Minjok, yesterday and today

Many Korean learned Dangun grandfather is the founder of our Minjok and now it is regarded as an established theory. For example I easily found a video that show Dangun story to children.

Let’s look at the korean calendar, what is October 3rd called? It is Gaechun Day that Dangun founded Korea (called Dangun Chosun). But, as you know Dangun story is just a mythology. How Bears can be woman or son of the lord of heaven can appear on this ground. This story is written by priest Il Yeon in the Koryo. Considering Korean people were gathered while they were struggling indebtedness of appealing ethnicity. Let’s find the true of Dangun story and what ‘Minjok’ means to the people.

           Korean history textbook says “Our ethnic group has maintained one group for 5,000 years. In this sentence, ‘the ethnic group’ is not clear. It is obvious that there were several groups around the Korean peninsula. In the Bronze Age, Each group made the political relations, rules, marriage custom, religious ceremonies etc. At that time, it is possible that each group didn’t retain political or cultural ties with the others. Therefore, we may say there was a cultural range around the Korean peninsula however, we may not say there was a one ethnic group. Actually, in A.D 3C, there were several countries such as Booyeo, Goguryo, Okjae, Ueproo, Three Han, Yea etc. It means, before 3C, there were more small countries around there. Old Chosun was not only country at that time.

           Then when we began to think Dangun is the founder of Korean minjok? It was necessary to unite Koryo people against the Mongolian troop at the latter term of Koryo. The ruling class of Koryo needed a symbol to unite people. Since Koryo had maintained one country – one ethnic group for 500 years, Koryo people accepted the existence of Dangun easily. But we can find some faults in this theory of Dangun and Korean minjok. First, there were several groups except Dangun’s group that have each custom. And think that Dangun’s major territory is northern Korean peninsula where Booyeo-language user lived in. However, Sila and Koryo people used Han-language (Korean language).

          In 1920s, Mr. Shin Chae-Ho wrote <Chosun Old-History> called 조선상고사 in Korea. He wrote the stroy of Dangun again and emphasized the Gogyryo protected themselves from Chinese attacking. Modern historians evaluated his writing that ‘Mr. Shin overcome the Japanese Colonial historical view and tried to revive and national historical view. What the important is that his history is written against Japanese imperialism. And it triggered Korean people to unite again.

           In Koryo, Korean united to fight with Mongolian. In 20C, Korean united again to Japanese Imperial. What about nowadays? It’s the age of Americanization. All things including ideology, food, fashion, and some languages are absorbed in American style. Koreans are becoming American in some meanings however, we don’t try to be against Americanization. Without any caution about this situation, there is no sure that we won’t be a part of America. Think that Korean become one minjok as a result of one country fought and defeat the others.

Before 20 days...Presidential Election

The Clash sings this song to reveal the dark sides of america, and the conclusion
is that "I'm so bored with the USA"
Then...Are You Bored With KOREA?

Presidential Election left only few days.
If you are so bored, please change it interesting by participating election

MOVE UP STARSKY FOR THE CIA
SUCK ON KOJAK FOR THE USA

Assign president who you want for korea!
Talk! by election!

What changes in 21C

Toefl Essay #2

What Things Will Be Changed in 21C

           I still remember the red shouting of 2002. It was quite interesting for me that world can watch the soccer games held in Korea though the countries are far from here. 10years later, 2012, People can communicate through ‘facebook’ and several types of smartphones. Those things actually give us many conveniences but also some inconveniences. They have improved democracy all around the world but also exploited workers all around the world in many different ways. Following paragraphs will help you to understand the contents in this paragraph.

           26^th October 2011, there was the election to fill vacancy the major of Seoul. Around that times, radio podcast program called ‘I’m funny trick[나는 꼼수다]’ exposed expensive plastic surgery of the candidate government party who call herself a mother of Seoul. Moreover, member of Ggomsu imitated two candidates on the other side of government to help citizens to choose one. As a result of that podcast, opposition side candidate won the election after 10 years absence. In addition, there was a ‘twitter’ that spread citizens’ idea effectively with function ‘following’ and ‘retweet’. These kinds of Social Network Services (called SNS) worked on the Greek, Egypt and even Wall Street. People had demonstrated on the street through the social network services so that removed dictator or threatened capitalists in New York.

           However, some sociologists say that improvement of network services can exploit workers. Being able of long distance communications help workers get work though the time is after work time or Sunday. Higher offices can give workers work anytime they need. As a result, workers cannot get enough rest during weekend. But, there is no serious consideration about wages working time listed on the Labor Standard Law or infringing worker’s private life. Considering many workers admire leaving office and weekend for their sweet rest, out-office working such as e-mailing is too cruel.

