters bothering people on the streets with irrelevent pieces of paper, will not change world opinion, and unfortunately, will not bring the Korean passion surrounding Dokdo to the rest of the world. I would expect the most animated response from a leaflet holder to be, “Hmm.. Ok… Whatever.”
It’s not fair to discount the legitimacy and urgency of the message due to the ineffectiveness of the messengers. Putting the messengers aside for a moment, let’s look at the message:
“This problem can have an impact on world peace,” said Sang Kyun Kang, 25, a student at Yonsei University who came up with the motorcycle-crusade idea two years ago while serving his obligatory two-year stint in the Korean military.
There you have it! The continuation and survival of Civilization as we know it rests on the the recognition of Dokdo as Korean Land. Unless this is realized, Senegal-Guinea relations could collapse, Bolivia and Paraguay could take military action against each other, Canada - USA relations could be brought to the brink of armed conflict. Either that or everyone could continue to be ignorant of the big rocks in the ocean.
“The key to solving this problem is not the two countries involved, but other countries,” Kang said.
Would these “other countries” be the same “other countries” that Koreans say should mind their own business, stay out of Korean affairs, and not to even presume to understand anything about Korea for the reason that “you cannot understand because you are not Korean?” I thought so…Just checking.
T.J. Pempel, head of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asia Studies, said the dispute is a rallying point for Korean prestige, and Connecticut College historian Alexis Dudden, in a paper to be delivered at the annual Association for Asian Studies meeting in San Francisco next week, says, “These islands embody Northeast Asia’s 20th century.”
Not to diminish Pempel’s remarks, but EVERYTHING in Korea is a rallying point for Korean prestige. Also, Dudden’s paper might be an interesting paper to read.
“This is our island,” said Young Been Kim, 23, a Dokdo Rider
Thanks Mr. Kim. That is profound. You should write a song about Dokdo being your island.
When Japan’s Shimane prefecture established a “Takeshima Day” last year to declare its ownership of the islets, angry demonstrations erupted in South Korea, accompanied by weeks of saturation media coverage. Among the extreme reactions were a mother and son slicing off their little fingers in front of the Japanese embassy and a man setting himself on fire.
I mentioned above that no one outside of Korean and Japan has heard of Dokdo. If it’s any consolation, no one outside of Korea and Japan has heard of Takeshima either.
The conflict doesn’t generate much heat among the general population in Japan, except among right-wing nationalists.
It would seem that even in Japan, no one really cares.
Well, it would be easy to conclude that the message itself is not really important or of any real interest to anyone except Koreans. Maybe we should turn our focus from the issue itself and focus on how successful the ineffective messengers are in increasing world awareness of an unimportant issue.
First, the total lack of news from the LA area for the first month does not bode well for the next eight months. Maybe things were better in San Francisco.
The Dokdo Riders are hoping to generate public interest here, but their plans in the Bay Area fell victim to the relentless rain. It washed out their sidewalk performance of traditional Korean music on Telegraph Avenue on Friday, not to mention nearly all of the performances they had hoped to do in the past week.
No sidewalk performance, cancellation of nearly all performances, rain…oops. That is sad and unfortunate. It is sad because:
Before leaving Korea, they trained rigorously to perform “Samulnori” traditional music on their tour, intending to attract onlookers to whom the leaflets and other literature can be given.
All of this touring is going to cost a lot of money.
Funding comes from $20,000 they earned at part-time jobs, $50,000 from the GS Caltex energy corporation, $20,000 from KIUP Bank, and a $10,000 pledge from the Korean Government Information Agency, which also is supplying postcards and maps to distribute, Kim said.
All joking and kidding aside, one thing has always impressed me about these Dokdo Riders. I have give my props to them for finding a way to get someone else to pay for their 9 month vacation biking around the world.
Rubber side down, Dokdo Riders!
