[KS] North Korea says multiracialism is poison

[Mark Peterson]

Greetings old friends and new.  This racial thing has touched off a 
view observations that I would like to add to the mix.

	On the issue of North Korean concepts of racial purity, South Korea 
was once in a similar position -- I think things have improved 
measurably in the South today, witness all the cross-cultural marriages 
that are pushed today.

	One curious figure in the history of South Korean racial constructs 
was a man named An Hosang.  An was Syngman Rhee's first Minister of 
Education -- that says a lot since the Minister of Education must 
assure that the correct line is taught in school, after all.

	An was a strong anti-Communist hardliner, as you would expect, but 
then became a spokesperson for racial ideas later in his career.  In 
the 70's and 80's when he was in his 70's and 80's, he became the 
author and advocate of a concept then called the "hanbalk" people or 
race.  This putative racial group went back to the earliest history and 
beyond, included Tangun, of course, but went beyond that to include 
what the Chinese records called the tongi (they wrote it dong yi) the 
"eastern barbarians".  An argued that this group was not only what we 
might think of as Altaic people of northeast Asia, proto-Koreans 
perhaps, but also the people of the Shangtong peninsula and therefore 
included none other than Confucius himself.  Yes, Confucius was Korean. 
  Why, of course!  He was from the eastern sections, and so were the 
Koreans.  Certainly they were connected as racially superior stock.

	His outlandish ideas had currency for a time with a certain sector of 
the population, but I haven't heard of any of that kind of thing 
lately.  But at the time, I found it all rather curious -- this search 
for roots, and this idea of racial purity that was part and parcel of 
it.

	I looked into An Hosang's background a bit, and found his paksa 
credentials were from a university in Germany -- in the 1930's.  
Achtung!  There is something to be said for the desire to find one's 
pure Aryan or let's make it hanbalk roots, isn't there?

	Fortunately, South Korea has not gone down that road much.  The South 
Korea of today can at least stop and look at itself from the 
perspective of Hines Ward's mother.  She was right to throw it in their 
faces, the hypocrites who were wining and dining her on that day would 
not let her in the banquet hall when she was raising her child alone.  
She suffered a lot raising her son, but her efforts are now recognized 
and praised, and maybe society is a little more open today than it was 
then.  We can be grateful that South Korea has turned a corner and is 
not going down the road An Hosang or Kim Jong Il would lead us.  I'm 
not sure how much it has turned the corner, but there are some hopeful 
signs out there.

	Back on the point of banners in the streets of Seoul advertising 
marriages with Vietnamese and Mongolian and Chinese women -- I was 
surprised on my last trip to Korea to find those banners hoisted along 
the major roads in Seoul.  Beginning about six or seven years ago, I 
began seeing those signs in the country side.  "First marriages; 
Remarriages; Engagements" -- they would say.  It made sense that 
country boys, farm boys, without good marriage prospects would be 
interested in a foreign bride, any bride!  But now we see the banners 
in the heart of the city.  No, the issue in South Korea is not racial 
purity.  It's a practical matter of finding a wife for the gender 
imbalanced society that has selectively eliminated a few too many 
female fetuses.

	Just a few observations...

with best regards,
Mark Peterson