1,510 words
Cathy Park Hong
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
New York: One World, 2020
Is it really wise to allow the immigration of people who find it so difficult and painful to assimilate into the American majority?
— Peter Brimelow
It would take a heart of stone to read the self-absorbed, neurotic words of Cathy Park Hong in her book Minor Feelings and not laugh. However, there is a deadly seriousness to this drivel. To sum it up, Cathy Park Hong represents the burden of Korea upon America. This particular burden is a sub-set of the greater non-white burden with a few unique factors which will be explored below.
Koreans were effectively barred from entry into the United States until the 1965 Immigration Act. Shortly after their arrival, they became seen as something like a model minority. That is to say, they were perceived as successful, intelligent, capable, and relatively crime-free. They experienced a great deal of white sympathy following the 1992 Rodney King Riots where they were specifically targeted by blacks. There was a sort of “Whites and Asians together” concept that existed in the decades following the riot. The concept was probably a cuckservative idea that was more related to the disappointment whites felt at the failure of “civil rights” rather than an actual combining of whites and Asians politically and culturally.
Han
Cathy Park Hong shows what I’ve observed through two tours in Korea with the military and growing up around military bases with their contingents of Korean camp followers. Korean culture is not very dynamic. The professionalism, intelligence, creativity, lawfulness, etc., is a mirage. Korean immigration to the US, of which Cathy Park Hong is a part, has been problematic from the get-go. I have always been professionally disappointed by Koreans outside of a classroom environment.
Cathy Park Hong’s family came to the United States after the 1965 Immigration Act disaster. Her father turned out to be highly successful selling life insurance. [1] He eventually purchased other business interests and moved his family from Koreatown in LA to the suburbs. However, Hong writes that most of her community was a hive of bankruptcies, interpersonal violence, failure-to-launch issues, and other troubles. Many Koreans left the United States following the Rodney King Riot. Hong calls her family life “cheerless.”
This high-drama at the private level matches some of what David Straub wrote about in his book Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea — a book about the sub-lethal Korean-American War of 2002. Straub went on to look at the later careers of the most vociferous anti-Americans during the conflict, and these people and their careers were not successful — one man ended up in jail for some sort of domestic drama. Roh Moo-Hyun, who used anti-American attitudes to win the 2002 presidential election, later committed suicide by jumping off a bridge to his death.
Cathy Park Hong describes many of these problems through a Korean concept called Han. Like other Korean concepts such as kibun, nunchi, and inhawa, han has no English translation. Hong describes han as, “. . .a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness. . .” which she blames on “. . .years of brutal colonialism, war, and the US-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed.” She goes on to add, “. . .to be Korean is to feel han.” [2]
I suspect that han doesn’t come from colonialism. It’s more likely a longstanding feeling Koreans have already had prior to their colonization. Han probably explains mass-shooter Cho Seung-Hui’s murderous neurosis. One can easily see that a culture where bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness comprise the normal emotional setting is not a society that can advance. With such a setting, there can be no geniuses or even disciples of geniuses — just passive-aggressive rage-quivering. It could be the cause of being colonized rather than the result of such. One can say the rage-quivering instead of progress of Han has consequences. When the big national test came against the Japanese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Japanese had Dreadnoughts; the Korean navy had a paddleboat.
Insanity, Envy, & Resentment
Cathy Park Hong is part and parcel of the non-white, female, hysterical, and mentally ill coalition that became increasingly empowered during Obama’s second term. The book starts with Hong’s description of her depression. Apparently, she and her good friends have mental issues. One of her friends even put lithium pills in Peeps candy to give to others.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s Confessions of a Reluctant Hater here
Resentment is interwoven through the book; resentment that Seoul is covered in dust from a natural phenomenon called “the Yellow Wind” (which she doesn’t seem to understand), and resentment that movies whose plot settings take place prior to 1965 don’t have more non-whites. She has resentment that her face is too Mongolian, too wide, with eyes too slanted, and her looks are too homely. Her resentment over her looks is everywhere in this book. Hong has much resentment towards a type of plastic surgery, developed by a US Army surgeon during the Korean War, whereby Oriental women can get the epicanthic fold removed from their eyes so they look prettier. Apparently, this surgery is very, very popular in South Korea. The envy and resentment over her looks are as pathetic and contemptible as it is striking.
