Children's drawings in the subway!, How cute.

For every person that reads this thread, no less than five people see the pictures in hotlinks. I went through about 120GB in traffic yesterday on this subject alone. I built the server to handle anything, and so far it has performed remarkably in my observations. I have a spare drive in the server set to go in case I have to load-balance everything to make it faster.

While I was amused by the pictures, I feel what the education ministry has organized here is entirely wrong. Teaching children to hate is very much uncool, and if the people who organized the project lost their jobs I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.

What I have found interesting is how people are reacting (mostly through the translation feature of the Google taskbar) in other forums. Most of the Japanese posts appear to express concern that the Korean government did such a stunt especially during the "year of friendship" Korea and Japan are suppose to be having. A few Japanese posters have voiced opposition to allowing Korean cultural imports, but they are a minority. On the Korean side, few have expressed sorrow and it seems that most find the pictures quite funny or that Japan deserves it because they want to believe Japan is the evil empire. Except for one person who claimed that I drew the pictures myself.

I'll return to the station this Friday to take some more pictures. The drawings were set up in a couple locations around the station and probably came close to a thousand pictures.

"It is desired. The fuel is supplied to quick-tempered national principle, thousand sketches from the child of the small attending school age where international incident is begun."

I love automatic translators.

This post has been edited by Patrick Lee on Jun 15 2005, 05:32 PM

In other words, six times the total listed on the board, or a little over 370,000 people in two days. If it stays this popular for a little while, the word of the Gord could reach over 1,000,000 people in just 5 to 6 days!

And I thought the Xanga incident was a lot of people.

On another note, can you provide links to the sites that are generating these links Gord, or are they still coming up as blanks on your referral logs?

hi, everyone. nice to meet you.
Gord, I'm sorry, I'm not a pretty japanese girl friend but just another japanese guy.

thanks, Lyrt. of course, I got it. I know children in korea are innocence personified. and so I feel just a bit disappointed.
as far as I know, many japanese internet users seem to read this topic and these pics cynically with cold eyes. maybe they dont feel their hearts broken any more. cuz having already been used to anti-Japanese sentiments and behaviors from korea. it's nearly late. that's all.

Well, a search on Altavista turned up four relevant linkt. One to this thread, one to the first post of this thread, and two on Japanese sites. But these are just copies of this page with no other pages - from here or elsewhere - on either of the sites. While they are responsible for some (all?) of the hotlinks, they don't tell us why all these Japanese people are visiting.

llooll and Captured - you seem to be here as a result of this. Where did you first find these links?

I found about this thread via 2ch (Huge Japanese BBS site) and most likely others found it in same way.
Now, most of the traffics seem to be diverted toward multiple mirrors (created without permission or any pointers to where they copied it from, lack of proper etiquettes on 2ch user parts are disappointing).

The pictures are pretty sad, both in content and quality of artwork. What kid drew that one later in the thread bashing America? It was worse than all the other ones the Korean kids drew in terms of quality, humor and accuracy.

The kids doing this don't seem much different than college kids protest marching against things they don't fully understand either.

Even if these kids were fully educated to both sides of a political issue, they'd still pick a side based on however their parents believe at this point.

There is enough diversity of news in S. Korea, I'd think, that the many of these kids will remember how they were propagandized as they get older and start questioning things like:

- Is the government propaganda accurate, or blatantly manipulative.

- Are the people protesting the government being fair minded about it? ...or simply bashing anything and everything a government does, even if it actually agrees with their position this time, just because they've picked a side and can't give anyone on the other side even the slightest benefit of the doubt. Ever.

People that actually look closely at an issue and decide for themselves, for example how Gord does (from what I can tell he's not blindly Liberal, Conservative, or anything other than an independent thinker), are speaking out more and hopefully this helps issues like this not develop into a KKK style racial bias against Japan by the kids that drew this stuff.

This post has been edited by YRM on Jun 16 2005, 01:17 PM

I knew this topic at a blog which sends out the informations of the situation in east asia at first. and then I took a look at 2ch, which IWCTY noted.

I'm appalled by the violent expressions contained within some drawings.
bombing, shooting, knives, stomping, and putting on fire. although they are still children......
therefore I feel at ease with looking at the last drawing of two giraffes. if japan and korea were like those two chummy giraffes, that would be too good.

if these kids realize in the future that they were exploited for political propaganda as you YRM would think, I worry whether they can have healthy nationalistic pride.

Gord, I had no idea you had your own forum; I saw a post on Dave's yesterday and came here to sign in. Do you mind if I put the pictures up on my Cyworld site? No hotlinking there, of course.
でね日本人の彼女が欲しいんだったら福岡に一回行ってみるのがいいんじゃない？韓国に近いし福岡の女性はより正常的な性格を持ってる、方言も可愛いし
Okay, now it's time to see what I can do on this board.

Maybe the English can start a similarly absurd campaign against the Argies!

포클랜드 제도는 우리땅!

I am sure English elementary students could draw some pictures to rival those that we saw on the first page.

Gord,

Very interesting! I've never seen such paintings.

It is hard to believe that the teachers, who are supposed to provide their students with correct knowledge and equal viewpoint, allowed, or even encouraged them to draw these ugly works. It looks like Korean teachers stopped to think rationally and just propagating government-made hatred against Japanese.