 

           There are other problems about SNS. When companies hire new workers, some of them check applicants’ twitter or facebook to inspect their ideas and attitude of life, politics. In this unstable economic situation, taking a job is more and more important, and therefore, applicants and workers should manage their SNS according to boss’s idea. For instance, recently, some workers made one twitter address called ‘Bamboo Woods’ to share their everyday life however company president found the existence of that address, and began to censer that. Considering twitter and facebook can be alive because of free expression of idea, censorship killed the function of SNS and restrained the outlet of workers’ stress made in everyday office life.

           21C is the century of technology. As we know every technology has two faces like Janus. Modern technology, represented as social networking services, may improve our democracy through free expression of our ideas, on the other hand, may exploit worker no matter office and house, and boss’s censorship is work cruel for them. Therefore, what we need is participating to improve democracy more and respect workers’ leisure time and facebook status.

We, As an Earthling

We, As an Earthling

           Movie ‘Earthling’ shows us how cruel we are when we treat the other earthlings; things that inhabits on the earth. Making the film, director uses 5 ways to abuse animals, pet, food, clothe, entertaining, and science (as experiment) and makes us be sorry for treating animals (earthlings). Director explained us three types of ‘-ism’ about discrimination, racism, sexism, and specism. Some races accept racism and ignore the rights of the other races for their profits. And one gender accepts sexism and ignores the rights of the other gender for their profits. Similarly, some species accept ‘specism’ and ignore the rights of the other gender for their profits. Among these three types of ‘-ism’, there are not big difference in terms of cruelness, discrimination and inhumane attitude. In this review, readers can focus on the background of this video, that is, what made people so cruel.

          

At first, these earthlings are used to be clothes or leathers. Basically, it doesn’t matter that people wear animal fur. What the matter is in the way treating the India cows. Slaughtering cows in the many cities in India is strictly banned by law, people carry the cows to the places where slaughtering is allowed. Problems happen while cows are carried. Considering most of cows are first with truck and its sound, this experience will be scaring for them. The rougher people treat them, the more scaring experience will be. Without any food or water while they are carried, they definitely would fall in pain. As a result, about half of cows are killed when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. This video is enough to persuade people to rethink about their clothes made of fur. On the other hand, this video may make people abhor the human nature because of cruelness.

Someone may wonder “why they should be so cruel?” Then here is an answer. Readers may remember ‘foot and mouth disease’ that hit Korea last year. Here’s a link shows how people treated pigs influenced by the disease.

(Subtitles of this video will be posted on my blog).

As film maker of this video (treating foot-and-mouth disease) says, we treat these animals because of ‘economic value’. In this point, readers can get the clue to understand the cruelness in the movie Earthling. In terms of ‘economic value’, readers can remind another abuse in our society based on not only in specism but also in racism and sexism. For readers’ understanding, here’s a link of interesting article from ‘In These Times’.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2270/

          

Movie ‘Earthling’ mainly shows us the result of ‘specism’, however it is impossible to separate three types of ‘-ism’, racism, sexism and specism in terms of Capitalism. About 300 years ago in America, North and South fought for the black slaves. South struggled for maintaining slaves so that capitalist can exploit them. Nowadays, many advertisements appear sexy girls to attract consumers so that companies may get more profits. Similarly, many clothe companies and stock farmers treat animals harshly so that they can reduce productive cost. Like this, in front of the capital, people can be cruel though they were NOT that cruel before.

We can find that in part 2, food. In part 2, narrator says “There’s no anodyne or anesthetic during castration, and it is conducted for making good marbling or soft fleshiness.” Readers can find other specism in that sentence. Remind that castration of sexual-criminal had been controversial issue for several days. For instance, after one member of government party insisted that we should make the law that allows physical castration, some civic groups acted against his idea. On the contrast, people castrate little pigs without any sense of guilty, but they are full of expectation of making money.

Part 5, about earthling and science, reminded me one video showed Sunday morning when I came here for KMLA entrance interview. It treated some drugs safe for animals, but not for people. The Thalidomide Tragedy was highly highlighted in this video. For readers who don’t know this tragedy, here’s the link.

http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/thalid2.html

          

           It’s quite sad story, isn’t it? In fact, as narrator says in the movie, there’s no conviction that doctors can adopt the results from animal experiments to people. Since the basic presupposition, result from animal can be adopted is wrong, many drugs have made troubles so far, and will continue to make problems. While on the other, some scientists, including Charles Robert Darwin who claimed the theory of evolution, insisted animal experiment is necessary in terms of expansion of human knowledge. Moreover, some of them thought like rats, good at spreading, should be used for experiments. However, fact is that all of them including rats, Pavlov’s dog, and Schrodinger’s cat are all earthling. As Darwin explained to justify animal experiment, they can feel the pain or loneliness.

