I would like to congratulate your country for the spacial achievement (It is serious). You guys put a lot of money and effort on it. You deserved.

Maybe GI is right, we should put emotion aside and try to find a way to cooperate.

Dokdo Rage

By Yun Chung

The rocks of Dokdo were lonesome until recently. Now, every cat and dog makes a pass at them. Recent love calls on Dokdo include “There Ain't No 'Do' in Dok" and “Poem for Dokdo" in The Korea Times (July 24 and August 28) among numerous other articles. These two articles stand out because they caricaturized the Dokdo issue in Korea.

Dokdo became Dok in the above articles. The rocks of Dokdo bit their lips the first time being called Dok because there was some justification. There was, however, no justification the second time. Dok makes no sense in Korean or in English. It only jeers at the Dokdo emotion, which runs deep in me and many Koreans.

“Where is the beef?" This was a catch phrase of a TV commercial some years ago in the U.S. It derided small meat patties in competitor's hamburgers and is still being used when the size or substance of an issue is questioned. Likewise, let me ask: Where is the “land" in England? Isn't “Engisland" more appropriate than England? Why not, Engdo, Engdot, Engstan, or how about just Eng or Eng-Eng?

Am I being ludicrous? Yes. So is anyone charmed by Dok for Dokdo.

To British, England is England, no matter what. To Koreans, Dokdo is Dokdo, no matter what.

Kurri Kurri and Wagga Wagga are indigenous town names in Australia. Australians use these names without questioning their qualifications. Koreans call the Australian continent “Hoju" and the American continent “Miju." To Koreans, Hoju is easier to say and sounds friendlier than Australia. Chinese and Japanese call Australia by similar names. Likewise, America is Meiguo in China, Miguk in Korea, and Beikoku in Japan. Anglophones call Nippon Japan, Zhongguo, China, Hanguk, Korea, etc. and do whatever else they like to do. So, why bash Koreans for calling Australia Hoju or England Yeongguk as if whatever Koreans do is ridiculous? Hoju and Yeongguk not on Royal Navy maps? Don't be silly, please. Neither is Miguk!

Calling Dokdo Dok, however, is like calling England Eng. Both are absurd and should be not repeated.

To most contemporary Koreans, nothing is more painful and disgusting than having to relive the days of the Japanese occupation (1910-1945). Whenever Japan revives a claim to Dokdo, I think, in reflex, of the Japanese police and “Kempei" (Gestapo) who were rounding up teenage girls from a village where I grew up. Their mothers, distraught and wailing, kept on lunging toward a line of pony-tailed girls, trying to take their daughters back. Japanese Kempeis, hovering around the girls, kept pushing mothers away, kicking them as they fell down.

Girl's fathers stood around some distance away, just glaring at their crying wives in disgust and their fear-gripped daughters in resignation. Kempeis put a white sash across each girl's shoulder. It read: "Oiwai ? Tei-shin-tai," meaning "Congratulations ? Body Dedication Corps." I witnessed similar scenes repeatedly. We were told that the girls would serve as nurses and cooks for soldiers behind frontlines. When WWII ended, the truth came out: Japanese soldiers used them as “comfort women".

The Japanese government insists no documented evidence exists for “comfort women" when the whole world condemns the atrocities. What kidnappers stick up innocence by claiming no “documented evidence" and get away with it? Japan behaves as if their only “crime" was having lost the war to the Kichiku-Beiei (Demonic beasts, Yankees and Brits). Disgusting.

Calling Dokdo Takeshima revives other disgusting memories of Japan in many Koreans. In reaction, enraged Koreans protested. Onlookers shook their heads as hyperbolic. Too bad, they had no background or compassion to understand the pains of the oppressed.

Blacks and Native Americans are the oppressed people in the U.S. The blacks have marched and even rioted. Hyperbolic? One of them may become a U.S. president. Conversely, Native Americans were driven out of their own fertile lands. Many are now subsisting on handouts, silently, on barren lands, called “reservations". “What ya wonna do, Dok?"

“Dokdo Rage," below, is in response to the “Poem for Dokdo."

Do not go down gentle into the sea

I am a rough rock, take me rough

You've enraged me, O Take

Take me rough, O Take, rub me rough

Let me go tough and rough

Rub me rough, O Take, wash my rage away

Rub me, rub me, rub me rough

To wash my rage away

Go down rough into the sea

Shoot the rising-sun in the eye

Smash no shrimps between whales

Smash the rising-sun in the East Sea

Sing, Dokdo is our land

You and I are one in the sea, O Take

Sing, Dokdo is our land, O Take

To wash my rage away

Wash my rage away

Is Dylan Thomas crying? I have tried to learn from him only in part (“Do not go gentle into that good night.").

The writer is a Korean engineer living in California. He can be reached at yunchung2@msn.com.

I agree with the dictionary definition – "mental clarity" and "sound judgment" are the proper meaning of "rational".

But I disagree with the next step you take. You posit that because Korean people answered that poll with "emotion, not reason", they acted irrationally.

