[KS] South Korea's Rollback of Democratic Rights

[Frank Hoffmann]

Quote:
>My main critique with the protesters and their supporters in the 
>liberal/progressive media here is their sheer hypocrisy, and the 
>fact that many cannot even acknowledge that they are/were using 
>violence for their own ends, while at the same time perpetually 
>playing the "victim" card. (...)
>No doubt the blows they sustained were mitigated by the fact that it 
>was mere "playacting" in the "classic Korean mode."

J. Scott Burgeson


[T]he accusation of hypocrisy also has its counterpart in the 
colonial discourse of national character. Arthur Smith, for example, 
has plenty to complain about the "absence of sincerity" among the 
Chinese. In an indignant and yet resigned manner, Smith speaks of the 
impossibility to ever getting simple and straight facts from any 
Chinese person. (...) Smith declares that anyone who peruses the 
classics with a discerning eye "will be able to read between the 
lines much indirection, prevarication, and falsehood" (CC, 267). 
(...) That all the maddening instances of insincerity and hypocrisy 
do not seem to bother the Chinese very much is then taken as 
manifestation of their duplicity and moral depravity.

Quote from Haiyan Lee, Revolution of the Heart, Stanford UP, 2006: 242


The allegation of hypocrisy towards a political interest group is a 
bit like criticizing fishes to urinate in the water. That is utterly 
disgusting but somewhat unavoidable.


Quote:
>Look, I'm from the People's Republic of Berkeley, CA. I was arrested 
>in San Francisco protesting the first Gulf War back in 1991. My 
>father was an anti-Vietnam War activist/organizer who was on an FBI 
>watch list. (...)
>"sophisticated Europeans" viewing this all from afar.


Hmmm, YES, Scott, you must know, "we Europeans" are just soooo 
sophisticated -- especially Mondays and Fridays between 5 and 7, 
never on weekends -- we do not go by someone's acclaimed status or 
racial and national background, we go by what someone actually says 
or writes. (Just do not get lost in the streets of Leipzig or eastern 
Berlin after 10 PM, you might get killed. :)


Frank

-- 
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Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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