Friday, March 12, 2010

Korea demography reader (March 12, 2010 edition)

5 comments:

  1. What's with the "hangeul advocates"?? As if learning Chinese characters will hurt national pride. Removing hanja as mandatory learning in schools was one of the worst moves by the Park Chung Hee era for Korean education. I know Koreans who graduated from H.S. in Korea and can't even spell their own names in hanja! With a language so deeply rooted in chinese characters, why not learn them?? Without knowledge of Chinese characters, all the art and meaning of the language gets simplified and dumbed-down.

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  2. >> South Korea may have reversed the "missing women" phenomenon.

    Was this supposed to link to summat about the lack of female infants?

    Any stop-gap measures which result in Sonja Sohn are to be commended, in my view.

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  3. Alec, thanks for pointing out the inaccurate link, which I've now fixed.

    Not having seen The Wire, I was not aware of who Sonja Sohn is (I had to Google her), but now I think I shall watch.

    In the show is she depicted as mixed, or Black, or Asian, or is it not addressed?

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  4. It wasn't an issue - the black Po-Pos were very much middle-class, and above the racial politics of the street.

    Although, I suppose there was an implication that she was black rather than Korean, with the choice of name.

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  5. Also, if you want a good hard laugh at a sub Cao de Benos, try this:

    http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4089

    Genuinely mad.

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