Mediocrity as White Dispossession
There is nothing profound in this book. She identifies with Richard Pryor’s jokes but has no ideas of her own. She seems to have been inspired when one of her Oriental girlfriends cut a loud fart. Another Asian girlfriend wore garish clothes in Seoul, which was also somehow inspiring. Her poetry is drivel and has none of the force and cultural awareness of Kipling, Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Counter-Currents’ poets. She claims to be repelled by whites, but seeks to be around them as much as possible. She is utterly mediocre and yet she is a sitting professor.
The purpose of having people like Cathy Park Hong in academia is not that she says anything valuable, it’s that her existence keeps a white from that job. The crowns sit easier on the heads of the Hostile Elite when the poets and teachers are like Hong. As genius is unstoppable, such a person can’t permanently stop a new Kipling from arising of course, but she does help suppress such a thing in the short term. With her in a professorship, a white poet has to fight a bit more for recognition and it could be easier to just go unpublished and take the job as a bank manager.
Taking Our Own Side
There is a clash of two irreconcilable viewpoints between Koreans and Americans that needs to be explained also. Americans view their relationship with South Korea with some pride. After all, they defended South Korea from Communism at great cost over several generations. In doing so, South Korea became quite wealthy. American-free North Koreans really did starve during the “Arduous March” of the 1990s. South Korea is not an American colony. It’s a wealthy, subsidized land, more akin to Israel than British India.
From the South Korean perspective, the view is different. They rage about the fact that mid-grade American officers divided Korea at the end of World War II, and the fact that America dropped a great many bombs during the Korean War. Hong believes that “lives and resources were sucked” [3] from Asia by the Americans.
This view is a misreading of events. Americans decisively won a war that Japan started when Korea was already a prostrate colony; hence the unfortunate division. Americans haven’t dropped any bombs on Koreans since 1953, and Americans provided a system to generate wealth. It was Genghis Khan’s form of imperialism who “sucked lives and resources.” But anti-American resentment in South Korea and anti-white resentment among Koreans in the US is mainstream and unlikely to be challenged within the Korean community. Those from a conformist culture that views loud farts as rebellion and whose children cannot take it upon themselves to flee an obviously sinking ship such as the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster will never be able to unshackle themselves from their resentment. They could quiver with han forever.
America’s relationship with Korea is a burden. Since the end of the Cold War, we have an unnecessary enemy in North Korea and a resentful, sullen, hostile ally in South Korea. The contributions of Koreans to American culture is also suspect. There are no great inventions, cultural works, or breakthroughs, but there are prostitution rings, liquor stores, old people dumped on the Social Security System, and of course Cho Seung-Hui, Sarah Jeong, and Cathy Park Hong. One cannot reason with envy and resentment. Time to disconnect. Withdraw the troops from Korea, pass the tariff law, and bring on the travel ban.
Notes
[1] Making a pile of money through insurance is difficult to do. If one is white and has some sort of cultural ties to Connecticut, where insurance companies abound, all one’s friends and family are likely insured. If one is from a recently arrived non-white minority, one can easily carve out a niche and sell to an untapped group.
[2] Page 54.
[3] Page 195.
22 Comments
Whether Korean-Americans, or Korean-Koreans for that matter, are characterized by too much han, which would explain their supposed dysfunctionality, fact remains that Korea became a Japanese “protectorate” in 1905, and was annexed in 1910, while its culture was harshly oppressed by the Japanese and the Americans committed devastating war crimes in “liberating ” their country from the Communists. Thus the Koreans have real historical reasons for resentment apart from their supposed “han”.
Besides, are the Koreans really that increative? If I look at their art, it looks as good as that of Japan, same with their modern industrial productivity.
Koreans do not really feel “at home” in a White man’s country. Well, that is only natural for any racial minority.
‘This high-drama at the private level matches some of what David Straub wrote about in his book Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea — a book about the sub-lethal Korean-American War of 2002. Straub went on to look at the later careers of the most vociferous anti-Americans during the conflict, and these people and their careers were not successful — one man ended up in jail for some sort of domestic drama. Roh Moo-Hyun, who used anti-American attitudes to win the 2002 presidential election, later committed suicide by jumping off a bridge to his death.’
