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

For those Americans, especially those who grew up as a kid in the 80s, think of the following for perspective:

When you were a kid, what was your image of the Soviet Union? When Reagan himself was calling the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire" and when you grew up watching movies like "Rocky" and "Rambo", didn't you believe that the Soviet Union should be wiped off the face of the earth?

Specifically, if, in your childhood, you were told that the Soviet Union claimed "Alaska was Soviet territory" on the basis that they discovered it first and had occupied it before, what would be your reaction? If you were to draw a picture to protest the upsurd Soviets, those as evil as Darth Vader and his troops, what would you have drawn, as a kido?

rene wrote:

I am one of those kids that feared the Soviet Union, just I had fear when the Berlin Wall came down and I no longer had an "enemy" (imagine that). I see a crucial distinction, however, in my situation and the situation of these middle-schoolers in Korea. When I went to school and voiced the fears of myself (and really, of my parents), many of my teachers guided me in a direction that encouraged intellectual and emotional growth, rather than unexamined fear. Because I have been handled well by those responsible for my development, I feel generally equipped to take a critical stance when confronted with the unknown and unexamined.

If teachers are not providing the same guidance to children, in the U.S., Japan, Korea, Russia, China, or any other country, then they are serving the state's interests over the interests of the children with whom they have been entrusted. Kids are going to be kids, making it all the more important that the adults that surround them act like mature, rational, and mentoring individuals rather than tools of propoganda.

This post has been edited by Patrick Lee on Jun 23 2005, 02:32 PM

Yes there was a very real fear back then that the Soviets could have quite easily wiped America off the face of the earth. They didn't hate the USSR they feared the USSR. There's an important difference. Even though yes many people did take it too far but after the Cold War ended, most people looked at their anti-commie attitudes and just sort of went, 'well no point to this anymore.'
Your 'Alaska Territory' claim makes no sense as they bought Alaska from russia at a price tag of a little under 2 cents per acre. They bought about 600000 square miles with this price.
As to your film references, Rocky IV was pretty much hailed as a crappy film during its release, and Rambo took place in Vietnam so I don't see any argument there.

I have a story about this.

When I was growing up, my mother actually got a subscription to the English language version of Pravda, which was more like a monthly magazine than the newspaper it was in the Soviet Union.

She gave me a copy to read one day (my hobby in Junior High was the study of Nuclear Weapons and their strategic value) with a warning, "This is their side. Read it. You pretty much know our side of the equation. I've found in cases like this, the truth is in the middle."

Oddly enough, that's pretty much the way it wound up being after the wall came down. the USSR was a superpower with clay feet, but the people firing the kilns weren't rabid psycho nutcases - They were just people trying to put food on the table like so many other people in many other cultures.

I rather liked Rocky IV and Rambo II, but I surely didn't concider it real. I was raised better than that. And I was even raised in the shadows of ICBMs. Heck, Nuclear Proliferation is how my parents met.

The kid's drawings were, simply, poor propiganda. I don't blame the kids for drawing what they do - Kids are mean-hearted people toward things or people they hate (for whatever reason).

When I was very young, I admit would have done similar things. But the following things would have happened:

A ) I'm sure my teacher at the time would have informed me that such images are not really appropriate, whether or not they were 'accurate' with the propiganda in the news or whatever.

B ) I know for a fact that my parents (Mom, specifically) would have done bad, bad things to my tiny hide. The first time I used the word 'nigger' in a derogatory way, my mother (who was cooking at the time) thwaped my shoulder hard enough to draw blood with the metal spoon in her hand. No stitches or any major damage, but I'll be damned if I'm going to try to do that again - Even thirty years later...

As a youngster in Michigan, I was never taught to hate the people of the U.S.S.R. Certainly, we were afraid of the Soviets, but, as has been voiced already here, hate and fear are two different things.

We were told that communism was evil, but never were we made to believe that all Soviet people were evil. I had a high school teacher who spoke Russian; who owned his own copy of Mao's little red book; who taught a class called Dictatorships & Democracies. Many many other teachers also made sure we knew what made a government bad or good. Never were we told to hate people. Early on, in a Sunday school class at my church, I can remember using the word hate, and being told that hate is a four-letter word, and Christian's don't hate anyone.

So no, I did not grow up believing the Soviet Union should be wiped off the face of the earth. I grew up believing that a nuclear war would wipe out all of us, friend and enemy, and quite possibly leave nothing but the cockroaches to clean up after us.

Secondly, we were taught quite early on in American history about the Lousiana Purchase, whereby we bought ourselves a large bit of the U.S.A. from the French; and the purchase of Alaska from the Russians at $.02/acre; and the better-late-than-never compensation to Mexico for the land we took from them in a war years earlier to make it easier for a set of train tracks to come through.

