Chapter 8, pages 231-234

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Part 4
So far, I have been translating all of the narration in the book and leaving out the speech bubbles unless they are necessary for context or particularly interesting. The same is true of the pictures, which I only describe when they are quite shocking. The reason for doing so is that I think the pictures in the book are extremely off-putting. Images of Uncle Sam trapped in a Star of David, or the royalty of Europe prostrating themselves before a haughty enthroned Nathan Rothschild are so over the top that they provoke a strong reaction in the viewer. I really want to focus on the portion of the book that is unquestionably being presented as fact by Rhie Won-bok, and that would be the narration. This seems to me to be the most unambiguous and unquestionable way to bring attention to his glaring racism, antisemitism, and general poor scholarship.
On a related note, I am curious whether I should continue translating so much, or whether I should focus on the worst portions of the book. I think the whole narrative flow is quite interesting, but I also understand that posting everything robs the low points of some of their visceral punch. Any thoughts?

p231)
The first place that the Jews got a solid hold on the finance industry was Amsterdam. After the religious revolution religious groups being oppressed in their homelands were pushed there. Netherlands was open-minded towards Jews and Sefaradim chased from Spain came there. In the time of the English Revolution the Jews lent huge sums of war funding to Oliver Cromwell and so played a decisive role in his victory. At the chance of profit, Jews spread en masse into England. In 1688, Stewart King James the 2nd was forced out and William the 3rd of Orange, from the Netherlands, rose to the British crown. William was afraid that James had his eye on retaking the crown. He needed a massive amount of money and he consulted with Jewish merchants.
(Graphic shows William of Orange with a Jew)
Jew: "But you know nothing is free in this world. Instead of giving you this money at low interest, give me some rights equal in value to the money I've lent you."
William: "Be straight, you're asking for the right to mint money, right?"
Jew: "Oh, your highness, you've got a good head on your shoulders, that's just what I'm talking about."
William: "What's so tough about that." (maybe we could translate this as "No problem.")
Jew (thinks): "Stupid. He doesn't even know that national sovereignty is the power to coin money."

p232)
"The Jews who got permission in 1694 established the Bank of England.

"The Bank of England remained a private establishment until it was nationalized in 1946."

(Graphic shows a Jew in a yarmulke waving from behind an altar or box labeled "Bank of England" with a menorah standing on it)
This was the Jews' chance to grab England's financial power, and thus had the world's finances wrapped around their fingers (이를 계기로 유대인은 영국 내의 금융권을 장악, 세상을 그들의 뜻대로 좌지우지하였어).
Jews even occupied the chair of England's Prime Minister. Disraeli and Glad Stone (글래드 스톤 ) are representative of this.

"But it's not just England. All over Europe Jewish power, based on monetary power, began to get stronger."

Representatives of that power exhibit strong power world-wide to this day as financial dynasties. We can point to the Rothschild clan. The Rothschilds were a family of Jewish international financiers from Frankfurt. They were born in Germany and so this German Jewish name was pronounced "Rothschild' (로트 실트), but we now pronounce it in the British style. They are an ultra-wealthy Jewish clan that had all of Europe clasped in their hand via their money (전유럽을 돈으로 휘어잡은 거부 유대인 가문이지).


p233)
This family's leader, Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in the Frankfurt ghetto. Rothschild started a bank with money he gathered from usurious loans (고리대금업으로 출발하여 거금을 모아 로트실트, 즉 로스차일드 은행을 설립하고 . . .). In London, Naples, Vienna, and other places he opened branches and sent his sons to them. After he constructed a connected financial network and exercised huge influence, getting close to each country's government and power elite. They even got ennobled in various countries, meddling deeply in their government. They took power on their back as today's world financial capital's basis was solidified by them.
In Europe whenever there was a big war the Rothschilds' money played an important role. European history was reversed depending on the direction their money flowed.
England's Nathan Rothschild decided the outcome of the Napoleonic War. Nathan Rothschild lent 100 million pounds to each country's government. He had them fight Napoleon, who was hostile to Jews.

p234)
After Napoleon escaped from Elba, when the decisive Battle of Waterloo began, Rothschild promised enormous sums of financing so Prussia and the other nations' volunteer armies could receive massive reinforcements. The greatly bolstered allied forces delivered a crushing defeat to Napoleon. Napoleon eventually came to ruin at the hands of the Jews (그는 결국 유대인에 의해 몰락한 셈이지).
(Graphic shows Star of David-clad hand holding a mallet and bopping Napoleon on the head)
Nathan Rothschild as a financier was the first person to perceive that information was important. When the Battle of Waterloo began he bought off the reporters. The British and allied forces won, but of course everyone in London heard the news that they had lost. London instantly went nuts (아수라장으로 돌변). In London's stock market, the stock prices plummeted 90%. Rothschild bought these stocks at the same price as sheets of toilet paper. He was able to snatch up 62% of the stocks being exchanged on the market. England's famous families went bankrupt and fell into poverty. They had no choice but to prostrate themselves before Nathan Rothschild, now England's greatest rich man.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Chapter 8: One Must Know the Jews to Truly See America

