Xenophobia for Kids
November 7th, 2006 by MarkOne thing I love about Taiwan is the near lack of xenophobia. Pictures like these make me thankful to be living in a comparatively open and accepting Asian country.
At various subway stations in Korea, they often they are decorated at different times of the year with school art projects. Fire safety, future jobs, home life, technology, and so on. The theme of this one appears to be “Fuck Japan!”
AoG.2y.net: A passing moment in the life of Gord
bombing Hosted on Zooomr
stomping2 Hosted on Zooomr
stomping Hosted on ZooomrThere are quite a few more pictures from the same exhibit on the site linked at the top.
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November 14th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Those pictures are quite old.
November 14th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
They made it to the top page of Reddit the day before I posted them. That’s how I found them. Do you know any more details about them? Have you ever seen this sort of thing personally?
I’m kind of just shocked. I’ve never seen anything remotely like that here in Taiwan.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:17 am
The art projects are probably the result of a Geography/History lesson. The Korean (and I can’t read much) suggests the kids are claiming that Dok-Do (Dok Island - you can Wikipedia it) is Korean. I can’t remember much about it. Some disputed, scraggly set of tiny islands in the East Sea/Sea of Japan. Something that ought to be confined to fishing and natural gas rights disputes has been turned into a major national campaign. The Koreans claim it. The Japanese claim it. Some Koreans see it like a litmus test of future Japanese expansionism. If you REALLY want to piss off a Korean guy, mention Dokdo after a couple of bottles of soju. But it isn’t new. It’s been going on for hundreds of years.
Many Koreans (like many mainlanders) hold a pretty strong grudge against the Japanese for the occupation, war crimes, rape culture, and the systematic destruction of Korean lifestyle, history and language. Probably similar (though I’m just guessing) to how some native Taiwanese feel about the post ‘49 neighbors.
It’s a healthy dose of anti-Japanese Nationalism/propaganda, but I wouldn’t call it xenophobic. I haven’t been to Taiwan yet, but ROK is a pretty open, friendly place - even to the Japanese.
Josh
Qingdao
peer-see.com