I am quite sure that had I taken an art class in middle school, the art teacher would have fainted at the thought of his/her class being used as a tool of propoganda.

So there ya go. Little long-winded, but nothing compared to some posts lately.

I look forward to, in the future, this forum going back to being slightly more trivial in nature, and a lot less serious.

James

As many of my post usually are this one will likely be deleted in the near future as it likely will have no more effect than echoing the previous post by Hardware.

Its just that his description is very much a mirror of my own time in school . My teacher did a very good job separating the fact and fiction about the cold war era , and how a government and its people are not as evil or stupid as the people who have the power in whatever country they happen to rule.

I was taught that the Soviet people weren't as evil as Stalin who was a maniac. i was taught that because greedy men had taken power that the general populace were suffering while blinded by nationalist pride so that they didn't see there own suffering . That made them blind not evil i never hated any of the Russian i grew up with or meet at the time . Teaching hate in any capacity is wrong, and a abuse of power and just morally deplorable.

I apologize for that slight tangent but the heaviness of the board has been getting to me as i am fairly ignorant of the Korean history after or during ww2 as I was always more enraptured by the European conflict .

On my point that these Korean kids sentiments do not differ too much from American kids of the 80s I think has been conveyed enough. As for the line btw "fear" and "hatred", it is very thin. The Nazi's hated the Jews cause they were afraid the Jews were gonna take over the world (they even believed communism was a Jewish consipiracy). The American hate the Muslim fundementalist cause they fear they may strike another 9.11.

And Yes, I agree it was wrong for the teachers to have left those hate-ridden pictures there. But the fact is MOST of the pictures were peaceful protests and a MINORITY of them violent. So, considering the universality of such sentiments among Korean and American kids, and the fact it was a small part of the exhibition should be enough basis to say that it would be a great exaggeration and sheer xenphobia (much like those of Korean kids), as some posters have said here, to claim that these few pictures show that Korean people (the majority who are adults, and peaceful) are Japanese-hating-violent-madmen.

This post has been edited by rene on Jun 25 2005, 05:26 PM

Yes there was a very real fear back then that the Soviets could have quite easily wiped America off the face of the earth. They didn't hate the USSR they feared the USSR. There's an important difference. Even though yes many people did take it too far but after the Cold War ended, most people looked at their anti-commie attitudes and just sort of went, 'well no point to this anymore.'
Your 'Alaska Territory' claim makes no sense as they bought Alaska from russia at a price tag of a little under 2 cents per acre. They bought about 600000 square miles with this price.
As to your film references, Rocky IV was pretty much hailed as a crappy film during its release, and Rambo took place in Vietnam so I don't see any argument there.

Yes, and American were ready to wipe USSR and the Soviet bloc off the face of the earth in case they were threatened! Nuke War was a doom-doom scenario. As for fear and hate, I have written above, it basically stems from each other.

My citing Alaska was to give you an example, not a factual event, that would allow you to understand what these Korean children may have felt. It was purely to show something that would have had the same emotional effect on American kids of that time. A mind game, that;s all, so dont be upset.

Rocky IV is a crappy film, but it doesn't change the fact that kids, uncritically, absorb the good-bad dictonomy in the movie, and how they see for themselves how the soviets are really really evil. Rambo took place in Vietnam, but in the movie, it is Soviet intelligence officers and paratroopers who kidnap, toture and kill Rambo and his comrades, so there is relevance. (Yet the truth of History is the Soviet Union didnt send combat troops to Vietnam and they avoided direct contact with the US troops lest it may lead to WWIII.)

Yes, kids are prone to draw such pictures. To make a huge fuss over them is itself biased and unwarrented.

And Yes, the sad part is the teachers didn't do so for these Korean kidswhat your teachers would have done for you. But as I wrote above such violent inappropriate pictures were a minority out of all the pictures on that subway. And the actually Korean middleschool site uploaded only the peaceful ones. The teachers knew violent ones were not appropriate but they could selectively take those down and then teach the kids it wasnt so--this is the sad part. But still this doesn't legitimize all the Korean-hating going on here on some posts, which I find to be even less-grounded than the attacks on those pics.

There aren't any pictures there explicitly "demonizing" the Japanese PEOPLE or making racist expressions about them. It's all about Japan as a nation and as a state. Of course, these kids dont differenciate btw people and the government, but at least their pictures weren;t about attacking Japanese people. You dont see any derisive words like "Jjok-bari" which is like calling a black "nigger." No, these Kids also are not "demonizing" common Japanese people.

