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Read only about 80 or 90 pages and found it very cryptic probably due to my own lack of familiarity with the constant classical(?) references. I think my mother was quite fond of Joyce and made references to Ulysses from time to time. She actually went as far to visit Dublin after she retired, which surprised me.
I might make another go of it, but i find it unlikely. I head one middle aged student of Chinese who pitches studying classical and doing calligraphy say at one point, probably in exasperation, if you started in middle age, you're not young enough to learn Chinese. I thought about the same of Joyce. I'm not young enough to cure the deficiencies in my education. Other than reading references to the family Irish legacy from my son from time to time, I tended to ignore my heritage until recently.
Read only about 80 or 90 pages and found it very cryptic probably due to my own lack of familiarity with the constant classical(?) references. I think my mother was quite fond of Joyce and made references to Ulysses from time to time. She actually went as far to visit Dublin after she retired, which surprised me.
I might make another go of it, but i find it unlikely. I head one middle aged student of Chinese who pitches studying classical and doing calligraphy say at one point, probably in exasperation, if you started in middle age, you're not young enough to learn Chinese. I thought about the same of Joyce. I'm not young enough to cure the deficiencies in my education. Other than reading references to the family Irish legacy from my son from time to time, I tended to ignore my heritage until recently.
EL, thanks for bringing up this Irish day.
up
4 users have voted.
—
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
@soryang
Language acquisition is hard at any age, and harder with age, but by no means impossible. I'm still learning Laotian. I thought I'd have a chance to go to China this summer, but it now looks doubtful, if that had been the case I'd of been studying Mandarin the entire time. Even a little each day is often of immediate benefit.
Read only about 80 or 90 pages and found it very cryptic probably due to my own lack of familiarity with the constant classical(?) references. I think my mother was quite fond of Joyce and made references to Ulysses from time to time. She actually went as far to visit Dublin after she retired, which surprised me.
I might make another go of it, but i find it unlikely. I head one middle aged student of Chinese who pitches studying classical and doing calligraphy say at one point, probably in exasperation, if you started in middle age, you're not young enough to learn Chinese. I thought about the same of Joyce. I'm not young enough to cure the deficiencies in my education. Other than reading references to the family Irish legacy from my son from time to time, I tended to ignore my heritage until recently.
...was speaking about become fluent, being able to read and write script/calligraphy, etc. He's talking level 5 expertise. That means a broad vocabulary, knowing etymology, etc. No one is going to excel in all areas after only a couple of years without immersion and a great deal of study. For tourist purposes maybe you could order food, get a beer, say hello, glad to meet you, and ask what's the tab, etc., Mostly you'd be asking people if they can speak English, etc.
#1 Language acquisition is hard at any age, and harder with age, but by no means impossible. I'm still learning Laotian. I thought I'd have a chance to go to China this summer, but it now looks doubtful, if that had been the case I'd of been studying Mandarin the entire time. Even a little each day is often of immediate benefit.
@soryang
From that perspective many Americans born here aren't English linguists either. Once away from the tourist track just about no one speaks English most places outside of Europe.
The difference can be observed in many adults who immigrated here as adults after the wars in South East Asia. Some are very fluent, though they can't read or write. They are immersed in the English speaking world. Others who learned French in school can read and write to an extent. Still others who have ensconced themselves only within the immigrant community taking non speaking jobs still speak very little conversational English.
...was speaking about become fluent, being able to read and write script/calligraphy, etc. He's talking level 5 expertise. That means a broad vocabulary, knowing etymology, etc. No one is going to excel in all areas after only a couple of years without immersion and a great deal of study. For tourist purposes maybe you could order food, get a beer, say hello, glad to meet you, and ask what's the tab, etc., Mostly you'd be asking people if they can speak English, etc.
...I think you're right. He's setting an impossible standard. How you study and learn depends on a number of variables. I've heard neurologists maintain that youth is a factor and the younger the better. If you don't have some familiarity with any second language by age 13-14 you are going to be challenged. I think if you already speak or otherwise understand a Sino-centric language, learning Mandarin is easier. Knowing any second language at a young age, yields an advantage with any language later. I'm not a scientist, this is what I have heard from doctors and researchers or those who claim to be. I like to listen to Canto to Mando occasionally for this reason although I have no practical interest in Cantonese. The young teacher has some remarkable life-language experiences. His English is great.
