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NEWS: Manga About Victim of Korean Kidnapping

Ranmah wrote:

I've followed this story for quite sometime and it won't go away anytime soon. It just makes me sick for the "Chosin Byungshins" (bad word) to do that.

Hope you haven't used that "bad word" too much, since Choson refers to Korea's name of old and not the current day North. That is unless my readings upon East Asian history is off, though a quick google appears to support this.

The so-what this is nothing compared to what fascist Japan did between the turn of the century to 1945, the so they (N.K.) killed or kiddnapped a few dozen Japanese, I guess thay's only a fair payback to you!

P.S. Dormcat, do you know the pinyin for that expression?

American intelligence knew about the Attack on Pearl Harbor, but let it happen anyways cauze that would allow Americans to officially enter the war, as well as test out their nuclear weaponry.

Em, which romanization system you prefer? There are more than a dozen. For current ISO standard Hanyu Pinyin, it's "bān mén nòng fŭ."

heyyu: Yes, it's no secret that Asian countries have been at conflict for a while. But there's a moral difference between territorial conflict, and a conflict between an imperialistic country which considers a particular ethnic group(s) to be inferior, and decides it's "okay" to rape their women, capture their men and children and use them for forced labor, and even experiment on them. That's something called genocide. (Sort of what China wants to do with the Tibetans.) As for Japan, America was officially a neutral nation, while the Europeans had no power through the League of Nations to call them on their encroachment,because their economies and man-power were decimated from the first World War and the Depression. Also, the wrongs of Western imperialism do not make Japanese imperialism right.

Yes, Japan did a lot of awful war crimes. One of my friends is an expert on the Nanjing Massacre. But Japan is not the only Asian country that considers it's ethnic group the best. You have the same in each Asian country, such as the numerous ethnic wars in Indonesia, the Vietnam Holocaust, the powerful Chinese minority in Malaysia and Singapore, the superiority of the Mestizos in Philippines (people of mixed Spanish and Philippine blood), etc.

Second, it was Western imperialism in the first place that allowed Japan to gain a foothold in Asia. For instance, the Taft-Katsura memorandum between Japan and the United States allowed Japan to conquer Korea (and in return, Japan promised not to interfere with the US involvement in the Philippines, which the US had received from Spain during the Spanish-American War).

And a number of European countries signed secret treaties assuring Japan of access to colonies in or near China.

Not only until Japan became too powerful (and thus threatened the US own burgeoning power in the Pacific), that the US decided to finally retailiate.

I don't know the equivalent English idiom, but you are 班門弄斧. Ranmah is Korean.

I know Asian countries have typically had this idea that everything in the West is superior.

American intelligence knew about the Attack on Pearl Harbor, but let it happen anyways cauze that would allow Americans to officially enter the war, as well as test out their nuclear weaponry.

After Japan lost the war, it was America that gained a stranglehold on the Pacific, occupying a lot of territory (such as Philippines and even Japan)

Just like with the Panama incident, when America purposely provoked the attacks (as they did with Pearl Harbor) so they could gain a foothold on the Panama Canal.

Heyyu wrote:

Yes, Japan did a lot of awful war crimes. One of my friends is an expert on the Nanjing Massacre. But Japan is not the only Asian country that considers it's ethnic group the best. You have the same in each Asian country, such as the numerous ethnic wars in Indonesia, the Vietnam Holocaust, the powerful Chinese minority in Malaysia and Singapore, the superiority of the Mestizos in Philippines (people of mixed Spanish and Philippine blood), etc.

True, but Japan probably did it on the biggest scale.

Heyyu wrote:

Not only until Japan became too powerful (and thus threatened the US own burgeoning power in the Pacific), that the US decided to finally retailiate.

Or maybe the it was the fact that they bombed American citizens?

When the war started nuclear weopens did not exist.

Heyyu wrote:

After Japan lost the war, it was America that gained a stranglehold on the Pacific, occupying a lot of territory (such as Philippines and even Japan)

America won the Phillipines in the Spanish-American war, in case you forgot.

heyyu wrote:

Just like with the Panama incident, when America purposely provoked the attacks (as they did with Pearl Harbor) so they could gain a foothold on the Panama Canal.

Um, yeah... America actually built the canal.

You need a fact-checker or something.

More people died in the Cultural Revolution in China than died in the war.

And when the Mongols conquered Asia in the 13th Century they sacked and burned entire towns and cities to the ground while slaughtering millions of children and women.

