[KS] What's So Good about Korea, Maarten?

[Maarten Meijer]

>
> Response to KFlexx
>
>  Dear (sorry for the blank... don't know your name!)
>
> If you go the the JoongAng site
>
> http://joongangdaily.joins.com/
>
> and type in my name, all articles and letters dealing directly or
> indirectly with my writing activities are listed.
>
> So far, two letters in response to the review have appeared. One very
> brief, very negative and, in my view, too dumb to be considered seriously
> (the author 'browsed my book in Kyobo bookstore' for several minutes and so
> may be considerate a consummate expert on its contents...) But it has
> entertainment value...
>
> The other positive - the author obviously intelligent and well-versed in
> Korean matters.
>
> http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2871478
>
> This author also adequately addresses the "not reading" issue you
> expressed concern about.
>
> I did approach the editors of the JoongAng with a proposal along the lines
> you suggested. This received the cold shoulder, i.e. no reply. I included
> an excerpt from my response for you here.
>
>  What I *am *interested in though is having a chance to offer a rebuttal
> of equal length in the pages of your paper to the nonsense that he passes
> off as 'book review.' Why? Because this is nothing of the kind. By highly
> selectively quoting from my book he thoroughly misrepresents its content and
> distorts its intention. In reality, about 60 percent of that content is very
> positive about Korean culture and people, whereas about 40 percent is
> critical. This criticism is both well-founded and documented, and serves a
> very specific purpose, as explained in the book's introduction. Most readers
> seem to understand and appreciate this - in *particular*, Korean readers.
> I would also like to have the opportunity to share some of the things many
> of these good people have shared with me in their appraisals of the book.
>
> So far, my experiences with your foreign staff have failed to impress me.
> Despite the lip-service to tolerance and freedom of expression of personal
> opinion, I have encountered an editorial culture that allows room only
> for views that are in line with certain narrow principles of political
> correctness. I am giving it another try...
>
> Feel free to advertise this to our common friends at Koreanstudies if you
> wish...! (I don't want to wear our my welcome by overloading digests with my
> entries...)
>
> In conclusion, concerning confessing one's 'allegiances.' Unless an author
> writes for a very narrowly-focused objective and -targeted audience (a
> Christian missionary or Marxist revolutionary bearing testimony to their
> respective evangelizing efforts...), I think such confessionals are
> superfluous. I do not expect Thomas Friedman (one of the few 'liberal'
> columnists I consider to write with genuine integrity) to explain his
> readers in "The Earth Is Flat" that he writes from "left-of-center."
> However, people who generally have *no* allegiances whatsoever seem to
> expect that the views of those who *do* have any are *a priori* suspect;
> hence, the common demand for such an "identification process," the deck thus
> firmly stacked in favor of moral relativism. (I do not suggest that you fall
> in this category; this may just be a matter of coincidence.) Our current
> pope has justly identified a form of "dictatorship" of the latter...
>
> I try to be fair, from my particular angle. That will have to do.
>
> With best wishes,
>
> Maarten
>
>
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