This is a website that rages against globalisation and champions nationalism. Could not these actions have been standard anti-Americanism from an anti-globalist persepctive?
‘Cathy Park Hong shows what I’ve observed through two tours in Korea with the military and growing up around military bases with their contingents of Korean camp followers. Korean culture is not very dynamic’
Korea had the best pottery makers for hundreds of years in east Asia (Japan famously used to kidnap them) and has a couple of thousand yeard old civilisation? Even during WW2 looting Korean cultural works was a high priority for the Japanese and others.
I know that you are drawing on your personal experience but isnt it a bit much to say that Korean culture is not dynamic?
‘Cathy Park Hong describes many of these problems through a Korean concept called Han. Like other Korean concepts such as kibun, nunchi, and inhawa, han has no English translation. Hong describes han as, “. . .a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness. . .” which she blames on “. . .years of brutal colonialism, war, and the US-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed.” She goes on to add, “. . .to be Korean is to feel han.” [2]
I suspect that han doesn’t come from colonialism. It’s more likely a longstanding feeling Koreans have already had prior to their colonization’
Point taken Asians are conformist and will indulge in resentment but it is my understanding that Korean resentment comes from other Asians countries preying upon Korean namely the Japanese.
‘the fact that America dropped a great many bombs during the Korean War’
America alone dropped more tons of bombs on the Korean peninsular during the Korean war than were dropped in the whole of the second world war. This was due mainly to improvements in aircraft engineering. This also does not count artillery shells. You make this point sound rather flippant. America would go on to do the same in Indochina later on.
‘There are no great inventions, cultural works, or breakthroughs’
At all?
‘The purpose of having people like Cathy Park Hong in academia is not that she says anything valuable, it’s that her existence keeps a white from that job’
Agree
‘One cannot reason with envy and resentment’
Strongly agree.
Cathy Park Hong sounds like a midwit (by academic standards) moron why judge all Korean Americans by the likes of her?
You seem to have personal experience with Asians and of east Asia. What is your opinion of Japanese Americans who were the most decorated American soldiers in WW2 and whom most see as a model minority?
I am not Korean or Japanese btw.
Excellent article. We definitely need to gtfo of Korea.
We need to learn that a military presence in a foreign country will ALWAYS be hated. It will ALWAYS be viewed as colonialism and force. It does not matter why that military presence is there; it does not even matter if the country’s leaders themselves ask for the military to be there.
US leaders, I guess, don’t understand this. But it is not too hard to imagine how creepy it would be if we had the Chinese military stationed in New Hampshire…for decades.
On this: ‘The contributions of Koreans to American culture is also suspect.”
This seems to be a weird point to make from a white-positive or nationalist standpoint. Gushing about contributions from outside immigrant groups is the multiculturalist’s thing. We would not prefer to have tons of outside groups making too many contributions, (even if they are genuinely nice) because that would erode our own cultural sovereignty.
This problem is happening in the East. And the weird thing is that it probably is not forced. I don’t think the US military forces Koreans to dress in Western Clothes (the Saudis don’t), East Asians just have been corrupted by us.
If we were to create European Nationalist political platforms, the first thing to do would be to extend a helping hand to other nations that have lost their spirit, such as Korea. This would prove that our nationalism is not a statement of war against people who are simply “different.” It would mean encouraging them to reclaim their traditions and buck Christianity (Christianity is a great source of anger for many foreign peoples). It would also mean creating new alliances that could help them be removed from the US’s sphere, without going rabidly anti-Western.
An enjoyable article. There’s something about the tone that is quite appealing, as if I were hearing steel whetted on stone.
I’ve heard it said that Koreans are the Jews of Asia. My studies of the region haven’t taken me that far, but there are parallels.
I always heard it was the Chinese.
The Chinese are labeled “the Jews of Asia”, specifically the southeastern Chinese because their merchant class spread around the world.
I’ve read a few times that Koreans are the Irish of Asia.
Koreans, Asians in general, are in attitude toward the paleface not different from any other subracial group the whites humiliate simply by existing.
You remember that fat gangnam style urbanide? Before his viral one hit gig he made songs about killing americans and raping their women. A fat urbanide plastic clown threatens the very people who spared him from the existance of a fieldhand on a collective farm.
