by Cat on December 1, 2006
No, actually, this is not an attempted coup. Nor is it even a particularly heated debate in the National Assembly. This happened at a university symposium on a proposed high school history book.
I understand that a book that refers to the coup d’etat that brought Park Chung Hee to power this way:
“a crucial incident which gave birth to a new administrative power that led Korea’s industrialization, which was the most important national task at the time”
is significant cause for concern. But is this really the best way to conduct an academic debate?
*From an article in The Hankyoreh covering yesterday’s Textbook Forum symposium at Seoul National University.
by Cat on September 6, 2006
Smitty and Super E just returned from a tour of the DMZ and wrote an excellent post (with pictures) over at their place.
We’ve been talking about doing this also—maybe when my parents visit in the spring. I really want to see it, yet can’t shake the feeling that a) it’s a little weird to take a “tour” of what is basically the front line of a war that’s been put on hold; and b) with my luck, the day we visit is the day it would all go to hell anyway and wouldn’t I feel stupid being in the wrong place at the very wrong time. What would I say to anyone after that? It didn’t seem dangerous at the time?
“Well, you know, as active war zones go, it was pretty tame right up until those missiles hit.”
So, mostly this resonated with me:
The DMZ is a strange place. On the one hand, it’s ostensibly one of the most dangerous places in the world, run through with 50-year-old tensions and modern-day fears of nuclear war. It separates great wealth and extensive freedoms from extreme poverty and a Stalinist totalitarianism reinforced by the terrors of one of history’s most insidious personality cults.
On the other hand, it’s a tourist attraction complete with a gift shop. Bus-loads of eager-beaver foreigners walk around snapping photos and getting their pictures taken with the stock-still guards, just like they do at Buckingham Palace.
This is the very same table at which generals and diplomats have met to make the agreements recorded in the history textbooks you read in high school. Yet here we were, on our $40 tour, gawking at it.
Go read the entire post, if you have a minute. It’s very interesting, and the pictures of the guards and the Bridge of No Return are fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time.
