Deauwand Myers is English professor at Shingu University, Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
“Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.” –Jeremy Taylor, British clergyman and theologian, (1613-67).
“To argue that to preserve our freedoms we must suspend our freedoms, that to safeguard elections we must cancel elections, that to defend ourselves from dictatorship we must appoint a dictator – what logic is this?” — From Robert Harris’s “Dictator.”
“I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this." — from Homer’s epic tragedy, “The Odyssey.”
Recently, President Yoon Suk Yeol dismissed Korea’s umbrella intelligence agency’s (National Intelligence Service, or NIS) powerful head, Director Kim Kyou-hyun, and oddly, Director Kim’s two chief deputies.
“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place... The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself — anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide…to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” — from George Orwell’s magnum opus, “1984.”
Reparation — the making of amends for a wrong one has done, by paying money to or otherwise helping those who have been wronged. — From Webster’s English Dictionary.
By Deauwand MyersAfter the American Civil War, all states with enslaved populations of African descent (the Confederacy) were forced to free those populations (except in Texas, where the enslaved were informed of their hard-fought freedom later than in other states). On June 19, 1865, 2,000 Union troops entered Galveston Bay, Texas. The Union Army declared that the more than 250,000 enslaved people in the state of Texas were emancipated by order of the president (President Lincoln, at the time).In the United States, this day is celebrated as a federal holiday called “Juneteenth.” Juneteenth is a combination of the words “June” and “nineteenth,” the day the last group of slaves was officially freed. Long before this official holiday was observed (a holiday ushered in by President Biden), there was an alternative term for Juneteenth, one that simply means joy. They called it “Jubilee.” There is a similar national holiday in Korea on this very day, Aug. 15, a day called “Gwangbokjeol,” which, loosely translated, means “th
By Deauwand MyersThere are a lot of things I like about Korean culture. Infrastructure, cuisine, dramas, K-pop music… the list is quite extensive. But we're going to have to talk about the elephant in the room.There's a dark and destructive underbelly within the nation: the need to be perfect in all things, and it is a huge social problem that society and the government need to tackle. The tentacles of this obsession with perfection reach into many areas of Korean society.Let's look at one example that's not as obvious as the others I'll cover later. Recently, a young teacher killed herself alleged because of the bullying of students and their parents. Why was she being bullied by parents? These parents know the competition is stiff for Korean students. Standardized test scores throughout the students' academic career ― secondary and tertiary ― can and usually do affect their career and financial futures. The stress from all this is called toxic stress, and you experience everything as a blood sport competition. It stresses the parents, so they put that stress on teachers. Wor
By Deauwand MyersSo many things. Let us first discuss the proposed deployment of American THAAD missiles in Korea. Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor who manufactures the missile defense system for America and many other countries, is not too shy to brag about its system, describing it in its white papers and online in breathy accolades: “The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is a highly effective, combat-proven defense against short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats. THAAD is the only U.S. system designed to intercept targets outside and inside the atmosphere.” Statistically, the system has a nearly 100 percent success rate in lethal interception of ballistic missiles. The Korea Times and other news organizations wonder if the deployment of such a system to operational status would bring ire from North Korea and China. My answer is twofold, “Yes.” And “who cares?”Let's then discuss the Chinese Communist Party. It is, for all intents and purposes, a fascist, criminal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate gove
By Deauwand MyersKorea and Japan have a long and troubled history with each other. They shared a variation of the Chinese writing system for centuries. Both countries share similar tastes in food (raw seafood, rice and green tea, for example), and they both have excellent infrastructure and public transportation. But Japan's brutal occupation of Korea from 1910 until 1945 and the industrial slavery of Koreans by the Japanese is still a point of contention with the Korean population, especially its politicians.This is why the recent bilateral and trilateral summits with Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and U.S. President Joe Biden are so remarkable. The liberals (the Democratic Party of Korea, or DPK), who control the National Assembly, claimed President Yoon (member of the conservative People Power Party, or PPP) was giving concessions to Japan's bad history with Korea. It is not uncommon for Korean and Chinese politicians to use Japan's wartime atrocities as a way to score political points. (Japan also occupied China during wartime, and was horr