Japanese Embassy Ambushes Korean Truck Driver

Japan's Seoul Embassy Flag

In an increasing sign of Japanese militarism, the Japanese embassy ambushed a Korean truck driver yesterday in broad daylight on the streets of Seoul.

Tensions have been mounting between the increasingly belligerent Japanese and the kind and peaceful people of Korea, over a statue that was installed in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul last December to enhance the cultural environment of the area. The beautiful and sensitive artwork commemorates the shocking plight of Korean women who were brutally forced into sexual slavery during Japan's colonial rape of Korea (~1910-1945). Incredibly the embassy denied it was involved in this exploitation of Korean women, claiming it was only built in 1976.

Last month, Japanese anger boiled over yet again and a 47 year-old Japanese man drove a wooden stake into the bronze statue with a message attached to it which read "Dokdo is Japanese territory", a ridiculous territorial claim in line with those by Japan's extreme rightists. Fortunately there are no extreme rightists in Korea, where everyone knows Dokdo is Korean territory. The Japanese extremist is now selling similar stakes on the Korean Internet.

The failure of Korea to declare war on Japan in response to the incident is believed to have emboldened the Japanese embassy to escalate Tokyo's campaign, leading to it sneaking up on the Korean truck and ramming it from behind. The helpless old man driving the truck, who sustained a serious scratch in the attack above his right eye, told police who had rushed to his aid "If I die, please cremate me and spread my ashes in the waters off Dokdo." However, doctors believe they can save him.

There is speculation that the unprovoked assault was the first act in a premeditated killing spree aimed the genocidal murder of as many Korean motorists as possible before declaring the nearby roads to be Japanese territory. After the first attack, police and military personnel disrupted the planned Japanese campaign, chasing the Japanese embassy through Seoul's congested streets, but it got away. It is now being hunted on charges of violating the Act on Punishment of Violence Acts etc., the Act on Driving Without Insurance, and the Act on Being Japanese in a Public Place Without a License. Officials say diplomatic immunity will not apply in the case because South Korea does not have particularly diplomatic relations with Japan.

Police have warned the public that the Japanese embassy should be considered dangerous and should not be approached. Coastal areas are now being watched in case it makes an attempt to swim back to the Japanese fatherland, but there are fears the embassy may never be caught. In August last year, the TechnoMart building in Seoul escaped, running a red light and alarming motorists, but it quickly became wedged in a narrow alleyway. The failure to capture the Japanese embassy quickly may mean it has now adopted a disguise, and police have asked Seoul residents to be on the lookout for any buildings acting suspiciously.

With its old embassy on the run, the Japanese government has already - shamelessly - requested permission to build a new and bigger embassy building to replace it, no doubt with the aim of causing more damage next time they launch an unprovoked attack on Seoul's fearful drivers.

Korean government officials believe the new building, which is planned to be more than three times larger in floor area than the old one - with six stories above ground and more made-up Japanese lies below it - is part of a plan by Japan's increasingly militarized government to control more of Seoul's airspace as a prelude to invasion by Japanese ground forces.

Related Links
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Man rams truck into Japanese Embassy
Seoul says no to new Japanese embassy
Statue of 'comfort woman' erected outside Japanese Embassy in Seoul
Tokyo spearheads protests over monuments: source
Japanese right-wing extremist sells stakes claiming Dokdo
In Search of Japan's Feng-Shui Stakes
Violation of the Act on the Punishment of Violent Acts, etc.
[Editorial] Resist Japan’s attempts to arm itself
Japan Begins 'Hate Korea Year 2011'
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Betrayal! Infamy! Japan Betrays Korea Over Dokdo
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Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.

[Opinion] Is Korea Too Culturally Full to Accommodate Other Cultures?

By Professor Kim (53), Department of Politics and Public Administration, Korea International University

Korean culture is sweeping the world because it has already filled Korea to bursting point. How can Korea accommodate other cultures?

We are living in an era of globalization and it is right, at first glance, that Korea should be open-minded about the deluge of foreigners flooding our country. It's not that Korea can not be a 'multicultural' society in principle, but what if there is just no room in the spa?

If a sauna is full, you wouldn't let more people in because it would be dangerous - especially if they had darker skins than Koreans that made them difficult to see in all that steam. So if Korea is like a spa - and our country is well-known around the world as the relaxing Land of the Morning Calm - why do we keep letting more foreigners in and creating problems for them? Perhaps we should recognize that we are being selfish and this is unfair to these temporary foreign 'guests'.

So while we have been conditioned to accept the vague term 'multicultural' as positive, it is well known from biology that different cultures often attack one another. So perhaps a better term for 'multiculturalism' would be multiethnic social conflict, and we should be asking if we want to create a multiethnic social conflict society?

One should look at the unfortunate experience of lesser nations around the world. Decades ago countries such as the United States, England, Germany and France brought in foreign workers and created multiethnic social conflict. Look at where these so-called nations are now - with nobody there racially identifying with their countries any more. Not even the French want to be French these days, although because they are French they will never admit it.

Even this foreign multiculturalism, whose fallout zone initially seems a safe distance from Korea, holds great dangers for our country, because instead of staying in their own countries people from around the world are spending all their time watching K-pop and dreaming of coming to Korea even though no group ever sang a song called "We love foreigners, please come to our country and take our future girlfriends and daughters."

