Please, leave English alone. Matt also found another dumb-ass sign that tried, and failed, to make O.B.A.M.A. an acronym for something. I'll admit I don't cheer for Korea during international sporting events, mostly because sportsmanship and the spirit of friendly competition go right out the window among athletes and fans, and I've done a good job of not following the World Baseball Classic so far. But I think if Korea wins, and they decide to plant a Korean flag on American soil like they did in 2006 when they beat Japan in a second-round match-up, I might just have to move some furniture around.
31 comments:
That flag-planting is fucking despicable. And, what is up with the religious Dokdo-fanaticism: Dokdo:3:16
I triple-super-dog-dare you to plant an American flag in the ground in front of some significant building or structure somewhere in Korea . . .mooowahahahahhahahhahha . . . just don't get killed doing it.
J
Now hold on, hold on. I think the fans may have stumbled onto some soju-induced wisdom here. Winner of the next Japan-Korea game gets Dokdo!
Dave: I made that joke in 2006, saying, "Why don't we just give Dokdo to the winner of the next Korea/Japan soccer game?"
My Korean coworker's response was so vociferous it startled me: "BUT DOKDO IS OURS!"
Ticked her off pretty good.
That Dokdo sign is at too much of an angle to make it easy to Photoshop it for evil purposes. These guys have a much easier sign to tweak (I don't think they were actually carrying a Dokdo sign).
I did think that the flag-planting in 2006 was a bit over the top, but my view has tempered somewhat. This is, after all, a country that in modern times hasn't invaded or tried to usurp any other territory, so the flag-planting doesn't carry that kind of symbolism (unlike, say, the US, UK, Japan, Germany, etc.). It's about as innocuous as if the Danes were to do it.
After doing well in the first WBC, I think the motivation was akin to planting one of those flags at the South Pole or the top of Mt Everest.
Yeah, I know that might not be a popular view here, but whatever.
Winner of the next Japan-Korea game gets Dokdo!
Sounds like a plan. And if Mexico wins tonight in Petco Park, they get to keep San Diego.
They're going to get it back eventually anyway.
"This is, after all, a country that in modern times hasn't invaded or tried to usurp any other territory, so the flag-planting doesn't carry that kind of symbolism"
Are you sure about that, Kushibo???
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/02/137_39711.html
"Sounds like a plan. And if Mexico wins tonight in Petco Park, they get to keep San Diego.
They're going to get it back eventually anyway."
San Diego is Cuban territory is it?
I wonder how Japan felt about the Korean flag planting.
San Diego is Cuban territory is it?
No, but it used to be Mexico's.
There's no perfect equivalent to the Korean-Japanese row over who has legal right to those islets, of course, but the emotion-laden issue of former Mexican territory and irredentism makes for a good stand-in, especially in San Diego.
It's been a while since I was in grade school. What do they teach was the moral imperative for the US taking over the northernmost one-third of Mexico again? ;)
I wonder how Japan felt about the Korean flag planting.
Probably not as bad as Koreans feel when Japanese leaders keep claiming part of Korea.
Anyway, flags don't grow very well in that arid environment.
Brian, I will later write up some detailed thoughts on Madagascar that go beyond these, but a long-term lease, with billions paid out, under no imaginable threat of arms, does not count invasion or usurpation (and maybe you meant that a bit tongue-in-cheek).
Korea (represented by Daewoo and whomever works with them) is probably much more at risk of getting booted out at gunpoint than Malagasies are of losing their sovereignty at gunpoint.
(And I will elaborate more on my own blog, there is considerable potential for abuse that requires a built-in system of checks and balances NOT provide by Daewoo.)
Sorry, that was Matt who wrote that, not Brian.
"Probably not as bad as Koreans feel when Japanese leaders keep claiming part of Korea"
I wonder how you can possibly know that Japan would not feel as bad about Korean's "claim."
I wonder how you can possibly know that Japan would not feel as bad about Korean's "claim."
I'm extrapolating based on countless conversations with Japanese in Japan, Korea, and the United States.