Realize that everyone hates you for the same reason every loser hates the winner. We in our existance humiliate them because we are what they can not be down to our very looks and thats why they spend fortunes on plastic surgery.
The whole argument about non-whites feeling inferior is not solid.
It is a moralizing rhetorical tactic, used by many in our spaces.
But here at counter-currents we have higher standards of truth, and we make each other be honest.
Koreans hate the USA for the military presence in Korea and for intervening in the Korean war. They might even blame the USA for dividing their nation.
The same story goes for virtually all non-white groups; they all have a legitimate grievance.
“The whole argument about non-whites feeling inferior is not solid.”
Not my experience of living amongst them – being forced to live amongst them , I can add.
It depends on which non-Whites as they all have different reasons.
I think Asian men feel inferior because they’re invisible to women, while Asian women probably don’t feel inferior overall. Asians have more trouble dealing with their unforgiving, insect-like parents locking them in a pressure cooker to succeed than they do with White racism. Asians complaining about racism in general is nothing more than jumping on the bandwagon and it’s bizarre that any Right leaning Whites GAF.
The model minority is always going to be overlooked, so they might as well stick to their normal script and not try to stand out.
I hear this boring line repeated frequently. Few people hold legitimate greivances for age old problems.
What causes these inflamed reactions are people seeking to inflame them. When people are unhappy or discontent or bored they will apply their unhapiness to whatever gives them an outlet. And if a certain group wants to create a conflict and rile them up to anger . . . it can be done with anyone. . . .
Be it Japan and their evils of WWII or America etc. Korean society is highly conformist and highly competitive and as the world is being globalized they are met with economic and social issues in which they need to be upset about.
The perfect outlet are white scapegoats or Japanese Imperialism etc.
I had ancestors in Pearl Harbor . . . I’m not enraged at Japan. Medieval Muslim conquest? I simply want Arabs out of America and Europe because they do not belong there not because of historical grievances.
If I was a poor Arab in a dead culture and society . . . what more would I need than a scapegoat to inspire me?
A common enemy unites people and creates a fighting spirit.
What else is anger about military “occupation” else than an anger about being powerless against it? If they would want the americans to go they would do it like the Philippines and ask them to go. And in reaction you had protesters holding signs “Yankee go home and take me with you”. Many korean nationalists dream about reunification with the north because they think that gives them access to the norths nuclear bomb and then they will tell whitey whats up. These people don’t care about “occupation” or suppression or any of that, they are angry that whatever they do is dwarfed out compared to the bignose paleface who sees your ancient culture and customs and shruggs its shoulders and says “ey you know that poor people in murica are fat”.
It is an inferiority complex and i’am so very tired of it and their passiv-aggressiv copeing.
Korea strikes me as an uneasy halfway house between China and Japan. The food (and pottery) are excellent, the people seem presentable and industrious, but the spark of genius that makes Japanese culture and history so complex and fascinating is somehow missing.
There is little classic Korean literature worth reading: there could be no Korean equivalent of Musashi. Until the Japanese conquest they were a kingdom of Confucian scholars with few ideas of their own: little wonder that they have embraced Western religions so readily.
As for the present trend of Korean-Americans ‘calling out’ the ‘racism’ of their white fellow-countrymen and yet embracing the baseness of ‘hip-hop’ culture — well that will only drag them down.
After reading the comments and opinions on Asian ethnic groups I’d like to playfully toss in the idea that the Japanese are the Germans of Asia.
Not surprised they were allies!
Highly intelligent, very racially/ethnically aware, group conformist and honorable cultures, superiority complexes, an eye for beauty, and often authoritarian with a knack for engineering.
Also modern Germany and Japan have INCREDIBLY degenerate and growing subcultures – perhaps an unfocused redirection of racial and national pride?
This is a brilliant and greatly insightful essay sprinkled with pertinent and revealing tidbits of knowledge and facts to form an overall framework of rational and persuasive argument dissecting the collective Korean national traits and mentality. The author’s astute and penetrating understanding of the Korean mindset and its envy-resentment complex against the White West is truly admirable and commendable. As a long time Korean affairs observer, I would like to add a few more points and elaborations from my humble knowledge and perspectives on the topic of Korean mentality, followed by a discussion of its frenzied, unashamedly mendacious, and rabidly irrational, “han”-filled perception of Japan and the truths of Korean-Japanese relationship in modern history.