I'm not familiar with Lao language(s), is that Sino-centric in any sense? When I come across a new word and can't find a meaning in the Chinese dictionaries I have, and the online dictionaries, I look in the Korean dictionaries to see if I can find the analog and then go to their hanja base. Sometimes I recognize the word immediately because the Korean word for the same thing sounds similar. (The woman who ran naver.com, incidentally, has been nominated for Prime Minister of South Korea).
I don't hear people doing this anymore, but US/Korean teachers used to assess students or translators by how many Hanja they had learned. I think HSK in Mandarin uses this standard to some degree. The Korean hs standard used to be 1600 then they dropped it to 1200. By that standard I'm lucky if I'm the old middle school standard of 1000 (probably a lot less because I keep forgetting). You don't see hanja (traditional Chinese characters used that much in Korean) much anymore as virtually everything is hangul, the Korean alphabet which is much easier to read and remember the pronunciation. Korean etymology is 60-80 percent Chinese. A professional standard in Korean is 4000-5000 characters. I couldn't break the 500 barrier for years. I don't know the HSK Mandarin proficiency criteria.
the 7 minute Chinese channel is good for learning without formal structure. I found that fits my attention span. I've been dabbling in various channels. I like Mando talk for basic conversational.
#1.2.1 From that perspective many Americans born here aren't English linguists either. Once away from the tourist track just about no one speaks English most places outside of Europe.
The difference can be observed in many adults who immigrated here as adults after the wars in South East Asia. Some are very fluent, though they can't read or write. They are immersed in the English speaking world. Others who learned French in school can read and write to an extent. Still others who have ensconced themselves only within the immigrant community taking non speaking jobs still speak very little conversational English.
...I think you're right. He's setting an impossible standard. How you study and learn depends on a number of variables. I've heard neurologists maintain that youth is a factor and the younger the better. If you don't have some familiarity with any second language by age 13-14 you are going to be challenged. I think if you already speak or otherwise understand a Sino-centric language, learning Mandarin is easier. Knowing any second language at a young age, yields an advantage with any language later. I'm not a scientist, this is what I have heard from doctors and researchers or those who claim to be. I like to listen to Canto to Mando occasionally for this reason although I have no practical interest in Cantonese. The young teacher has some remarkable life-language experiences. His English is great.
I'm not familiar with Lao language(s), is that Sino-centric in any sense? When I come across a new word and can't find a meaning in the Chinese dictionaries I have, and the online dictionaries, I look in the Korean dictionaries to see if I can find the analog and then go to their hanja base. Sometimes I recognize the word immediately because the Korean word for the same thing sounds similar. (The woman who ran naver.com, incidentally, has been nominated for Prime Minister of South Korea).
I don't hear people doing this anymore, but US/Korean teachers used to assess students or translators by how many Hanja they had learned. I think HSK in Mandarin uses this standard to some degree. The Korean hs standard used to be 1600 then they dropped it to 1200. By that standard I'm lucky if I'm the old middle school standard of 1000 (probably a lot less because I keep forgetting). You don't see hanja (traditional Chinese characters used that much in Korean) much anymore as virtually everything is hangul, the Korean alphabet which is much easier to read and remember the pronunciation. Korean etymology is 60-80 percent Chinese. A professional standard in Korean is 4000-5000 characters. I couldn't break the 500 barrier for years. I don't know the HSK Mandarin proficiency criteria.
the 7 minute Chinese channel is good for learning without formal structure. I found that fits my attention span. I've been dabbling in various channels. I like Mando talk for basic conversational.
Hanja are traditional mandarin characters. Nowadays, South Korea doesn't use hanja much in media, they use their alphabet Hangul, 24 or 28 31 characters depending on how you want to count the four five doubled consonants which are aspirated or hard pronunciation. Two doubled vowels. You hit the shift key on the keyboard for these.
Hangul is used exclusively in Korea currently. Hanja (traditional Chinese characters) are only to distinguish homophones, words that have the same pronunciation, when the meaning cannot be determined from context of the text. North Korea has entirely eliminated the use of Hanja. So it was interesting to see the welcoming ceremony for Xi, with the banners hung on public buildings in Pyongyang both in hangul and mandarin. You don't see that very often. You can see it in China just north of the North Korean border where there is still a Korean population. Korean and Chinese youtubers and travelers go there sometimes and I watch those.