             In the beginning of this movie, there are words that Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on his novel “All men are like Nazis when they face animals.” Sadly, his sentence is still true in many different aspects. And I wrote about term ‘specism’ related with racism and sexism to help you think background of those cruel things. And lastly, with tragedy, I wrote about animal experiment. Overall, this is not interesting movie and essay. But what we should remind is 3 stage of truth. The last stage is ACCEPTANCE.

In-Class Writing#1-Revised

Why Should We Escape from Hakwan?

In Korea, most mothers force their children to go to hakwans. So a student's schedule is full of school, hakwans, and finally the house. It makes students not think about their life, society , or the truth of the universe, etc. Students grown to think only about wealth, success and a beautiful spouse. I didn't want to be such a kind of man, so I used to escape from the hakwan.

In winter of 2006, when I was 11 years old, I didn't do any homework that hakwan teacher assigned me last class. Since I was a small-mind man, and the teacher would punish me whenever I didn't do homework, I went to the park near my house rather than the hakwan. Considering it was winter, I wore my coat and bike-gloves. After being ready for my winter adventure, I rode my bike.

At first, I went to the supermarket to buy some emergency-foods. I didn't expect this adventure would last long; however, I needed some food to live in cold weather. After that, I just rode my bike to nowhere. there was no destination. I felt cold winds and freezing snow. Suddenly, I realized that there's a man lying on the side of the park. He seemed dead at first. Fortunately, he was sleeping. Actually, I thought about calling an emergency car. But I'd like to ask "why are you here?". I put my coat on his body.

Reading the last chapter of my comic book, he woke up and said "who are you?". We started to converse. At that conversation, I asked him what happened to him and his home. After he ate my egg, he started to answer. by telling his story. He was a worker of a company He used to be given a salary every month. One day, the company president disappeared and gangs come to his company to demand money. They get all his fortune including his house.

It was startling for me to hear his past story. If I had gone to my hakwan and solved mathematical problems, I would have known what happened to the homeless man. Moreover, it was the day for my great-grandfather. If I had eaten warm foods at grandparent's house, I would never know how he was living in that cold weather.

In most cases real life itself gives us lessons, while a hakwan text book is limited, real life has various aspects of truth of this world. We can live our lives after facing the truth of the world. Therefore, I would like to encourage students to escape from hakwans and face the real world.

TOEFL ESSAY #1

Introduce the Past Korean Village Community

       After Korean War, many Korean left their hometown to go to Seoul. As they left, lots of village community that had longed from our ancestor began to destroy. At now, there are many gray cities like western life instead of rustic romance. Consequently, there is no humanistic community around urbanites. Therefore, on this day, it is necessary to rethink how our village community was peacefully operated and introduce to foreign cultures.

       At first, In village community people work for each other. They voluntarily make a group for working and work together. They don’t feel any competitive spirit since distributing of the harvest will be conducted by individual plot. Also, they are not lazy since they will possess their harvest. Moreover, it make members friendly and feel other member as necessary for one’s life instead of enemy for living or rival for producing. This system is especially suitable for agricultural life but also be suitable for recent days, full of competitive lifes.

       Secondly, village community allows people democratic life. Mostly, the number of this community is about 100 including from babies to grandfathers. Since there aren’t many people in this group, everyone has chances to say one’s opinion to all member of community. In our cities, there are so many people that group can’t accept one’s opinion directly. On the contrary, it is easy to accept new ideas in village community. That’s why Dr. Seung-Ho Ahn, professor of social science of Chungbuk University, emphasized using this community efficiently.

       Thirdly, power of this community can protect members. Since all members are necessary for each others, they can be easily united against outside power. For example, members of Gangjung village, appointed as Naval Base by Korean government, have been united for 6 years to against to the government. Since they are united, government cannot even control them easily. There is another example that happened in Pyeongtaek. Since the government announced to build American Military Base in Daechu village, members of the village had been united and protested officially. Although government made them move in this case, it showed how strong village community is.

       On this day, urban life is full of competitive life and faces crisis of democracy. Also, it faces lack of power to protect individual. Therefore, I can proudly introduce our village community to foreign culture. It will be good for us if they accept this custom

Who Am I??

It's good to see you readers, including my teacher Mr.Menard

I'm from Jeju island where is the most beautiful land in Korea
and I'm nature man who love our mother nature.

Actually, I'm not malleable guy. I constantly protest to my teachers since middle school whenever they order me ridiculous things such as 'hair limitation', 'school attire checking' and etc.

Although I appears very bad man as I fight with teachers or do something craze, I have warm heart. You cannot even see my dark face during this semester.^&^

Anyway, this is new beginning.
Have a nice semester!