Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Who's sorry now?

All the wrong people, it turns out. Like most people with the Korean connection, I'm wondering what's up with all the apologies for the Virginia Tech shooting from Koreans in and out of America. It all seems very obsequious to me. Why should you be apologizing? To top all the apologies, one of my students, a man in his fifties, told me the Korean government should compensate all the victims' families. Weird.

Update: I imagine, as many have said here, that the Koreans are projecting what would happen if a foreigner did the same in Korea, namely mass anti-foreigner sentiment would flare up, as it did in fall of 2002 after two girls were accidentally run over by an American tank. This is the result of that event

This also includes some of the anti-American sentiment left over from Japanese American Anton Ono's Olympic victory over a Korean speed skater.
Check out the original, supposedly produced by the North Korean government but popularized in South Korea, here.

2 comments:

Jeff said...

I've ignored most of the media circus, but from what I've read, no one is blaming Koreans for this.

Kristin said...

That dude was just a straight up lunatic. I feel really bad for his parents, I'm sure they felt like they had nobody to talk to about the kid's problems.