Before giving much deserved praises and further corroborations to the author’s main argument, I would like to humbly point out a single aspect in the article that I honestly and objectively disagree. The author remarked: “Americans decisively won a war that Japan started when Korea was already a prostrate colony; hence the unfortunate division.”
There are two viewpoints in this sentence that are simply not historically true. First, Japan did not start the war in a genuine and voluntary sense, albeit arguably so in a technical sense i.e., the Pearl Harbor attack. I have made many observations in this regard in my past essays published here on CC, the latest being my counter-review of the movie Midway, here:
https://counter-currents.com/2020/01/midway-a-different-perspective/#more-115389
Second, the “unfortunate division” of Korea into the Communist North and Capitalist South was a result of ideological and geopolitical power struggle between US and Soviet Union at the end of WWII, enabled to a large extent by the pandering and conceding to the Communist Russia of the FDR regime which was riddled with high-ranking, treasonous, and sinisterly maneuvering Soviet spies and pro-communist elements. It has nothing to do of Korea being a “prostrate colony” under the rule of Japan until 1945, and even less to do with “Americans decisively won a war against Japan”, which, in a logical thinking, would only have made the scenario of division less likely had the victory of US been really that “decisive”. Hence this very statement of the author is unfortunately neither historically accurate nor logically tenable.
Now back to the overriding merits and strengths of this great article. I highly agree with the author’s precise, poignant, and piercing examination of the “han” complex of the Korean mentality. “Han” (恨) is characterized as a combination of bitterness, wistfulness, shame, melancholy, and vengefulness, together with envy and resentment, as the author aptly remarked, to which I shall add rancorousness, spitefulness, willful ungratefulness, and an alternate display of self-aggrandizement and self-pity. It is truly part and parcel of the Korean national mentality and an intrinsic and fundamental factor of the Korean national traits. It dates back to feudal times when the commoners held an intense feeling of “han” against the class of privileged officialdom called “Yangban”, continues to demonstrate itself on Korean masses against the Japanese during the half-a-century Japanese rule in modern history, and later manifests itself in their national sentiment toward US, despite the fact that both Japan and US had done a lot to promote Korean modernization and social development and uplift their people’s general living standards.
“Han” is embodied both by the Korean complex of (blind and unfounded) superiority over Japan in a sense of considering itself culturally superior to Japan and a hyper-awareness of engaging in a cutthroat binational competition to overtake Japan and by an acute sense of inferiority to the Japanese and the White West as demonstrated by both explicit and implicit signs of imitating Japan and the West technologically and betraying a constant lack of confidence in their physical especially facial Mongolian features, which are far more pronounced than Chinese, let alone Japanese who has collectively and comparatively the most quasi-Caucasian facial features in the three East Asian peoples. This particular streak of self-pity on its own wide flat faces and slanted eyes with single-edged eyelids speak volumes about why South Korea is the country in Asia, if not in the entire world, where facelift plastic surgery is most popular and widely practiced by males and females alike and the cosmetic industry the most developed and thriving, as well as the news report that there are even some students in South Korea who choose to undergo a weird type of surgery to have their tongues trimmed in order to speak English like White Westerners, which I found both shocking and pathetic.
Another prominent Korean national trait that goes hand in hand with “han” is called “火病” (Fiery Disposition Disease), and it is easy to infer from the words that it indicates that Koreans have a proclivity to fly into high dudgeon, go ballistic and go berserk, often losing self-control or self-restraint, as a result of “han” both toward its own people and toward foreign countries and foreign nationals. This explains the case of the mentally twisted mass shooter Cho Seung-Hui as well as the facts that South Korea has the highest violent sexual assault rate among developed countries and ethnic Koreans in Japan are disproportionately overrepresented as perpetrators of sexual assault crimes. Furthermore, when it comes to Korean-Japanese relationship, it is not unusual that on the anti-Japanese demonstrations in Korea, the Korean protestors have not just displayed conventional scenes such as burning Japanese national flag, but resorted to other acts that could only be described as gruesome, grotesque, and disgusting, such as publicly cutting off their own fingers in a vehement outburst of senseless rage and wrenching off the head of a living Japanese green pheasant and drinking the blood from its headless torso to demonstrate their morbid and virulent hatred of Japan. All these instances show how deeply and inextricably possessed Koreans are by their inherent “恨” and “火病”.