The hangul alphabet is shown in the graphic at the link below. It demonstrates the virtual one to one correspondence with the English alphabet-
In 1994. I came across this reading some South Korean accounts of interactions before the UN mandate was carried out. There were some negotiations among political parties nation wide after liberation, in Pyongyang, which ostensibly were directed to forming a unified Korea after Russian and US military forces left the peninsula. Naturally, the US never left.
In the course of reading a Kim Il-sung biographical note about this I came across a description of Kim Il-seung's death in July 1994, 17 days before he was supposed to meet South Korean President Kim Young-sam. I had seen Kim Young-sam a few years earlier before he became president at a reception in the US embassy. I knew he was a major political figure but that was about it. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing there. I think we were brought there in a military bus just to fill the reception area with warm bodies.
Anyway, while reading this, I learned that on June 16, 1994, according to the South Korean sources, Kim Il-sung met with former President Jimmy Carter, who on his own volition, basically negotiated the Agreed Framework, to restrict the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea. From Carter's perspective he went to prevent nuclear war with North Korea as tensions were very high at that time. Carter actually entered North Korea through the DMZ. Clinton gave him permission to go. After this historic event, Kim who was over 80 at the time, died of a heart attack on July 8, just seventeen days before he was scheduled to meet with South Korean President Kim Yong-sam. What a historic time.
"I think we were on the verge of war," he told the US public broadcaster PBS years later. "It might very well have been a second Korean War, within which a million people or so could have been killed, and a continuation of the production of nuclear fissile material… if we hadn't had a war."
"I had despised Kim Il-sung for 50 years. I was in a submarine in the Pacific during the Korean War, and many of my fellow servicemen were killed in that war, which I thought was precipitated unnecessarily by him," he told PBS.
"And so I had very serious doubts about him. When I arrived, though, he treated me with great deference. He was obviously very grateful that I had come."
Over several days, the Carters had meetings with Kim, were taken on a sightseeing tour of Pyongyang and went on a cruise on a luxury yacht owned by Kim's son, Kim Jong-il.
I remember the tension with North Korea in 1994 very well. I got a call and a letter from the pentagon because there were a couple of things that caused them to believe I could be of some use in Korea. I had to decline for personal reasons. I actually met a relatively low level state department official who actually had gone there then, at a social gathering maybe 15 years ago. His wife and my wife knew each other socially in Florida and they lived nearby. I almost fell out of my chair when he told me, he had been requested to go there as a driver with the delegation to North Korea. My understanding is he died a few years ago.
Nice picture at the link of Jimmy and Rosalyn with Kim Il-sung.
@soryang
This being an Irish and Korean thread, first the Bloomsday history is interesting. My grandmother on my mother’s side was Irish. All I know of our Irish history is my grandmother laughing about the fact that her mother always indignantly denied being Irish because Irish came from the wrong side of the tracks.
I went to college in the late 80’s, when I was in my 40’s. I became friends with a student from South Korea. She was incredibly smart, the best student in math and computer classes. I got the impression from her that Korean culture was rather chauvinistic. One thing, she said in Korea only boys learned how to ride bikes. She was about 30 and determined to ride a bike, had gotten one but having trouble learning how to ride it. My parents still had the Schwinn bike with fat tires I had as a child. I told her I’d teach her how to ride using that. That didn’t take long, then she insisted we go riding everywhere. I had to ride the Schwinn bike and in keeping with her demands to ride, quickly lost 30 pounds. Anyway, one thing I remember her saying was that North and South Korea would never be reunited because they had grown apart over the years and were basically two different countries. Whether or not that’s the case, I assume that ideally they will live in peaceful coexistence.
In 1994. I came across this reading some South Korean accounts of interactions before the UN mandate was carried out. There were some negotiations among political parties nation wide after liberation, in Pyongyang, which ostensibly were directed to forming a unified Korea after Russian and US military forces left the peninsula. Naturally, the US never left.
In the course of reading a Kim Il-sung biographical note about this I came across a description of Kim Il-seung's death in July 1994, 17 days before he was supposed to meet South Korean President Kim Young-sam. I had seen Kim Young-sam a few years earlier before he became president at a reception in the US embassy. I knew he was a major political figure but that was about it. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing there. I think we were brought there in a military bus just to fill the reception area with warm bodies.
Anyway, while reading this, I learned that on June 16, 1994, according to the South Korean sources, Kim Il-sung met with former President Jimmy Carter, who on his own volition, basically negotiated the Agreed Framework, to restrict the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea. From Carter's perspective he went to prevent nuclear war with North Korea as tensions were very high at that time. Carter actually entered North Korea through the DMZ. Clinton gave him permission to go. After this historic event, Kim who was over 80 at the time, died of a heart attack on July 8, just seventeen days before he was scheduled to meet with South Korean President Kim Yong-sam. What a historic time.