In most Western civilized country, students have freedom to choose from several different textbooks. Some are slightly right, some are slightly left, and kids will be differ in their viewpoint, but nobody will blame others for what they believe. That is democracy.

However, in both Koreas, (and not to mention in communist China), they allow only one government-made textbook. Kids are forced to believe what are written in their one-and-only textbook. And of course, textbooks will be freely re-written by their government at their convenience whatever the historical facts. Thus, sadly, kids are brainwashed very efficiently enough to draw these ugly pictures.

I believe, what we are seeing here is a Korean version of the "brainwashing the kids with distorted history" that happened in China in '90s. In China, it resulted in recent anti-Japanese riots by youngsters. So maybe we will see similar things happen in Seoul in 2010's. In this context, I think we should not be naive to believe that Korea is a true democratic country. It rather is a totalitarian state. And we should be aware that, it is highly possible that South Korea will be absorbed into China-North Korea complex in the near future and become an enemy of Western democratic countries.

Note to every newcomer:
You’ll find the forum rules here. I especially wanted to remind everybody that most of the regular posters here don’t understand Japanese and that it would facilitate mutual comprehension to provide an English translation for every Japanese or Korean link you post.

If there’s an idea you want to convey but your English really, really sucks, you can post it in Japanese and I’ll provide a translation.

That being said, I’m back to work. I’ll post my own arguments later.

PS: fugue, could you please check your PM box?

This forum made monkeyfilter.com today...a whole new bunch of banana flingers to add to the fun.

Hell, I'll throw one in for the show.

One, I don't think anyone posting here can REALLY claim that they KNOW what the fact is. Nobody here was even alive at the time, much less be there to see what actually happened. In my opinion, the strongest claim anyone here can make is that they accurately "remember" _some other person's_ interpretation of the events. Never mind that it's currently "widely believed as fact" from whereever you are. That can change at any point.

So I honestly don't think it's anyone's call to give out history lessons. You know your version. Others know theirs. The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle. Maybe Japan really did renovate Korea and brought them out of the dark ages. Maybe they really did fuck them over and rape their women. Nobody here KNOWS what happened, so don't try to teach your version of truth to others. Are you all SO hardheaded that you cannot allow for even the slightest possibility that what the other person is saying MIGHT be true?

That being said...

I don't know what produced these pictures. Maybe the teachers encouraged it. Or it could have been the result of the version of this history taught in Korea. Perhaps it was the result of recent government propaganda which some have mentioned. Maybe it's just a hip cool thing to bash Japan in that school. Whatever caused it, I am surprised that it ultimately ended up in display in a public place like that.

I mean, come ON! Am I the only person seeing the uncanny violence portrayed in these pictures? Little KIDS produced these pictures, and it's not just one or two kids with mental poblems. Never mind the historical background, the teachers should have told the kids that it's wrong to drop bombs in any country for any reason (a lesson many Americans could stand to learn, I might add - a one G. Bush, for one. ), or taking another's life is NOT a good thing, etc. THAT really should have been the focus here, not the political and historical jumble that everyone's focusing on.

...my two cents.

Oh, and just out of curiousity... Which subway station IS this anyway? I'm currently residing in Seoul area and if these pictures are still up there, I would like to see these pictures in person. (Not because I doubt their exsistance... I just want to see what other kids drew, and if at all possible, identify where they came from)

Whenever some naif tells me that the "young generation" of Koreans is/will be far less xenophobic than their parents, I remember garbage like the drawings Gord posted.

If anything, it is getting worse with each new generation.

Hello Gord! Here comes the world famous cute young Japanese Girl, yes I am. Oops, am going to be 30 later this year but still looks very young and energetic, so I reckon myself a young Japanese Girl, so it's A-OK.


Anyway, I want to ask you to have a look on this Flash site in here http://www.geocities.jp/flash9735/korean_children.html

this flash was made for all the non-Japanese people even including Koreans. We need to understand what is most evil really.


Thanks very much and want to return to this site under the different topic.

Cool, I like how you quoted Gord for a good portion of it! Oh well, the beginning was cute.

Okay, I got the first batch up on my Cyworld page. What's up with that 태국기 drawing anyway? I suppose they meant to write 태극기? 태국 would be Thailand.

Heh, Darkflame. Korea being split on their opinion about Japan? Like whether to nuke them and cleanse them from the surface of this planet or to concur them and enslave them?

Seriously if the burning hatred toward Japan wasn't shared by virtually everyone in Korea, one of the following would have happened:

1) Teacher, upon seeing students' drawings, raises alarm. Exhibit gets cancelled.
2) Parent, upon hearing about it from their children, raises alarm. Exhibit gets cancelled.
3) Organizer of the exhibit, upon reviewing drawings they received, raises alarm. Exhibit gets cancelled.
4) Official at subway station, upon realizing the content of exhibition, raises alarm. Exhibit gets cancelled.

This is what will happen in sane country but obviously none of this happened in Korea. Are sane adults near extinct in Korea? Or are they afraid to voice their opinion against the passionate and radical majority? Likely it's both. This realization is what shocks many people. It's not the content of these drawings that is most shocking. What really appalls people from sane part of world is the state of Korean culture that allowed this to be displayed at public place.