It is perfectly possible to make a decision based on emotion with plenty of mental clarity and sound judgment. For example, right now I am considering asking my long time girlfriend to marry me. While there are a lot of different things I will take into this consideration, the most important basis for my decision will be based on my emotion: do I love her enough for that, or not? When I make my decision one way or the other, my decision would be based on emotion, but I still would have made it with sound judgment and mental clarity. (Hopefully!)

Similarly, the poll asked for people give their emotion toward different countries — which countries do you like or dislike? How could you answer that question without consulting your emotion?

They can, for example, put a stronger emphasis on a different set of facts while evaluating how they feel about different countries. Japan did wipe out Korea for 36 years — the feat that China and NK may have tried, but have not succeeded. That could weigh stronger on people's hearts.

Sure, your arguments about the recency, lack of apology, etc., all make sense. But all I am saying is that not buying into your argument does not make Korean people irrational. You can be perfectly rational and still dislike Japan more than any other country.

In fact, I think the responses to "which country should Korea emulate more?" were telling. That is a question that depends less on emotion, and the answer was Japan. I'd say there is a fine display of rational thought. Koreans recognize that, whether they like it or not, Japan is on a similar trajectory as Korea, and it would be Korea's benefit to emulate it.

Most blogs from Americans on Korea like your, USinkorea, Metropolitician, Marmot and so on, are emotional responses to voice their frustration on Korea, and your comments are subjective reaction to what you thinks is the Korean “Irrationality”. In that aspect, I don’t see difference from your “rationality” to Korean “irrationality”.

I can accept that Americans and the rest of the world bear different opinion from me and the Koreans, but can you do the same?

Have you ever noticed how intolerant you are on subjects that Korea does not follow American opinion? You are a grown man so you should know that people have different opinions, but if there is something about Korea that you don’t agree with, you just label it as irrationality. It doesn’t seems to be rational to me.

However…once the Koreans come to some sort of realtionship/situation with the North, then a possible future basing agreement, which is conducive to popular opinion, would be benefical to all involved.

Doesn't anyone REALLY listen to the Koreans? I never fooled myself into thinking the Koreans WANTED the US military on its soil. We are here because it is expedient and the US presence meets mutual goals. But to say the Korean people "want" us here is too strong.

In Korea, the US has gone through many phases of its relationship with the ROK — from its wobbly steps to democracy under the corrupt thumb of the Syngman Rhee (Yi Syng-man) government through the iron-fisted dictatorship of Park Chung-hee through Chun Doo-hwan and the democracy stage with its mature partner after the Miracle of the Han. However, the US remained and its image as an "occupier" remains. It will not go away until the US military leaves Korea. Sorry…it may hurt the US feelings, but that is just the way it is.

However, Koreans are also realistic. Even Kim Il-sung stated that the USFK should remain AFTER the Koreas reunified. All the leaders want the US to remain to be the stabilizer — the cement that holds Korea together until it can do it by themselves. The idea is that the Koreans want the US to stay — but only until they can do it themselves.

Thus the statement — Koreans do NOT want the US military to leave — YET!

Thus I see "Selective Blame" exhibited by these two countries…The Americans vice the Spanish in the Philippines case…and Japan vice China/N. korea in the S. Koreans case.

It would be interesting to hear if any other Asian races, or other races in general, exhibit such a displaced hate towards another country in proportion to time ruled over by a certain country, or by acts of violence, etc. exhibited.

without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment.

Opinions on Japan are made with emotion and not reason and that is how I interpret irrational to mean.

Despite past historical wrongs and the Dokdo issue having a strong relationship with Japan is in the national interest but is prevented from happening due to the deep hatred of Japan.

I have asked Koreans before why the hate Japan so much and the usual reasons of colonization, comfort women, no apologies, Dokdo, etc. are given. Thus I always reply yes those are valid reasons but both North Korea and China have more recently invaded South Korea then Japan. Both China and Japan have killed more South Koreans then the Japanese ever did during the colonial period. China is directly responsible for the current division of the country, Japan is not.

The North Koreans and Chinese have to this day never apologized for the aggression and division of the country, at least Japan has given half hearted apologies. Currently a systems of tens of thousands of Korean sex slaves is active in China where Japan's sexual slavery happened 60 years ago. And the list goes on and on.

There are plenty of reason on why North Korea and China should be hated more or at minimum just as much as Japan, but they are not. That brings up the question of why?

My opinion is that hatred of Japan promoted by the Korean media and politicians comes with no consequences. As we have seen over and over again hatred of China comes with consequences and thus why Koreans are reluctant to openly bash China as they do Japan. Hatred of NK is kept to minimum due to inter-Korean relations concerns as well as ethnic ties. Personally I find it hard to hate people in such a pathetic state as NK anyway. I can hate the regime though.

And yes Michael Korean polls are dubious and thus why I always leave a caveat when posting on them.

These polls are generally BS anyway because there's no side questions to understand what like and dislike means in this context.