"I think we were on the verge of war," he told the US public broadcaster PBS years later. "It might very well have been a second Korean War, within which a million people or so could have been killed, and a continuation of the production of nuclear fissile material… if we hadn't had a war."
"I had despised Kim Il-sung for 50 years. I was in a submarine in the Pacific during the Korean War, and many of my fellow servicemen were killed in that war, which I thought was precipitated unnecessarily by him," he told PBS.
"And so I had very serious doubts about him. When I arrived, though, he treated me with great deference. He was obviously very grateful that I had come."
Over several days, the Carters had meetings with Kim, were taken on a sightseeing tour of Pyongyang and went on a cruise on a luxury yacht owned by Kim's son, Kim Jong-il.
I remember the tension with North Korea in 1994 very well. I got a call and a letter from the pentagon because there were a couple of things that caused them to believe I could be of some use in Korea. I had to decline for personal reasons. I actually met a relatively low level state department official who actually had gone there then, at a social gathering maybe 15 years ago. His wife and my wife knew each other socially in Florida and they lived nearby. I almost fell out of my chair when he told me, he had been requested to go there as a driver with the delegation to North Korea. My understanding is he died a few years ago.
Nice picture at the link of Jimmy and Rosalyn with Kim Il-sung.
...her mother always indignantly denied being Irish because Irish came from the wrong side of the tracks.
I hear that loud and clear. The story about bike riding rings so true. I wish I could go hiking again all the time on those hills and mountains all over Korea.
There is no question South Korea is paternalistic/confucian and treats women poorly or are too conservative and role conscious. Becuase they aren't draft bait for compulsory military service, the young men complain the women leave them behind in college and careers. I'm no expert on that, but it polarizes their society. The young men of this type are know as Ilbe, and are right wing. The women are imo more politically aware, more active, more organized, and are the force for good in South Korea. I hope these issues are overcome. I simply cannot keep up with Ms. So.
Whether the north and south could conceivably unify is the issue. The best start is to simply get along, encourage exchanges, commerce, and get over the threats and recriminations, etc. Any movement toward normalization, just getting along, doing business and cultural exchanges results in accusations of being a communist a traitor etc. One step at a time. Frankly, the US public input on this is almost invariably wrong. Trump missed the chance of a lifetime, in Hanoi in February 2019. It's not the goal, it's getting there, one step at a time. Any Korean statesman has the obligation to do that, and not let foreign powers manipulate their policies. I'm sorry to see the block politics that the US experts invited...
#2 This being an Irish and Korean thread, first the Bloomsday history is interesting. My grandmother on my mother’s side was Irish. All I know of our Irish history is my grandmother laughing about the fact that her mother always indignantly denied being Irish because Irish came from the wrong side of the tracks.
I went to college in the late 80’s, when I was in my 40’s. I became friends with a student from South Korea. She was incredibly smart, the best student in math and computer classes. I got the impression from her that Korean culture was rather chauvinistic. One thing, she said in Korea only boys learned how to ride bikes. She was about 30 and determined to ride a bike, had gotten one but having trouble learning how to ride it. My parents still had the Schwinn bike with fat tires I had as a child. I told her I’d teach her how to ride using that. That didn’t take long, then she insisted we go riding everywhere. I had to ride the Schwinn bike and in keeping with her demands to ride, quickly lost 30 pounds. Anyway, one thing I remember her saying was that North and South Korea would never be reunited because they had grown apart over the years and were basically two different countries. Whether or not that’s the case, I assume that ideally they will live in peaceful coexistence.
Comments
I found Joyce rough going
Read only about 80 or 90 pages and found it very cryptic probably due to my own lack of familiarity with the constant classical(?) references. I think my mother was quite fond of Joyce and made references to Ulysses from time to time. She actually went as far to visit Dublin after she retired, which surprised me.
I might make another go of it, but i find it unlikely. I head one middle aged student of Chinese who pitches studying classical and doing calligraphy say at one point, probably in exasperation, if you started in middle age, you're not young enough to learn Chinese. I thought about the same of Joyce. I'm not young enough to cure the deficiencies in my education. Other than reading references to the family Irish legacy from my son from time to time, I tended to ignore my heritage until recently.
