Gwangju 5/18
This weekend was the anniversary of 5/18 in Gwangju. There's a huge story behind it (more than I know right now) but on 5/18/1980 there was his huge massacre in Gwangju by the government. The president of Korea had just been overthrown by a soldier tyrant type and the students in Gwangju were demonstrating against him. I guess the new President didn't like it and sent the army to contain the problem and they ended up shooting into the crowd and killing tons of people. It went on for weeks and many people were killed. All of which was terrible but I guess they also lied about how many people really died and said it was only a few hundred when in actuality it was a few thousand. Well, anyway, this weekend was sort of like an anniversary of when that happened. Ten years ago during the anniversary people were still really upset and there would still be demonstrations and such and the government still intervened and people would still get killed every year. In fact, my friend Patti was there about ten years ago during this time and was actually in a situation where there were a group of demonstrators and the soldiers through tear gas at them and were chasing them through the streets. She said her and her friends were running for their lives. She has a one picture that she was able to take and if she finds it and send it to me, I'll post it. But this year it was all mock versions of what happened twenty years ago.
So anyway, this man with a camera came up to me and asked me what I knew about what happened (since I was a foreigner and he assumed I was from America). So I told him what I had heard about it (through my friend Patti). He was Korean so my friend Hae Young was interpreting his questions for me and I was answering to the camera. And then he asked Hae Young another question and she said something to him and we left. I didn't really think anything of it because I couldn't understand what was happening but Hae Young said that he said that now there are large suspicions that America was behind all of the problems that happened and that it was our fault and since I was American how did I feel about that!
I was so pissed and felt so used...I felt like I sold myself out and didn't even know it. Here I thought he was just wanting to know how much a foreigner new about the problem because he was being really nice but the real point of his question was to place blame on America and then criticize... So that pretty much sucked...but, there's nothing I can do about it. I'll probably be on the news somewhere being made a fool of because of this idiot.
He basically only asked me what I knew about what happened so he can't really twist anything I said but it just depends on the context in which he uses it. Koreans assume that the rest of the world (America especially) knows everything about Korea because they know everything about us and they get pissed when we don't know....he assumed that everyone knew about what happend and I had never heard about it before Saturday. We'll see I guess...or I may even never know... I'm ok now ut on Saturday night I was really pissed off about the whole situation. Hae Young said that she thinks she shouldn't have told me what he said but I'm glad that she did.
I know this situation is no where near some of the persecution that some people feel in other countries and things that missionary's do everyday, but it was still pretty brutal to feel taken advantage of and there was nothing I could do about it. America is not to blame for the problems of the entire world - especially 25 years after the fact!
So anyway, this man with a camera came up to me and asked me what I knew about what happened (since I was a foreigner and he assumed I was from America). So I told him what I had heard about it (through my friend Patti). He was Korean so my friend Hae Young was interpreting his questions for me and I was answering to the camera. And then he asked Hae Young another question and she said something to him and we left. I didn't really think anything of it because I couldn't understand what was happening but Hae Young said that he said that now there are large suspicions that America was behind all of the problems that happened and that it was our fault and since I was American how did I feel about that!
I was so pissed and felt so used...I felt like I sold myself out and didn't even know it. Here I thought he was just wanting to know how much a foreigner new about the problem because he was being really nice but the real point of his question was to place blame on America and then criticize... So that pretty much sucked...but, there's nothing I can do about it. I'll probably be on the news somewhere being made a fool of because of this idiot.
He basically only asked me what I knew about what happened so he can't really twist anything I said but it just depends on the context in which he uses it. Koreans assume that the rest of the world (America especially) knows everything about Korea because they know everything about us and they get pissed when we don't know....he assumed that everyone knew about what happend and I had never heard about it before Saturday. We'll see I guess...or I may even never know... I'm ok now ut on Saturday night I was really pissed off about the whole situation. Hae Young said that she thinks she shouldn't have told me what he said but I'm glad that she did.
I know this situation is no where near some of the persecution that some people feel in other countries and things that missionary's do everyday, but it was still pretty brutal to feel taken advantage of and there was nothing I could do about it. America is not to blame for the problems of the entire world - especially 25 years after the fact!