(To be continued)
Some of author’s gem arguments in this great article completely comport and resonate with my observation and perception of Koreans. Such as:
“I have always been professionally disappointed by Koreans outside of a classroom environment.”
I have the same impression.
“I suspect that han doesn’t come from colonialism. It’s more likely a longstanding feeling Koreans have already had prior to their colonization.”
The suspicion is point-on. As I have explained in my early statements, “han” dates back to ancient times long before the Japanese annexation, to the general resentment and animosity of the common people toward the inept ruling class of nobility-officialdom, and perhaps also toward the Chinese empire that had remained an overlord of Korea for centuries, despite the latter’s ostensible obedience. To note, Korea had been a vassal state to both the Ming Dynasty and the subsequent Qing Dynasty of China from early 14th to the end of 19th century.
“With such a setting, there can be no geniuses or even disciples of geniuses — just passive-aggressive rage-quivering. It could be the cause of being colonized rather than the result of such. One can say the rage-quivering instead of progress of Han has consequences.”
This is a remarkably truthful and gimlet-eyed observation. Can’t agree more. I used to wonder why South Korean has never produced a single Nobel prize winner of its own in natural sciences, with its status of an arguably developed country of wealth, prosperity, and technological prowess, now it seems all obvious and reasonable that their “han” mentality and culture is the culprit, which made the soil infertile and unsuitable for emergence of real geniuses and indeed further toxified and consolidated the “han”-obsessed national mentality. As an anecdotal side note, the Korean envy and resentment of Japan which has garnered a dozen of Nobel science prize winners in the last two decades have gone to such an extreme that they even claimed a Japanese scientist as their first Korean Noble prize winner. Upon a closer look, one finds out that the said scientist had a Norwegian father and a Japanese mother and merely had lived in Korean peninsula during the Japanese rule. The audacity and brazenness of Koreans are beyond ridiculous and appalling.
“Those from a conformist culture that views loud farts as rebellion and whose children cannot take it upon themselves to flee an obviously sinking ship such as the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster will never be able to unshackle themselves from their resentment. They could quiver with han forever.”
This statement is impeccably and indisputably true, and quite profound. In introspection, the Japanese culture is also conformist on par with the Korean, or perhaps slightly less so. But free of the cursed “han” mentality of Koreans, and equipped with many other virtues unpossessed by Koreans, Japan stands out as the single non-White nation that is closest to White civilization in social trust, safety and civility, high culture, and scientific and technological advancements.
“America’s relationship with Korea is a burden. Since the end of the Cold War, we have an unnecessary enemy in North Korea and a resentful, sullen, hostile ally in South Korea. The contributions of Koreans to American culture is also suspect. There are no great inventions, cultural works, or breakthroughs, but there are prostitution rings, liquor stores, old people dumped on the Social Security System…”
Again, incisively, trenchantly, factually, and rightfully argued by the author, and wholeheartedly agreed by this humble commenter.
“which she blames on “. . .years of brutal colonialism, war, and the US-supported dictatorships that have never been politically redressed.”
The so-called US-supported political dictatorships are a typical leftist liberal specious and exaggerated statement in South Korean society. Their existence was sort of a necessity under the background of heightened North-South Korean confrontation and tension, and they did, together Japanese monetary and technological aids, help South Korea take off economically and catapult it to its quasi-developed status today. And it has already been politically redressed, if not actually overdone, which led to the ostensible democracy of today’s South Korea and also gave rise to its fervent and incessant anti-American sentiment. As to the so-claimed “brutal colonialism (under Japanese rule)”, I have detailed many relevant historical facts in my past comments to clarify the differences between Koreans and Japanese, and debunk the former’s dishonesty shaped by their warped mindset of “han”, and I will restate some of them in the following paragraphs.