EL, thanks for bringing up this Irish day.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
My pleasure. Joyce was indeed a load.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
LOL! nt
己所不欲，勿施于人。
@soryang Language acquisition is
Language acquisition is hard at any age, and harder with age, but by no means impossible. I'm still learning Laotian. I thought I'd have a chance to go to China this summer, but it now looks doubtful, if that had been the case I'd of been studying Mandarin the entire time. Even a little each day is often of immediate benefit.
I think the post graduate candidate
...was speaking about become fluent, being able to read and write script/calligraphy, etc. He's talking level 5 expertise. That means a broad vocabulary, knowing etymology, etc. No one is going to excel in all areas after only a couple of years without immersion and a great deal of study. For tourist purposes maybe you could order food, get a beer, say hello, glad to meet you, and ask what's the tab, etc., Mostly you'd be asking people if they can speak English, etc.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
@soryang From that perspective
From that perspective many Americans born here aren't English linguists either. Once away from the tourist track just about no one speaks English most places outside of Europe.
The difference can be observed in many adults who immigrated here as adults after the wars in South East Asia. Some are very fluent, though they can't read or write. They are immersed in the English speaking world. Others who learned French in school can read and write to an extent. Still others who have ensconced themselves only within the immigrant community taking non speaking jobs still speak very little conversational English.
Yes Ban Nock
...I think you're right. He's setting an impossible standard. How you study and learn depends on a number of variables. I've heard neurologists maintain that youth is a factor and the younger the better. If you don't have some familiarity with any second language by age 13-14 you are going to be challenged. I think if you already speak or otherwise understand a Sino-centric language, learning Mandarin is easier. Knowing any second language at a young age, yields an advantage with any language later. I'm not a scientist, this is what I have heard from doctors and researchers or those who claim to be. I like to listen to Canto to Mando occasionally for this reason although I have no practical interest in Cantonese. The young teacher has some remarkable life-language experiences. His English is great.
I'm not familiar with Lao language(s), is that Sino-centric in any sense? When I come across a new word and can't find a meaning in the Chinese dictionaries I have, and the online dictionaries, I look in the Korean dictionaries to see if I can find the analog and then go to their hanja base. Sometimes I recognize the word immediately because the Korean word for the same thing sounds similar. (The woman who ran naver.com, incidentally, has been nominated for Prime Minister of South Korea).
I don't hear people doing this anymore, but US/Korean teachers used to assess students or translators by how many Hanja they had learned. I think HSK in Mandarin uses this standard to some degree. The Korean hs standard used to be 1600 then they dropped it to 1200. By that standard I'm lucky if I'm the old middle school standard of 1000 (probably a lot less because I keep forgetting). You don't see hanja (traditional Chinese characters used that much in Korean) much anymore as virtually everything is hangul, the Korean alphabet which is much easier to read and remember the pronunciation. Korean etymology is 60-80 percent Chinese. A professional standard in Korean is 4000-5000 characters. I couldn't break the 500 barrier for years. I don't know the HSK Mandarin proficiency criteria.
the 7 minute Chinese channel is good for learning without formal structure. I found that fits my attention span. I've been dabbling in various channels. I like Mando talk for basic conversational.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
Always wondered why the Mandarian
.
characters do not look like yours. Hanja is a new concept
for me. It does look less compressed in comparison.
仁者無敵 and 感謝. Seems like a mix of Sino/Korean.
Zionism is a social disease
Nice four character idiom Q
Treat people humanely (and voila!) No enemies.
Hanja are traditional mandarin characters. Nowadays, South Korea doesn't use hanja much in media, they use their alphabet Hangul, 24 or
2831 characters depending on how you want to count thefourfive doubled consonants which are aspirated or hard pronunciation. Two doubled vowels. You hit the shift key on the keyboard for these.Hangul is used exclusively in Korea currently. Hanja (traditional Chinese characters) are only to distinguish homophones, words that have the same pronunciation, when the meaning cannot be determined from context of the text. North Korea has entirely eliminated the use of Hanja. So it was interesting to see the welcoming ceremony for Xi, with the banners hung on public buildings in Pyongyang both in hangul and mandarin. You don't see that very often. You can see it in China just north of the North Korean border where there is still a Korean population. Korean and Chinese youtubers and travelers go there sometimes and I watch those.