As for hate and fear and Alaska, read my above posts.

This post has been edited by Gord on Jun 26 2005, 12:40 AM

Perhaps you have missed the pictures showing the Japanese as having buck teeth or as being monkeys.

Perhaps you missed the pictures about where they were inflicting violence on generic citizens.

The fuss is over that this project which ended up promoting a substantial number of violent or racist pictures was encouraged and rewarded by both the education ministy and the government owned subway corporation.

While pictures encouraging or rewarding violence were indeed a minority, there were hundreds of them.

They shouldn't have gone up in the first place. Each picture was drawn and then applied to a larger piece of cardboard. The second anything resembling racism or violence was spotted, it should have been removed. And it is not as though as though one or two accidentally got through unspotted

What "Korean-hating" is going on? Though if you want hate, you should have seen many of the posts deleted (while mostly attacking me for being more retarded than one can possibly imagine, some were doing nothing more than insulting Korea) or what has come into my email box.

Among Koreans, it seems that it is not considered anything immoral to express Hate toward Japanese people.


telop: "I suggest it's a good idea that we invade Japan"


The sign says "Japanese, not allowed to enter"




The flag says "we welcome you, The War Criminal"

forgot to add an explanation to the second picture from the bottom;
The face printed on the red banner cloth is of An Jung-geun, a Korean who assassinated Hirofumi Ito, Japan's first, 5th, 7th and 10th Prime Minister.
Hirofumi Ito is a respected historical figure in Japan while An Jung-geun is a national hero in Korea.

I personally find it is against manner to display such banner cloth and insult opponent team.

Perhaps the definition of "hate" for some Koreans are different from ours.
For some Koreans, hating, bashing, insulting Japanese are common sense, so they may not feel those are "hate".


After the Niigata Earthquake, some Korean networkers started posting like "Die more! They are killed because of their past faults", "This is punishment of Heaven. One of the most sneakiest race in the world is "Jjok-Bari" (meaning is "pig's leg, the word for insulting Japanese)".

If Japan and Korea were at war, I might imagine those performances, but Pacific War ended 60 years ago, and Japan and Korea have never been at war...

Probably many Japanese don't know that Korea teaches hate as long as they don't start searching about history on the internet.
(I actually had been wondering about the claims of Korea and the crack between both Korea and Japan, then started to learn what's going on.)
We don't know something like the pics posted above as long as we watch TV programe.
We don't know that some Japanese fishermen were killed by Korea when they got into their sea.
(I'm so sorry I don't have an evidence. I just read it somewhere.lol)

So, I consider most Japanese know very well that Korean's getting angry at the text book and the island and the protests, and many of them think that's very right to be blamed because Japan only did very bad horrible things in Korea during the war,
as we never learn good things like civilization in Korea at school in Japan.
(now it is going to be revealed that Korean made some of the stories later though.)

Besides, we can see only very nice part of Korea like "Japan-feel" among Korean younger generation on TV.

"It is said" on the internet that Japanese media is amazingly claimed by Korean organizations or something like that in Japan when they report something bad about Korea- for examle, the facts that they teach hate, or some treaties related to the island or comfort women - although it is true.
I don't think it would be the only reason of their narrow report though,
I could say that both Japanese and Korean media and education are very strange.

I was so shocked when I first saw the pictures by Koreand kids and now I'm wondering what's going on in Japan and Korea and their citizens. (and China if I may add here. heh heh)
I'm afraid that when those kids get older and become politicians, they might cause a war easily.
Japanese education is not so good now (they teach kids hate-Japan as Korea does), the same thing would suit to Japanese kids.
And Japanese people don't have sense of constructioning of the peace and keep staying happily there(it's been too peace to notice that in Japan so far), I think Japanese have to learn that without enemies and staying in the middle.

The teaching of "hate Japan" in Korea started decades ago, while Internet usage in Japan is subtantially more recent.

Perhaps you could provide some examples of this hate you claim exists.

Have you met a single Japanese person in your entire life? Please show us some evidence that supports your claim.

Ah...... well, they just do not know what they are doing. There are crazy people in any country. Franky, howevber, a strange thing with Korea is that its government seems to be taking the major role in promoting hatred particularly toward Japan. Thus, the government is helping producing more crazy people. "Look at the anger of our people!" This is a type of message the government wants to appeal to the world, I guess. Childrens' drawing stuff in this thread is another example and the government might have thought it is a terrific idea. But it does not work. No way. Actually it works adversely. Moreover, it is not a question of whether it works or not. So I feel sorry for the Korean parents whose children are being taught hatred at school and I do hope that very few parents if not none are pround of that.