Anyway, I'm a bit loath to put stock in the claims of the same people who believe that the US forced a peace-loving Imperial Japan into war and are sympathetic to the idea that Korea still rightly belongs to Japan, since they are the source of Japan's ongoing claim to Takeshima.
I'm extrapolating based on countless conversations with Japanese in Japan, Korea, and the United States.
Right, after the WBC in 2006 you asked countless Japanese people in Japan , Korea, and the U.S whether Japanese people felt better about the flag planting than those same Japanese people could imagine Korean's feeling about Japan's continued claim to Takeshima.
This makes no sense.
Right after the WBC? No. In the period afterward.
In short, the reactions I heard ranged from the flag-planting being peculiar or even funny (a minority opinion amongst the people I talked with) to being annoying or considered bad sportsmanship.
None felt hurt, bitter, humiliated, angry — the feelings evoked in many Koreans about Japanese claims on Korean-held territory.
Or maybe you meant that you just didn't believe I'd actually talked about this kind of thing with anybody from Japan.
I did. Another consensus: America makes too many "America #1" movies.
I triple-super-dog-dare you to plant an American flag in the ground in front of some significant building or structure somewhere in Korea . . .mooowahahahahhahahhahha . . . just don't get killed doing it.
Yeah, because Anaheim Stadium and, say, Tŏksu-gung Palace? Same same.
Now if the American team were to plant a Stars & Stripes on the pitcher's mound immediately following a defeat by Japan, I don't think their lives would be in danger.
My WORD VERIFICATION is phevers, which looks like gbevers.
I don't think Korea will try to colonize California, or has any plans (that it says outloud) to take the US into a Korean Empire.
But I think the flag-planting thing is tacky. Maybe they didn't mean to imply conquest, but come on . . . who does stuff like that? Just tacky, base, and revealing of bad sportsmanship. Probably to most Americans it's innocuous, or they thought "aww, good for those Koreans," but I think if they were privy to all the chest-thumping nationalism that goes on here both in sports and out, they'd probably roll their eyes a little quicker.
How much longer will Korea be considered, and most importantly consider itself, an underdog in baseball?
I agree with everything you just wrote, Brian. I said my reaction to the flag-planting has tempered a bit, but geez, my first reaction was to put profanity in a post title.
Yeah, how long can the underdog thing go on? Not much longer. Korea's modern development puts it sort of at the adolescence stage in many respects: growing out of a period of learning and dependency, wanting to do a lot, capable of doing a lot, but often doing so in a ham-handed series of first tries at this and that. And, in some cases, not respected by others for having grown and learned, or demanded to finally pull their own weight.
Anyway, one thing to put this in perspective: the event happened three years ago, not today. Since then, the wins haven't been followed by a similar display, right?
We'll see tomorrow.
Well, they already beat Japan once (last Monday) and they didn't do anything unsportsmanship-like. Well, not that I heard of anyway.
Came here for the Photoshops, leaving disappointed. =(
kushibo,
Way to take over someone else's blog. Or is that several blogs?
John from Daejeon
just as some US dude. The planting of the flag in a stadium, after winning a big game?
Why would that bother me?
This isn't Eddie Izzard cunning use of flags territory anymore. It was the US, the team had "owned" the stadium in the sporting sense, and that gesture seemed natural to me.
Oh, they're Macedonians!
DOЌDO KOREA
Americans complaining about an international flag being planted on a baseball mound on American soil while hosting an international tournament strikes me as ironic.
How many is "countless"?
Samuel wrote:
I wonder how Japan felt about the Korean flag planting.
Marmot's Hole commenter cm points to pictures of the Japanese team also doing flag-planting.
Samuel asks:
How many is "countless"?
Countless is so many I can't count. Or at least so many I can't remember the exact number. But that's sloppy writing, so I should have said "dozens."
One can only hope that a controversial call against Korea or the ejection of a Korean player which leads to a loss in an upcoming WBC semifinal or final against either Japan or the U.S. will lead to nationalistic outrage that will make the Ohno brouhaha look like a mild response by Koreans.
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