The hangul alphabet is shown in the graphic at the link below. It demonstrates the virtual one to one correspondence with the English alphabet-
Korean Alphabet A to Z – Learn Hangeul with English Sounds
I liked this line from a Tang dynasty poem-
海内存知己，天涯若比邻
Though separated by vast oceans, true friends are never far apart.
謝謝朋友
edited- can't count very well
己所不欲，勿施于人。
I believe this also happened on June 16
In 1994. I came across this reading some South Korean accounts of interactions before the UN mandate was carried out. There were some negotiations among political parties nation wide after liberation, in Pyongyang, which ostensibly were directed to forming a unified Korea after Russian and US military forces left the peninsula. Naturally, the US never left.
In the course of reading a Kim Il-sung biographical note about this I came across a description of Kim Il-seung's death in July 1994, 17 days before he was supposed to meet South Korean President Kim Young-sam. I had seen Kim Young-sam a few years earlier before he became president at a reception in the US embassy. I knew he was a major political figure but that was about it. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing there. I think we were brought there in a military bus just to fill the reception area with warm bodies.
Anyway, while reading this, I learned that on June 16, 1994, according to the South Korean sources, Kim Il-sung met with former President Jimmy Carter, who on his own volition, basically negotiated the Agreed Framework, to restrict the development of nuclear weapons in North Korea. From Carter's perspective he went to prevent nuclear war with North Korea as tensions were very high at that time. Carter actually entered North Korea through the DMZ. Clinton gave him permission to go. After this historic event, Kim who was over 80 at the time, died of a heart attack on July 8, just seventeen days before he was scheduled to meet with South Korean President Kim Yong-sam. What a historic time.
Here's a BBC account-
When Carter met Kim - and stopped a nuclear war
I remember the tension with North Korea in 1994 very well. I got a call and a letter from the pentagon because there were a couple of things that caused them to believe I could be of some use in Korea. I had to decline for personal reasons. I actually met a relatively low level state department official who actually had gone there then, at a social gathering maybe 15 years ago. His wife and my wife knew each other socially in Florida and they lived nearby. I almost fell out of my chair when he told me, he had been requested to go there as a driver with the delegation to North Korea. My understanding is he died a few years ago.
Nice picture at the link of Jimmy and Rosalyn with Kim Il-sung.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
@soryang This being an Irish and
This being an Irish and Korean thread, first the Bloomsday history is interesting. My grandmother on my mother’s side was Irish. All I know of our Irish history is my grandmother laughing about the fact that her mother always indignantly denied being Irish because Irish came from the wrong side of the tracks.
I went to college in the late 80’s, when I was in my 40’s. I became friends with a student from South Korea. She was incredibly smart, the best student in math and computer classes. I got the impression from her that Korean culture was rather chauvinistic. One thing, she said in Korea only boys learned how to ride bikes. She was about 30 and determined to ride a bike, had gotten one but having trouble learning how to ride it. My parents still had the Schwinn bike with fat tires I had as a child. I told her I’d teach her how to ride using that. That didn’t take long, then she insisted we go riding everywhere. I had to ride the Schwinn bike and in keeping with her demands to ride, quickly lost 30 pounds. Anyway, one thing I remember her saying was that North and South Korea would never be reunited because they had grown apart over the years and were basically two different countries. Whether or not that’s the case, I assume that ideally they will live in peaceful coexistence.
Anya
Great story Anya!
Thanks for sharing it.
I hear that loud and clear. The story about bike riding rings so true. I wish I could go hiking again all the time on those hills and mountains all over Korea.
There is no question South Korea is paternalistic/confucian and treats women poorly or are too conservative and role conscious. Becuase they aren't draft bait for compulsory military service, the young men complain the women leave them behind in college and careers. I'm no expert on that, but it polarizes their society. The young men of this type are know as Ilbe, and are right wing. The women are imo more politically aware, more active, more organized, and are the force for good in South Korea. I hope these issues are overcome. I simply cannot keep up with Ms. So.
Whether the north and south could conceivably unify is the issue. The best start is to simply get along, encourage exchanges, commerce, and get over the threats and recriminations, etc. Any movement toward normalization, just getting along, doing business and cultural exchanges results in accusations of being a communist a traitor etc. One step at a time. Frankly, the US public input on this is almost invariably wrong. Trump missed the chance of a lifetime, in Hanoi in February 2019. It's not the goal, it's getting there, one step at a time. Any Korean statesman has the obligation to do that, and not let foreign powers manipulate their policies. I'm sorry to see the block politics that the US experts invited...
己所不欲，勿施于人。