south-korea

"Some weird music, which has been likened to that of Scotch bagpipes, is heard from the direction of the city gates, and the traveller, who is still threading the streets to his abode, feels thankful that he has arrived in time, for now the massive gates are closed, and none may enter without royal permission."

"I have to be honest and and say that i don't particularly like South Korean literature and I don't particularly like Korean prose, long- long form Korean prose fiction. ... I mean, when I approach a novel I expect to be brought into contact with somebody special in some way and I find that Koreans tend to enjoy fictional and cinematic depictions of normal everyday group life. They want to see a mirror and they will sit back and nod at that and I just have to say it doesn't do very much for me."

"Women hold a very low position in Corean estimation, and count for little in the sight of the law. Not only are they destitute of all political and social influence, but they are not held personally responsible for their actions, and live in a state of lifelong pupilage."

"[P]eople here [in South Korea] do not identify strongly with their state. No public holiday celebrates it, neither the flag nor the coat of arms nor the anthem conveys republican or non-ethnic values, no statues of presidents stand in major cities. Few people can even tell you the year in which the state was founded."

"The [South Korean] national anthem conveys no republican ideals at all, referring only to the ancient race and homeland."

"Transcripts of cockpit voice recordings recovered from the wreckage show confusion in the cockpit, with crew members questioning one another repeatedly about the state of the instrument landing system and failing to follow procedures that would have kept them all aware of how close they were getting to the ground."

"After the accident, Korean Air announced that it planned to spend more than $100 million over the next two years on safety initiatives, including changes in pilot training and maintenance operations."

"Burned and scratched, some of the more fortunate survivors told of being hurled from the plane still attached to their seats, and of turning back in their escape from the burning jet to pull fellow passengers to safety."

"Witnesses said the plane plowed through the jungle trailing smoke and flames, before it came to rest. The first rescuers had to make a maddeningly slow journey to the wreckage, trudging in with flashlights after hacking their way through razor-sharp grass that came up to their shoulders. They were followed by a bulldozer that slowly leveled a path over the rocky ground, the witnesses said."

"The cause of the crash was attributed to failure to adequately brief and execute a non-precision approach, and the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam, the report showed."

"The wait for remains has been excruciating for the families of the victims, most of them South Korean. A scuffle broke out Thursday at a hotel used as a center for the families when mourners hungry for information saw a Korean Air representative hold a news conference for reporters instead of briefing the families."

"The sophisticated provocation masterminded by the US special services with the use of a South Korean plane is an example of extreme adventurism in politics."

"The recollections bring back some unpleasant feelings. Those events left scars and added some gray hairs to my head. I will always be convinced that I gave the right order. Sometimes, in strategic operations, we had to sacrifice battalions to save the army."

"Those who ran the American government did not want to learn that the Soviets had been honestly confused and panic-stricken about the enemy intruder."

"Until we know what final explanation [the Soviets] give and we have made a judgment on that explanation, it is premature to say what we are going to do about it."

"I am far from thinking that the blame for this tragedy lies entirely on us. The passengers on board KAL 007 had become the hostages of two great powers colliding with each other. They were condemned to die."

"There have been many books written about KAL 007 in the West, but the only living eyewitnesses to this tragedy are in the Soviet Union. The world is interested in the facts of what happened. But for me, what is most important is that ordinary Soviet citizens are opening their lips after so many years of silence. By talking, we become normal people."

"The plane was over Soviet territory for about two hours, so it can hardly be assumed that this was an unplanned action. We should make it clear in our statements that this was a gross violation of international conventions. It is no use keeping quiet now, we must go on the offensive."

"Stand by. Stand by. Stand by. Stand by. Set."

"Help me get my daughter back - I want my daughter back! Please, please help me!"

"I am heartbroken and have had nightmares because my best friend is dead. My Daddy and Mummy told me that some Russian men killed her and many, many other people, too. I asked Daddy why the Russians are so cruel. Yuen Wai-Sum was eight and was my best friend. Now we can never play together again. Why? You are the leader of the Russians, can you tell me why Russians have to kill her? I want to name offerings to Wai-Sum, to give her some fresh flowers and to pay respect to her spirit. May I? You are the leader. If you say yes, then it must be okay."

"I don't know anything - just that my mother is dead."

"We have been struggling for years to know what happened to our loved ones. Now we face the agonizing recognition that their death was neither painless nor instant."

"We have found new material on KAL 007. I know that sixty percent of the passengers were American. I am prepared to give you all the materials we have found. Perhaps one possibility is if some family members could come over and meet with me and discuss this. They could bring the materials back to you, including the black box."

"I was just next to him, on the same altitude, 150 meters to 200 meters away. I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."

"I would have landed him on our airfield, and I wanted it very much. Do you think I wanted to kill him? I would rather have shared a bottle with him."

"What civilian? [It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border."

"Within hours, story began circulating in Washington that the Soviets have been involved."

"Cold War international tensions rose to a peak in 1983, with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe exciting Soviet concern and anger, and the Soviets fearing attack under the cover of Able Archer, a NATO military exercise held from 2 to 11 November. Reagan going aloft in his command plane during the exercise worried the Soviets. Moreover, the unrepentant Soviet shooting down on 1 September 1983, over Soviet airspace, of Korean Airlines flight 007, suspected of espionage, increased tension. Two hundred and sixty-nine people, including an American congressman, were on the plane."