And if you look at human history, genocide has been used numerous times by the most powerful countries and empires: Alexander did it against the Persians, Europeans did it against each other and at other colonies at various points of time, the Americans did it against the Indians, Australia did it against the Aboriginese, the Roman Empire did it on numerous occassions, and even today it's still going on in places like Sudan.

No, that's one of the great myths, that Pearl Harbor was the only reason America entered the war. Even if Pearl Harbor did not happen, America still would have gone to war with Japan eventually (since Japan endangered American control of territories in the Pacific such as Philippines and Hawaii).

Nuclear weapons did not exist physically, but even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was already experimenting with nuclear weapons, first to be used against the Germans (who were also in the early stages of building a nuclear weapon), and then later against Japan. Americans later got the upper-hand in the nuclear arms race when numerous German Nazi scientists defected to the American side (and which the US has been criticized for, since most Nazi scientists were pardoned even with major criminal records). Ironically, Nazi scientists also helped give the US the upper-hand in the Space Wars between Russia (for instance, some of the key founding members of NASA were Nazi scientists).

But even though Americans won the Philippines, the Philippines themselves rebelled since they didn't want to be controlled resulting in the Philippine-American War (which the US squashed rather bloodily and similar to the actions of Japanese soldiers, a good number of horror stories involving US soldiers killing, raping, and torturing women and children). Later, the Japanese invaded and occupied it for a short time before the Americans came back and drove the Japanese away. So you could say America re-re-won the Philippines (first from Spain, then from the Philippines themselves, then finally from the Japanese) Razz

Duly noted, my major was in history (East Asian studies in particular), and I admit I've become a bit rusty.

Actually, WWII probably had the worst casualties of any war. Now if you mean more Chinese were killed by Mao than Hirohito, that might be the case

heyyu wrote:

And when the Mongols conquered Asia in the 13th Century they sacked and burned entire towns and cities to the ground while slaughtering millions of children and women.

Yes, but it was territorial conquest and not ethnic cleansing, as I said earlier.

heyyu wrote:

And if you look at human history, genocide has been used numerous times by the most powerful countries and empires: Alexander did it against the Persians, Europeans did it against each other and at other colonies at various points of time, the Americans did it against the Indians, Australia did it against the Aboriginese, the Roman Empire did it on numerous occassions, and even today it's still going on in places like Sudan.

That's true. But in today's world, you can (theoretically) hold people and corporations accountable for war crimes.

You just supported my earlier argument about the Japanese violating the Monroe Doctrine.

There's still a moral distinction between collaborating with nazi scientists to build rockets and satellites and collaborating with nazi scientists to kill Jews.

Heyyu wrote:

But even though Americans won the Philippines, the Philippines themselves rebelled since they didn't want to be controlled resulting in the Philippine-American War (which the US squashed rather bloodily and similar to the actions of Japanese soldiers, a good number of horror stories involving US soldiers killing, raping, and torturing women and children). Later, the Japanese invaded and occupied it for a short time before the Americans came back and drove the Japanese away. So you could say America re-re-won the Philippines (first from Spain, then from the Philippines themselves, then finally from the Japanese) Razz

I'll admit that how we've treated SE Asian countries in the past isn't something to be proud of, but that doesn't mean the dictators who came in after us were better.

heyyu wrote:

Duly noted, my major was in history (East Asian studies in particular), and I admit I've become a bit rusty.

More like you had a minor in East Asian History, but are suddenly an expert in all things Asian.

I mean, more Chinese died in the Cultural Revolution than by Japanese hands.

It was both.

If corporations do that, then yeah, they're accountable. But to be honest, I can't really think of any corporation that engages in direct genocide. Can you?No seriously, I'm curious to know.

I mean, there's a lot of Nazi scientists that didn't directly kill Jews as in taking a gun with their own hands and killing them. That was usually left to execution staffs. But they built the equipment and concentration camps knowing they'd kill Jews.

By that logic, you can say, well the Japanese killed off a lot of people in the War, but later the Asian leaders that came into power killed off a lot of their own people too, so they weren't much better.

#1) I never said I was an expert

#2) I regret choosing history as my major, believe me, history as a major is USELESS unless you want to be something like a teacher Razz

#3) Besides East Asian history, I also took a lot of Asian (S.East, S.Asia, Middle East, Central Asia) courses (but in different categories: philosophy, economics, social science, humanities, blah blah blah). Actually I took a lot of history courses about everything, it was required.