'Multiculturalism' though is rightly fiercely attacked by netizens on the Internet, who have seen this great Korean invention gradually swamped by foreigners as the technology has been badly copied in other countries. Of course, it is unfortunate that some people should launch attacks on foreigners and we should not condone such 'race hate' if that's what it is. But is it really accurate to use the overly-aggressive terminology of 'race hate', or is it better to more accurately describe it as 'race awareness'?

Liberals would have us believe that there is is something intrinsically wrong with race awareness, but surely it is ridiculous for a person not to be aware of their race. What do these liberals suggest? That we stop looking at ourselves in mirrors?

It is not the fault of the Korean people that this country has become too culturally full, and we should not be ashamed of it - but instead proud of our cultural exceptionalism in the world. We should also be thankful though that so many other countries are culturally empty enough to accommodate the overflow of Korean culture or 'hallyu' as we make them call it. The hallyu process must be allowed to continue as planned but we must also protect ourselves from the cultural backwash of foreigners listening to K-pop, watching K-dramas and eating K-food and thinking that it means they can just come here uninvited, which is really quite rude of them.

Every day, helpless Korean men in the countryside are being forced into marrying foreign brides from poorer countries in Asia so that their money can be stolen and their hearts broken. Foreign workers are coming here and breaking into dirty and dangerous factories and doing jobs nobody asked them to do even though many owners try not to pay them. Meanwhile this country has to bother itself with so-called-human rights laws to protect these foreigners when clearly it is Korean people who need protecting from an invasion.

If foreigners and foreign cultures come to Korea even though they were never invited, what aspects of Korean culture will need to be thrown out into the street like trash to accommodate them? K-pop? Your children's respect for you? Your medical treatment? Your grandmother?

We have already seen the damage done by the English Wave in Korea and the terrible tsunami wave in Japan last year. Waves are dangerous, and a number of people in Korea have been killed by flooding in recent years. Of course, no-one is blaming these foreigners for the floods; but this current lack of evidence highlights the way in which the National Police Agency has found its investigative resources and ability to function stretched in recent years as the number of foreigners has multiplied.

It seems - given current trends - that the breakdown of law and order in Korea is inevitable unless the cancerous idea of a multicultural society is reasonably questioned. We need to be wise enough to implement a balanced foreign policy that minimizes social conflict by keeping these dangerous foreigners out.

Korea does not have to become a multicultural, multiethnic social conflict society, and the policy choices being made which move us closer to disaster by the day are not inevitable.

Disclaimer: The views presented in this column are the writer's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Dokdo Times, although they do because otherwise we wouldn't print them.

Related Links
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Naturalized Korean decries refusal of entry to sauna
Exceptionalism

Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.

Gram of Pot Now as Cheap as a Gram of English

Number of Foreigners High

The recent arrest of an American native English teacher for allegedly distributing marijuana to a circle of other foreign criminals has revealed that shockingly a gram of pot is apparently now as inexpensive as a gram of English in Korea.

The 31 year-old male, identified only as 'J' because he can't remember the rest of his name, sold 90 grams of smuggled marijuana, charging 100,000 won ($87.90) to 150,000 won ($131.55) per gram to other foreigners, mostly at fifth column meetings. This compares to a typical national average hagwon fee of 350,000 won ($263.10) per month, but whereas Californian marijuana averages 15% purity, English lessons are generally 0.01% pure, with the remainder of the classes being filler material and bulking agents, meaning that a gram of usable English on the 'white market' is approximately also 100,000 won.

A police spokesman said that they had discovered enough pot to get 270 people high, and their investigation would continue once all his colleagues had recovered.

A school official interviewed by KBS said they were shocked by the revelation that one of their teachers – called 'M' - habitually took drugs supplied by 'J' - "He did a good job, I totally did not expect this." they told reporters.

Foreigners have argued in the past that taking drugs helps them make the cultural adjustment to teaching English in Korea, but the courts have ruled that while sexually assaulting students under the influence of alcohol is a mitigating circumstance, teaching them while under the influence of drugs should be subject to prison terms. Efforts to replace foreign teachers with robots have so far failed.

The case - which is far from isolated - highlights the continued problem of foreigners in Korea. In March another native English instructor working at a nationally well-known hagwon which maybe your children attend was arrested for smoking marijuana by prosecutors. The prosecutors noticed the crime in progress when they began to suddenly question why they were always persecuting people and generally being such 'downers'.

Evidence suggests booked drug users easily evade drug tests by submitting urine samples provided by one of the two native English teachers in Korea who do not take drugs. At least one of the teachers providing these samples is believed to be earning millions of won from the activity every week, but police can do nothing because selling urine is not illegal in Korea due to laws originally aimed at protecting the local beer industry.

Under South Korean law - which bans the use of drugs - marijuana users can be sentenced to a maximum of five years in jail or fined up to 50 million won ($43,850) - the same punishment as those found guilty of failing to drink until they vomit on a night out. Drug usage in Korea and the number of foreigners in Korea have both increased in recent years proving a clear link between the two problems.

Related Links
English teachers nabbed for selling, using pot
Police bust American teacher with pot, ecstasy
Drug testing for foreign teachers to include hair or random testing?
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Society Too Tolerant of Alcohol Consumption
Fight against sex crimes at schools intensifying
Robot Teachers Accused of Sex Assaults, Taking Drugs
Foreigner Meetings Point to Massive Conspiracy
The Shocking Reality About Relationships With Foreigners
The Shocking Reality About Foreign Hagwon Recruiters
Rabies Outbreak Worsens Near Seoul
Illegal drug use rises steeply
Foreign residents top 1.4 million

Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.