By Yun Chung
The rocks of Dokdo were lonesome until recently. Now, every cat and dog makes a pass at them. Recent love calls on Dokdo include ``There Ain't No 'Do' in Dok" and ``Poem for Dokdo" in The Korea Times (July 24 and August 28) among numerous other articles. These two articles stand out because they caricaturized the Dokdo issue in Korea.
Dokdo became Dok in the above articles. The rocks of Dokdo bit their lips the first time being called Dok because there was some justification. There was, however, no justification the second time. Dok makes no sense in Korean or in English. It only jeers at the Dokdo emotion, which runs deep in me and many Koreans.
``Where is the beef?" This was a catch phrase of a TV commercial some years ago in the U.S. It derided small meat patties in competitor's hamburgers and is still being used when the size or substance of an issue is questioned. Likewise, let me ask: Where is the ``land" in England? Isn't ``Engisland" more appropriate than England? Why not, Engdo, Engdot, Engstan, or how about just Eng or Eng-Eng?
Am I being ludicrous? Yes. So is anyone charmed by Dok for Dokdo.
To British, England is England, no matter what. To Koreans, Dokdo is Dokdo, no matter what.
Kurri Kurri and Wagga Wagga are indigenous town names in Australia. Australians use these names without questioning their qualifications. Koreans call the Australian continent ``Hoju" and the American continent ``Miju." To Koreans, Hoju is easier to say and sounds friendlier than Australia. Chinese and Japanese call Australia by similar names. Likewise, America is Meiguo in China, Miguk in Korea, and Beikoku in Japan. Anglophones call Nippon Japan, Zhongguo, China, Hanguk, Korea, etc. and do whatever else they like to do. So, why bash Koreans for calling Australia Hoju or England Yeongguk as if whatever Koreans do is ridiculous? Hoju and Yeongguk not on Royal Navy maps? Don't be silly, please. Neither is Miguk!
Calling Dokdo Dok, however, is like calling England Eng. Both are absurd and should be not repeated.
To most contemporary Koreans, nothing is more painful and disgusting than having to relive the days of the Japanese occupation (1910-1945). Whenever Japan revives a claim to Dokdo, I think, in reflex, of the Japanese police and ``Kempei" (Gestapo) who were rounding up teenage girls from a village where I grew up. Their mothers, distraught and wailing, kept on lunging toward a line of pony-tailed girls, trying to take their daughters back. Japanese Kempeis, hovering around the girls, kept pushing mothers away, kicking them as they fell down.
Girl's fathers stood around some distance away, just glaring at their crying wives in disgust and their fear-gripped daughters in resignation. Kempeis put a white sash across each girl's shoulder. It read: "Oiwai ― Tei-shin-tai," meaning "Congratulations ― Body Dedication Corps." I witnessed similar scenes repeatedly. We were told that the girls would serve as nurses and cooks for soldiers behind frontlines. When WWII ended, the truth came out: Japanese soldiers used them as ``comfort women".
The Japanese government insists no documented evidence exists for ``comfort women" when the whole world condemns the atrocities. What kidnappers stick up innocence by claiming no ``documented evidence" and get away with it? Japan behaves as if their only ``crime" was having lost the war to the Kichiku-Beiei (Demonic beasts, Yankees and Brits). Disgusting.
Calling Dokdo Takeshima revives other disgusting memories of Japan in many Koreans. In reaction, enraged Koreans protested. Onlookers shook their heads as hyperbolic. Too bad, they had no background or compassion to understand the pains of the oppressed.
Blacks and Native Americans are the oppressed people in the U.S. The blacks have marched and even rioted. Hyperbolic? One of them may become a U.S. president. Conversely, Native Americans were driven out of their own fertile lands. Many are now subsisting on handouts, silently, on barren lands, called ``reservations". ``What ya wonna do, Dok?"
``Dokdo Rage," below, is in response to the ``Poem for Dokdo." Do not go down gentle into the sea I am a rough rock, take me rough You've enraged me, O Take Take me rough, O Take, rub me rough Let me go tough and rough Rub me rough, O Take, wash my rage away Rub me, rub me, rub me rough To wash my rage away Go down rough into the sea Shoot the rising-sun in the eye Smash no shrimps between whales Smash the rising-sun in the East Sea Sing, Dokdo is our land You and I are one in the sea, O Take Sing, Dokdo is our land, O Take To wash my rage away Wash my rage away Is Dylan Thomas crying? I have tried to learn from him only in part (``Do not go gentle into that good night.").
The writer is a Korean engineer living in California. He can be reached at yunchung2@msn.com.