(To be continued)
1) The Japanese male chromosome is quite rare and unique in Asia. Nearly half of the Japanese male population (even higher among Okinawans and the Ainu minority in Northeast) possesses a Type D of YAP+ genetic factor that is unseen in Koreans and Chinese and only exist in Tibetans and Andaman Islands anywhere else in Asia; 2) The Japanese people shares some significant qualities and dispositions with the White race, such as inward-looking and introspection, curiosity about and love and care for the nature, honesty, diligence, courtesy, cleanness, tolerance, certain degree of inventiveness and altruism, which are seldom observed in Koreans and Chinese past and present; 3) These traits and calibers have laid the foundation for greatness and orderliness of the Japanese nation and its superior culture, similar and second only to the White race in world history, while at the same time made Japan gullible and susceptible to the intrusion and erosion of the deleterious and pathological post-modern values such as multiculturalism, diversity, and ethno-masochism and also vulnerable to the collectively inferior yet more ruthless, amoral, unscrupulous, and unconscionable Korea and China and their insatiable appetite for extortion and exploitation in the post-war era. In this very sense, it is not difficult for an informed and discerning person to discover that the present Japanese vis-à-vis liberal values and Japanese vis-à-vis Koreans and Chinese bear a striking resemblance to today’s Whites vis-à-vis liberal values and Whites vis-à-vis Jews and Blacks/Browns respectively.
I hesitated to use such explicit or even stark words, but the truth is that Koreans are a people possessed by a set of inherent and collective national characteristics that can be objectively described as an intense egotism and infinite vanity, habitual mendacity, chauvinism, hubris, and self-aggrandizement devoid of objective self-understanding, eternal ingratitude of the most self-righteous and self-serving kind that often results in requiting generosity with enmity, and an ingrained and indelible proclivity to falsify, whitewash or distort history to seek status of both victor and victimhood, which are similar to and even more pronounced and extreme than the Chinese and have been demonstrated by innumerable facts in the history. I recall a past reader who once posted a comment talking about the fierce nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea with a link to a Korean film depicting a famous sea battle during the Japanese-Korean/Chinese War of 1592 to 1593 and 1597 to 1598. Yet in spite of the graphic and riveting battle scenes in the film full of self-promoting fanfare, in real history the Korean-Chinese navy lost the very battle to the Japanese navy and sustained much larger losses despite they had started the fight by launching a surprise attack on the Japanese side that was in the middle of a retreat according to a previously reached ceasefire agreement between the two warring camps following the death of the Japanese ruler Hideyoshi Toyotomi and the subsequent Japanese decision to pull out.
As a side note, the Japanese-Korean/Chinese War of late 16th century is allegedly the largest international war of the 16th century, pitting 150,000 Japanese and more than 300,000 Korean-Chinese allied troops against each other. The final result was a draw but Japan enjoyed clear combat advantages and won most battles on both land and sea with its battled-forged military prowess and a lethal combination of samurai katana and musket (Japan was allegedly the largest musket owning country in the world at that time through importation and imitation, 50 years after musket was brought into Japan by Portuguese). Sweeping across the Korean peninsula like a hot knife cutting through butter, the Japanese army was utterly unstoppable in the early phases of the war, as it sacked Seoul and Pyongyang within short time, captured several Korean princes and marched right to the Korean-Chinese border. Only when Japan started to face acute logistic problems and resource shortages later, was the combined weight of Korean-Chinese alliance able to fight Japan to a draw while taking much larger losses in men and materials. There are a lot other anti-Japanese war movies made by South Korea out there with similar themes and style and a time frame ranging from ancient to modern that invariably encapsulate and reflect the typical and pathetic national traits of Koreans I have laid out in the previous paragraph.
It is not the least a hyperbole to claim that Korea is nothing without Japan and South Korea could have never reached its current form absent Japan’s all-round aid and assistance, if one knows the historical truths that while Japan had strived sedulously to proactively emulate the West in achieving modernization and self-empowerment, Korea was spoon-fed reluctantly ideas and skills to modernize and enlightened forcibly by Japan with tough love, which is something different from and much more salutary and significant in magnitude and effect than what the West did to the non-White nations of its former colonies such as British India.