"The destruction of the airliner and its immediate aftermath reaffirmed the Soviet Union's and the United States' essential distrust of each other and ended any hope of an immediate solution to the expanding nuclear arms race. Late November 1983 saw the failure of the European peace campaign as the West German parliament voted to accept 108 medium-range Pershing II missiles for deployment and the Reagan administration immediately began shipping missile components. The Soviets, as expected, broke off the strategic arms reduction negotiations in Geneva, accusing Washington of "wrecking" the talks and describing the Germans as "nuclear maniacs.""

"Five days after the Soviets shot down KAL 007, I went on nationwide television to urge that all of us in the civilized world make sure such an atrocity never happens again. And I pledged to you that night, we would cooperate with other countries to improve the safety of civil aviation, asking them to join us in not accepting the Soviet airline Aeroflot as a normal member of the international civil air community -- not, that is, until the Soviets satisfy the cries of humanity for justice."

"Roger, Korean Air 007...ah, we are experiencing..."

"Question I asked myself when I heard of his death is “Why Loc, of all people?” It seemed so unfair. Why not some multiple murderer on death row or some drunken bum? Worst of all, why did he die the way he did? I could understand and handle the death of a friend from diseases, but for him to be shot down on an airliner hurts me to the bottom of my soul."

"There were no circumstances that can justify the unprecedented attack on an unarmed commercial aircraft."

"The target is destroyed."

"Countries are different, but people are people, and the Koreans are the same as anyone else. Their rise out of poverty in the face of such circumstances to democratic capitalism underlines the theme of our age."

"Korean sounds like ack-ack fire, every syllable has a primary accent: YO-YO CAMP STOVE HAM HOCK DIP STICK DUCK SOUP HAT RACK PING-PONG LIP SYNC!!!! ... Their language is unrelated to Chinese or Japanese, closer, in fact, to Finnish and Hungarian."

"The language is peculiar to the country, and while written official documents are done in the common character of China and Japan, the spoken language of neither of these people is understood in Korea. The native language of Korea possesses an alphabet and grammar, and is polysyllabic, thus resembling English more than it does Chinese."

"Koreans are wonderfully tolerant of a foreigner with differing views when the discussion is in Korean, and no foreigners of importance are around. They lose their tempers when they see someone exporting information which — however widely discussed in the Korean press — is thought best kept "in country.""

"[E]verywhere there was the curiously clanging, grumbling tone of Korean speech."

"I strongly pledge, in front of the proud [South] Korean flag, allegiance to my fatherland, to devote my body and soul to the eternal glory of the [Korean] race."

"The national emblem of Korea, pictured on the cover, represents the male and female elements of nature; the dark blue representing Heaven (the male), the yellow representing Earth (the female). As seen across the Eastern Sea, the heavens seem to lap over and embrace the earth, while the earth, to landwards, rises in the lofty mountains and folds the heavens in its embrace, making a harmonious whole."

"Judging from the yin-yang flag's universal popularity in South Korea, even among those who deny the legitimacy of the Republic of Korea, it evidently evokes the [Korean] race first and the [South Korean] state second. There is therefore none of the parodying or deliberate desecration of the state flag that one encounters in the countercultures of other countries."

"The South Korean flag continues to function at least in South Korea, not as a symbol of the [South Korean] state but as a symbol of the [Korean] race."

"By 1910 Korea was fully annexed to Japan, as an integral part of its empire. The Japanese administration did its best to stamp out Korean identity. The royal palace in Seoul was demolished and Japanese became the medium of instruction for all higher education. Tokyo even tried to force Koreans to wear Japanese dress and assimilate in social codes and family life. But at the same time, just like in the European empires that the Japanese admired and feared in equal amounts, there was widespread segregation of colonizers and colonized. Most Koreans understood that they could never become full members of the Japanese Empire, even if they had wanted to. From the beginning, the occupation of Korea gave rise to nationalist resistance. For many young Koreans, the real insult of the Japanese takeover was that it came just as they were formulating their own views of their country’s future. Some of them went into exile, and the nationalisms they conceived there were intense and uncompromising, as ideal views of one’s own country formed abroad often are. Korean nationalists wedded themselves not only to defeating Japan and liberating their country but also to building a future, unified Korea that was modern, centralized, powerful, and virtuous. Korea, they believed, could not only produce its own liberation but would stand as an example for other downtrodden peoples."

"Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak."

"Korean nationalism is its emphasis on the vulnerability of the [Korean] race."

"South Korea, not very tolerant, is an outlier. Although the country is rich, well-educated, peaceful and ethnically homogenous – all trends that appear to coincide with racial tolerance – more than one in three South Koreans said they do not want a neighbor of a different race. This may have to do with Korea's particular view of its own racial-national identity as unique – studied by scholars such as B.R. Myers – and with the influx of Southeast Asian neighbors and the nation's long-held tensions with Japan."

"I was invited to the home of a young Korean couple for dinner and the subject of the children of mixed-race marriage came up. "You know, we hate them," the husband said quite unashamedly and, for some reason, with a smile. By "we" he meant not just he and his wife. He meant all Koreans. All felt this way. And feelings, I'd already noticed among my Korean friends, were not something to be kept in check by reason. They were justification for whatever came out of your mouth or made you swing your fist."

"Korea needs to institutionalize a legal system that mitigates unfair practices and discrimination against those who do not supposedly share the Korean blood. Koreans need an institutional framework to promote a democratic national identity that would allow for more diversity and tolerance among the populace, rather than simply appeal to an ethnic consciousness that tends to encourage false uniformity and enforce conformity to it. They should envision a society in which they can live together, not simply as fellow ethnic Koreans but as equal citizens of a democratic polity. It should be an integral part of democratic consolidation processes that Korea is currently undergoing. Otherwise, it would be hard to expect Korea to become "Asia's hub," which will require the accommodation of cultural and ethnic diversity and flexibility."