[KS] Jong-il Personality Cult

Frank Hoffmann hoffmann at fas.harvard.edu
Sat Sep 27 22:42:42 EDT 2003


>I would appreciate some suggestions on how South Koreans treat their 
>own government. In my experience, South Koreans tend to love their 
>nationality and their race but often truely hate their government.

First of all, as you will recall, the South Korean government was a 
pretty brutal U.S. sponsored dictatorship for quite a while, and 
before that it had been a colony ruled by its neighbor. So, some 
critical distance and continuous fight for more democracy etc. should 
not surprise anyone. Then, if you look around in the world, Europe or 
Asia or Africa, you see very few countries that had such an amazingly 
long time of democratic and mostly peaceful development as the U.S., 
ruled and still ruled by one race that constitutes the majority of 
the people, with one major religion (Christianity), and with no 
invasions and no wars taking place on its territory. In countries 
with a different history you see a different political culture. To 
me, for example (as someone who grew up in Europe), South Korean 
political life seems to be more familiar than what I see in the U.S. 
Koreans have a different way of conflict resolution than Americans 
have, involving different strategies and different rules of 
communication. But the same is true for about every other country and 
culture, and even cultures within one country. Just live in Oakland 
for some time and you might change your idealistic way of presenting 
U.S. culture and politics -);

I don't think South Koreans hate their government. Not today. I would 
suggest to be more careful with such oversimplifications.

>And you are correct, I am not happy with a situation in which a 
>despotic government rules over 23 million people, ruining their 
>lives and starving their children.  Apparently you are.

Apparently Serk-Bae Suh is happy that the North Korean government is 
starving its own people??? Is that what you just wrote?

Frank



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Frank Hoffmann
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