<html><div style='background-color:'><P><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; FONT-FAMILY: tahoma,sans-serif"><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; FONT-FAMILY: tahoma,sans-serif">Hello list members: <BR><BR></P>
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<P>The review of the short story "Pagoda" found below recounts how that tale tells about Korean troops in Vietnam allegedly showed sensitivity toward the local culture, supposedly unlike a certain white ally. Others might recall that the Koreans were brutal. When Americans encountered someone lying in the street, one soldier kicked the body over whilst a comrade covered his friend. The Americans taught this to the Koreans, who laughed at the Mi-gook's quaint ideas. They would simply rake the body with gunfire. Also, Korean forces were notorious for "ear necklaces" made from their victims severed ears. They also forced their prisoners to draw lots. The loser got skinned alive and the survivors were released to warn others. In fact, one leader of the Korean troops in 'Nam was Chun Doo-whan, whose refusal to discipline his
men was an early signal to his allies that he is not -- pardon the pun -- a straight shooter and therefore not the man Washington wanted to take the Korean helm. <BR></P>
<P>Finally, just as the Japanese keiretsu got rich off the Korean War, the chaebol profited from the Vietnamese version. Solidarity means less than the bank account.</P>
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<P>About five years ago, the Hankyroeh tried to run an expose on these Korean crimes. The comment to the editor took the hard nosed form of something like forty ex-commandoes attacking the newsroom with bats. Isn't that a sign there must be something to hide? Is it just Japan that lies?<BR><BR>I wonder if Asians can posit a non-chauvanistic unity? This observer notes that the Western imperial tendency to oppress downward -- on the vertical axis -- is more than matched by the Korean, Chinese and Japanese propensity to shove the gaijin/waegook/laowai outside -- aggression on the horizontal axis. </P>
<P>The risk for the US/West is that East Asian cultures now closed to each other -- circles that collide -- will meld into one giant sphere that discriminates. The fact that Washington is not invited to the Manilla conference on East Asian regionalism, alongside Mohammed Mahatir's desire to leave out Canberra and Wellington from any final blueprint -- is worrisome. Whenever I see Japanese, Koreans and Chinese together, invariably the talk gets around to how certain foreigners are self-interested -- implicitly in contrast to the virtuous natives -- and how East Asians possess some unique capacity for cooperation and togetherness, even as the skulls pile up -- the sense of superiority and exclusion over the outsider is palpable.</P>
<P>Best, Victor Fic, Seoul, <A href="mailto:vfic@hotmail.com">vfic@hotmail.com</A></P>
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<P><BR><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; FONT-FAMILY: tahoma,sans-serif">"The Voice of the Governor General and Other Stories of Modern Korea", by Hwang Suk-young et. al. and translated by Chun Kyung-Ja. Norwalk: EastBridge, 2002. 190 pp. (ISBN 1-891936-06-9 paper, $24.95).<BR><BR>Reviewed by Theodore Hughes<BR>Columbia University<BR><A href="mailto:th2150@columbia.edu">th2150@columbia.edu</A> <A href="mailto:th2150@columbia.edu">mailto:th2150@columbia.edu</A><BR><BR><BR>...snip...<BR>In "Pagoda," the first South Korean literary work set in Vietnam, a platoon of Korean soldiers is dispatched to R-Point...to secure a pagoda considered important to winning the affiliation of the inhabitants of a local village. After heavy casualties and an extended firefight, U.S. troops arrive on the scene and proceed to raze the pagoda, paying no attention to the protests of the Korean soldiers.
?Pagoda? contests the semi-peripheral position of South Korea in the Cold War World, the location of South Korea between the U.S. and its ?undeveloped? Others, by advocating a realignment based on a culturalist pan-Asianism (here in the form of Buddhism).<BR><BR><BR></P></FONT></DIV></DIV></DIV><BR clear=all>
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