So looks like I was wrong. "hate-Japan" education in Korea is sort of traditional. If that is the case, many parents might have been proud of their children drawing "hate-Japan" pictures. ah ha!

So we, Japanese, have to give up everything to Korea to look friendly to them. That is not called friendship in my dictionary...........

Question to rene and Gord

Gord,
rene,
Could you give me a rough guess what percentage of the pictures were violent/racially offensive?

Could you provide me a little more information about that? I tried on this site:http://www.gyeyang.ms.kr/ but since I can't understand hungul, I can't find anything except the poster of the exhibition...

Thank you in advance

Gord, those are my experiences and thoughts.

I see.
I learned that teaching of "hate Japan" through a book written by a Korean woman.
As I studied about femminism in Japan and there're many Korean classmates, and I heard that it's hard for women to say somthing in study fields in Korea, I just wanted to see what she said Korea and Japan.
And I learned a little about the civlization in Korea from that book, too, though it's about the interviwes of people's life during the ww2 in Korea.

I'm a Japanese and took whole education in Japan. As I didn't interested in the world history at all for years till a few months ago, I believed what I'd learned at Japanese public school; Japan killed lots of people in China and raped too many girls and robbered too many things from Asian coutries. They did terrible things and I always felt sorry for especially Chinese and Koreans, and I agreed that their never endress claims and wanting much money for years. And I'd really really hated Japan and all the ancestors who did the things like that in the war and Japanese army, though my grand mothers brothers were killed in that war(she never talked about the war and died last year). I let that hate go when I got in an university. As I thought it's too old to consider or to be botherd. But basically I hated Japan till last year, and I don't know now. When I read the book by a Korean woman and other infomation on the website, I felt released from a very black side a little. Because I knew that Japan didn't do only terrible things to other people in the war. And that changed my view of the world and I started to study and consider that war as it is related to another countries and situations in the whole world then, and the world now.

As you wrote before, each prefecture in Japan has their way to teach kids at school. But at the same time, history is much depends on teachers' knowledges actually. Many students go to another kind of shool after normal school, so they might learn defferent view from other teachers or text books.
But unfortunately, my prefecture seemed to be very famouse for under influences of Japanese teaching association (I'm not sure in English but something like that.), which choses and desides which history text book is good or terrible. And their standards are how we feel bad to Japanese army and wars.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet/4759/20010714.html (Sorry it's only in Japanese)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/lancer1/archives/cat_719972.html (It is also in Japanese)

I didn't believe that some Japanese seem to deny or perish the terrible things Japan did in the war from the history a few months ago. I thought that war time was all painted too dark. But now I learned it's neccesarry to distingish good things and bad things in the war time. And it would be good if one of the text books teaches that. (But at the same time we could warn that it's easy to become too right wing, though now in Japan any examine or overhauling about something in the war seems to be taken as a very right wing.)

But still I feel it's very much taboo to discuss something about the war in Japan. I talked with some of my Japanese friends but I didn't know how many of them tried to know what really happened in the war time and why the relationships between Korea and Japan seems too comlicated by themselves (but we are doing very well and friendly on Japanese TV shows).
I don't usually talk about history with my friends, so I don't know what others think.
and, I'm skeptical what I read on the website. I need to read books by myself. I'm still studying.
And also I'm asking my friends what they exactly learned about the history in school, too.

For 60 years, Japan teaches only terrible part of the war with the Japanese teachers association. So that's why I said that Japan is teaching "hate- Japan" in Japan. Though they never make us paint terrible pictures like Korea. But apparently, that education isn't good, I think. Lacking of self confedence to be born as a Japanese. Bad for mentality.
But other Japanese? here (they seem much younger than me) don't say much about that. The one who wrote before (sorry I forgot the name, probably yoshi uk ) seemed to have had better one than mine. It would really depends on prefectures and teachers.

I meant.. I just considered.
When I was in Canada a month ago, three persons talked about the peace in their neigborhood at a different time. All of them said they had responsibility and right to live feeling secured and happy with neigbors from different cultures.
In fact, one of them asked me where I came from and if I had a permission to stay my frined's house when I was with my another friend, and he made me call my friend and the owner of the building. That's totally new for me as a Japanese.

The states started to take finger prints form anyone who has no visa, and I was taken when I passed there to Canada. I thought it's overprotective first, but considered about the fear for the terrorists in the states, and, permitted myself to be taken them.
Japan stopped to take finger prints from visiters recently, on the other hand. I don't like to be taken. But it seems against the current of the world, doesn't it? So I just thought that's weird.

Did all make sense?