To help raise awareness, Korean parents of Bergen County schools in New Jersey held an all-day protest at a local elementary school yesterday to properly educate non-Korean blooded people, who are known as 'strangers', about Korean culture. "We're not trying to pressure Americans to label the Seollal holiday as Seollal" said one protest leader, "we're just trying to set the record straight that one of Korea's biggest holidays of the year is Korean, not Chinese".
Another protest is planned for New York next week, during which Korean university students plan to properly inform strangers of the Korean origin and meaning of the holiday, which was invented by Korea 5,000 years ago and later stolen and renamed by the Chinese, who lacked a holiday of their own. "Chinese cultural sleeper cells in America known as 'Chinatowns' have been very successful at perpetuating the lie that Seollal is actually called Chinese New Year, even though Seollal is our territory" said 58-year-old Professor Kim from Korea International University’s Department of Anti-Chinese Studies.
Seollal was historically celebrated by a number of different countries in Asia, but in 1873 Japan – the only Asian country aside from China generally known about in America at the time - adopted the Gregorian calendar, making it easier for the Chinese to falsely claim the holiday was theirs despite its Korean origins. In recent years Seollal protests have been launched in several American cities, but the three big American media chaebols – which ultimately control all printed and broadcast media within the military regime, have so far refused to properly call Seollal by its real name.
Many strangers in America say that Beijing's 'Greater China Co-Prosperity Sphere Plan' is weakening Korea's claim on the naming rights for the holiday. Under the plan, North Korea has already been co-opted into becoming a Chinese client state, and Seoul's increasing reluctance to criticize China shows it is gradually losing its independence from China as well – makes the renaming of 'Chinese New Year' to Seollal pointless in America, since before long Beijing will demand Seollal be called 'Chinese New Year' in South Korea as well anyway. The left-wing Hankyoreh newspaper claims that President Lee Myung-bak is likely to give in to the China's demand to rename Seollal when it is made.
Despite this, further Seollal protests are planned in America over the next several days.
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