I wish I had more of my old regular readers: the likes of Sonagi, Sewing, Darin, Plunge, even Dogbert, and others whom I'd never met, who could be relied upon to drop in once a day or a few times a week and leave comments.
I have quite a few new regulars, but they don't leave as many messages, even though the number of hits I get each day is twice that of three or four years ago. At this point I'd even welcome Bevers or Shakuhachi, because it would be more fun the more guesses I got for this (which I had once envisioned as a regular feature).
Ah, but let's have a go at this anyway. Who is the distinguished-looking haraboji elderly gentleman standing in the middle of the back row, the one in the hanbok? And no, it's not Burl Ives.
If I was Gerry Bevers I would say they are all Japanese and that all Korean claims to the contrary were false. Shakuhachi would probably counter this by saying it was the last Korean royal family and that the guy on right was Sunjong, a truly educated Korean who understood how much Japan was better than Korea, and one who developed a very unhealthy complex about hating Korea and Koreans but still trying to sleep with Korean girls where ever he can find them in Sydney.
ReplyDeleteSunjong was in Sydney? ;)
ReplyDeleteActually, I don't know who the gentlemen are to the left and right of the harabŏji, but I don't think either is Sunjong.
Sunjong looks very different with a moustache.
Anyway, in case either shows up, I don't want to put words in their mouths about what they might say. I'd genuinely like to hear their (or anyone's) guess, and I'd be at least a little impressed with whomever gets it right.
As for Shakuhachi's "unhealthy complex about hating Korea," I would agree that his blog and comments really do seem rather singlemindedly focused on that, but other than a couple short stories he wrote that involved bedding Korean women, I personally haven't seen any evidence that he sleeps with Korean girls wherever he can find them. Maybe he tries, I don't know, but sex is such a loaded topic and when libelous words can be used to unfairly smear a person, I would have to have more to go on (not that I'm asking for any such information; I don't need it for any reason).