Friday, July 30

THINKING ON THE WEEKEND?! . . .

Work has been near-manic lately, at least inside my head. Statute of Frauds WHAT?! Not again ... I had vainly hoped that the Statute of Frauds was some strange creature that reared its ugly (and confusing and double-negative laden) head only in the first year of law school, smack in the middle of Contracts, but NO. Here it is again, bitch-smacking me over and over and over. Unfortunately, I don't face the quietest, most relaxing and restful weekend ... but it's not what my occupies my body that prevents me from true bliss.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what foreign countries think of my country, what foreign journalists say about my people, how foreign citizens regard American citizens. In particular, I've been most intrigued -- and sometimes horrified -- by the Korean reaction. My other country, in many ways my first country regardless of my birth location ... how they must hate me now for being a hyphenated American.

Koreans have always had a love-hate relationship with the United States. Most in my parents' generation, both here and back in the Motherland, seem to view Americans as saviors, rescuers, protectors. Americans are the ones who air-dropped cans of Spam and bars of Hershey's chocolate and sacks of rough flour and rice, saving the very lives of the Koreans who survived on this meager and random beneficence. Americans are the ones who kept the Communist Chinese and Russian "imperialists" at bay. Americans are the ones who help keep the 38th parallel secure from the maniacal threat to the North. Americans are the ones who set the example for democracy, even if Koreans haven't exactly gotten it right just yet. Americans are the ones who opened their borders to people seeking a new start, a meaningful opportunity, and allowed these new citizens to send their children to great colleges, buy great cars, obtain great land. Young Korean-Americans like my brother and myself have adopted many of these views. We as families are kind of stuck in the 1970s, the era when the first generation immigrated here. Our political and social philosophies also harken back to these times, and as a result, many of our views and opinions are perceived as being silly and too conservative and old-fashioned by our contemporaries in the Motherland.

Most young people in South Korea hate the United States and everything about it. We are the country that unreasonably keeps troops stationed in Korea. We are the country that bullies the South into remaining separate from the North. We are the country that imported bad, loose, immoral Western values into a pure, Confucian society. We are the country that makes up larger-than-life images of an evil, nuclear-armed, crazed North Korean leader. We are the country that absorbs citizens of other nations and "changes" them and turns them against their native lands. We are the country that made them bastardize their language, spurring a desperate campaign to return to the use of "pure" Korean. They point to the Korean War as instigated by other, stronger powers ... a selfish war motivated not by an altruistic desire to protect South or North Korea, but by a greed for preserving bases of power in the globe. All of these reasons, and more, make the United States evil, and South Korea and its citizens innocent, unwilling, "occupied" victims.

BEH.

Allow me, a conservative-stuck-in-the-70s-abandoning-my-native-land-hyphenated-American to point this big finger in the face of all you radical young Korean-Koreans: were it not for America's selfish political and economic ideals, you would not have your cell phones, your computers, your precious McDonald's, your blue jeans, your imported cars, your opportunities for study abroad, your young and flawed but slowly improving democratic government, your right to vote, your fluid economy, the food on your tables, your technological and industrial development, your CASH and your fake Prada bags. Don't eat a cheeseburger, then complain that you have to call it a cheeseburger. Don't fight tooth and nail to come and study in my country, then go back and complain that we think we're smarter than everyone. Don't live off the benefits of an interdependent economy, then complain that you're a member of an interdependent economy. Don't live in peace under the reinforcements of several thousand of MY country's troops, without which YOUR country would be overrun with a military force whose power and intelligence and training and heartlessness you can't even imagine, then complain that we're occupying your land. Don't scream and swoon at the presence of Britney Spears in a stupid han-bok, then complain that your little siblings are too obsessed with all things American. You are where you are, you eat what you eat, you live how you live, you have what you have, and you haven't been bombed to all oblivion, all because America -- for whatever altruistic or sadistic reason -- chose to help you fight a war you most certainly would have lost otherwise without American reinforcements. You think you'd be better off as a unified peninsula under Kim Jong-Il's direction? GOOD LUCK, YOU FOOLS.

Yeah, it sucks when there's someone more powerful than you pushing you around. It sucks that you might be punished for standing up to the more powerful. It sucks that you haven't figured everything out yet and you need someone else's help. It sucks that things seem to be changing so quickly around you and you just can't keep up or remember the good old days when things were less complicated, even your vocabulary. And of course it sucks that people just like you in almost every way, people who are tied to you by blood and centuries, can't touch you or speak to you or be with you, separated by an arbitrary an invisible, but dangerous, line. I know that it sucks. It sucks for me too.

But reality is reality. Don't ignore it. Don't get all heated over every little thing; pick your battles and your opportunities. Don't rush forward so fast that you turn the corner and can't see history anywhere. I know my country has done lots of bad things; we continue to do so. But we're trying our best, just like you. Just stick with me, with us. We are one blood, all of us ultimately. Don't give up on us ...

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