(to be continued)
20 years into Japan’s Meiji Restoration and fruitful, sweeping reforms, at the end of the 19th century, according to the written records of Western travelers and missionaries, dilapidated and dismal streets of Seoul were teeming with human excrement and urine, with emaciated female civilians in rags standing at corners breast-feeding their babies in broad daylight with invariably wooden, expressionless faces. It was only under Japan’s rule after the annexation that Korea started to develop and be civilized with enormous investments in industry, agriculture, education, and public utilities from the Japanese government. Infrastructure and transportations were constructed, modern factories erected, mandatory education from elementary schools to universities with science labs built, and modern hospitals set up to treat patients and inoculate children with Western medicines which greatly increased the life expectancy of Koreans (from 24 in 1910 to 42 in 1945) and engendered a population boom (Korean population almost doubled from 13 million in 1910 to 25.5 million in 1942). The Japanese government in Korea also banned long existing Korean customs of child prostitution and child trafficking, taught Koreans public hygiene, and gave names to Korean women who had been treated as livestock thus far. Also, under Japanese rule the first modern Korean language dictionary was compiled, and the previously rampant illiteracy was dramatically reduced (the literacy rate of Koreans elevated from 10% in 1910 to 65% in 1936).
During the Japanese rule, in a society with markedly improved stability, prosperity, and employment opportunities, countless ordinary Koreans competed with each other to voluntarily change their names and adopt Japanese style names despite it was not mandatory. Contrary to the anti-Japanese claims of many Koreans today, the name-changing practice was never stipulated or required by law but was based on a purely voluntary basis, and the widespread and fake Korean assertion of being forced to change their names as a humiliation is another sign of their collective national mentality of fearing the strong (Japan as their powerful ruler then) and bullying the weak (Japan as a pacifist nation now).
Furthermore, when Japan and South Korea established their post-war diplomatic relationship in 1965, under the demand of the latter and as a gesture of (misplaced) repentance and apology for its past colonial rule over Korea, Japan made a one-time compensation totaling $500 million to South Korea, including $300 million of grand aid and $200 million of paid assistance (low-interest loans), together with large amounts of technical assistance and transfers. This was a disproportionately gigantic compensation in the sense that South Korea’s GDP and government budget in 1965 were $3.1 billion and 350 million respectively. Based on this, both sides agreed that the historical issues between Korea and Japan hereupon came to a “complete and final solution”. Of course, words like “faith”, “trust” and “contract spirit” do not exist in the post-1945 Korean dictionaries, and for Koreans, “complete and final” means “whatever and however I say”, as they have been incessantly and interminably raking up the past with Japan and making endless denunciations and demands for new apologies and benefits to this day.
It is also worth noting that by 1990s, more than 80% of all Korean elites from high ranking government officials such as President, ministers, Parliament members to military generals and large corporate heads had graduated from the higher education system established in the era of the Japanese rule. To sum up, it is patently clear that South Korea has reached its current status of development largely due to the unreserved and strenuous support from Japan in the last 100 years, and it is perhaps an understatement to say so. However, together with another major beneficiary of continuous and tremendous Japanese capital and technological support from 1980s to 2010s i.e. China, an unholy anti-Japanese alliance of the two rancorous and ungrateful nations has been formed to distort history and vilify and demonize Japan on phony or dubious historical grievances with sheer dishonesty and indignity.
Korea and China are deeply aware that if they ever fail to maintain their grip of “moral high ground” and keep Japan marinated in self-guilt, once the idea of healthy nationalism starts to take root and grow in the Japanese mind, they will have little chance against Japan. That’s why they have spared no effort to pin Japan down with historical burdens of false guilt and shame, which is eerily similar to the toxic mind control imposed by Jewish diaspora on the White people of the West. Apart from their joint effort to browbeat Japan at every turn, the two are also clownishly competing with each other for the title of “No.1 Victim” of “Japanese imperialist aggression”. This mafia mentality and practice of blackmailing Japan for ever more apologies to satisfy their ego and extra perks to fill their greed also smack of the shakedown of White nations by Jews and blacks in the post-war western societies, both epitomizing the inferior nature of mind of a fundamentally incompatible people marred by irredeemable and irremediable flaws.
(The end)
@Comtaose I always appreciate seeing your knowledgeable and enlightening comments on East Asia. I find that most of what the west admires in East Asia is Japanese. Unfortunately, many westerners do not differentiate well between Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese. They are distinct groups and much of the achievement of “East Asians” is really Japanese achievement.
East Asians have an incredible inferiority complex when faced by any criticism by white European people, and that they can never be “us” really.
I don’t think Africans really care as they don’t want to be part of “white” culture, but the Asian seeks to be of the same status with “Europeans”.