What the Hell is Wrong With Korea?

A fairly ordinary American (or possibly Canadian) girl posts a short and rather boring video on Youtube in which, while rambling on about nothing in particular, she mentions in passing that she dislikes Kimchi and finds the strong smell off-putting: nothing to get even the slightest bit excited about, right? Well, not if you're an oversensitive, ultranationalistic Korean, it isn't ... See the video which has even Korean newspapers up in arms for yourself.

Just read the angry responses to her video to see just how brittle the supposed self-esteem of so many Korean "patriots" really is: it would simply be inconceivable that people from, say, Japan*, the UK, France or Iceland would bat an eyelid if someone confessed to disliking natto, marmite, escargot or hákarl, and the other side of the coin to that overblown nationalism which Koreans are so partial to is a ridiculous oversensitivity to even the most minor perceived slights from the most insignificant of sources. This incident is even more pathetic than the repeated bleatings about that pile of guano Koreans like to call "Dokdo": a nation whose newspapers can work themselves into a blather over the passing comments on kimchi of a single foreign girl barely out of her teens is one with a massive chip on its collective shoulders; I know I'm repeating myself here, but there is something outright pathological about Korean nationalism.

*Note, by the way, the complete lack of angry responses by Japanese viewers to what she has to say about the country's cockroaches - a far less flattering thing to talk about than finding the smell of kimchi off-putting ...

PS: Take a look at the enraged Korean reaction to this kid's review of the near universally-panned "D-War."

One choice example:

Hey nigga! I can't see you boy! where are you? Whole black shit on screen, but sounds like some african boy. Where are you nigga?

Classy, isn't it? But that's what comes with idiotically over-identifying yourself with everything done by anyone who shares a passport with you - you find yourself feeling driven to "defend" even complete dreck by resorting to racial insults. To be fair, though, this time quite a few other Koreans make responses which show that the ultranationalist idiots don't speak for all of Korea.

Comments

[dd123dd]

The unfortunate comment above about "nigga" is from a user at youtube with the screen name "jjpmorgan."

This user's profile indicates that the person's hometown is Shanghai, China.

http://www.youtube.com/user/jjpmorgan

I'd suggest you and others who quote the quote get your information straight. The guy can be a martian for all you know.

[Abiola]

Yes, of course, all Koreans live in Korea, none could possibly live as far afield as Shanghai, let alone New York, London and so forth; the word "gyopo" means absolutely nothing to Koreans ...

You get your own assumptions straight before correcting others: one would have to be delusional to imagine any Chinese person would care enough about a sh*tty film like D-War to go calling anyone "nigga" for stating the obvious truth about the movie. It is 100% certain that this and the other abusive posts in response to the kid's video were by KOREANS, whether gyopos or otherwise - heck, I even recognize one or two who spend the rest of their free time injecting nationalist propaganda into Korea-related articles on Wikipedia (e.g., the one who calls him/herself "Melonbarmonster").

[dd123dd]

[The only idiot here is the person stupid enough to fling insults at me on my very own blog, and by the length and inanity of your tirade I can tell that you too are a thin-skinned gyopo who's made it his life's mission to patrol the internet looking for insults to Corean (or is that KKKorean?) pride. Piss off, loser. - A.L.]

[Abiola]

It's funny - in a post pointing out how ridiculously thin-skinned Koreans are apt to reach for insults when they feel challenged for rational retorts to criticisms of their supposedly perfect country, it only took you your second post to sink to the level of the morons embarrassing the Daehanminguk on Youtube, splendidly verifying what I'd been saying: far too many Koreans are unable to tolerate any criticism from any foreign source whatsoever.