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

Part 1
I was originally planning to translate the book from cover to cover in order. This morning I was flipping through the book on the bus and I got sucked into the eighth chapter, which deals with the history of Judaism. When I set out to translate this book I expected to find some interesting perspectives or factual errors. Instead I've found a full-on anti-Semitic polemic, and various other dubious comments about race which I'll get to later. Without further ado, Chapter 8: One Must Know the Jews to Truly See America: Jews, the powerful force that moves America. My comments are in italics this color, particularly interesting portions are in red.

This picture opens up the chapter on page 219

p220)
Among all the countries of the world, there is only one race in which a majority of the people don't live in their country of origin (본국), and that is the Jews.
Cartoon Korean man: "Korea = The country of Koreans."
Cartoon Chinese man: "China = The country where 95% of the people are of the Han nationality."
Cartoon Chinese man: "The largest population of people living outside their home country is the 40 million Chinese who live abroad. But that's only 0.3% of their home country's 1.3 billion people."
Israel has a population of 6.2 million. There are 6.5 million Jews in the U.S.
The nationless race of Jews (나라 없는 민족 유대인) were chased out of their homeland of Palestine in 70AD. They spread throughout the whole world for almost 2000 years.
(Graphic shows lines radiating out of Palestine to Western Europe and subsequently to America, Central Europe, East Europe, Africa, India, Asia and subsequently China).

Is this accurate? I was led to believe that the majority of American Jews come from Eastern and Central Europe.

The Jewish race, that advanced from Africa to China, share something with the Chinese, in that there is not a corner of the world in which either has not set down roots.
In all the world, Korea is the only place where the Jews failed to set down roots.
(Graphic shows a Joseon soldier in a guard tower)
Soldier: Only in Korea, where there aren't even any Chinatowns, were Jews unable to settle.
It's impossible to know which of the two races is the most "severe" (or harsh or sharp, "어쩌 보면 두 민족은 전세계에서 가장 '지독한' 민족일지도 몰라")
We Koreans, who are hard-working and diligent and are sad to come in second, can amass great victories in America with our competitive spirit. But in the end each and every time we hit a barrier, and that barrier is the Jews.
p221)
We Koreans, who don't know how to lose to any other race . . .

". . . [We] can never surpass the wall of Jews in American society."

This is not only true of Koreans: Every other race and ethnicity has this in common.
Cartoon Jew: "So many people hate us, but no one can mess with us."
Jews make up slightly more than 2% of the American population. They control American finance and naturally the American economy controls the world economy. They twist the media to their own ends and control the world of politics. They pilot the U.S. government from behind the scenes and they even have world politics wrapped around their finger (좌지우지). They have a monopoly on Hollywood and paint a picture of the Jewish people as virtuous victims. They play the part of herald for the message that the Arabs and Muslims that they oppose are a barbarous and violent mass.
In a word, the whites at the heart of America are called WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). . .

". . .but the real group that controls America through money and media pressure is the Jews."

So if you don't understand the Jews, you'll never understand America.
p222)
So what kind of people are the Jews? The Jews and their current implacable enemies the Arabs are sister races, both find their roots in the Semitic language family. They both draw their ancestry from their earliest forebear Abram or Abraham. According to the old testament, Abraham's great-grandson Judah lent his name to the Jews. Jews differed from other Arab peoples in their belief in the single god Yahweh.

So he's saying that the Jews are a kind of Arab, just to be clear here.

They believe that the Jews were chosen by God and that some day God would send a messiah, i.e. a savior, to save the Jewish people from hardship. The Jews clashed strongly with neighboring peoples over their belief that they were the chosen people, their monotheism and their belief in a Messiah. Even worse, their refusal to accept the gods of the invading Romans proved to be a huge stumbling block. Eventually in 70AD, they were expelled from their homeland.

p223)
This is called the Diaspora, in which the Jews were chased out of their homeland, Palestine, by the Romans.

The book does use the word Isreal in cartoons depicting the modern state of Isreal. but whenever referring to the origin of Jews it uses the term Palestine, insinuating that Isreal is a modern invention, I imagine.

From then on it was all sorrow for the Jews. They were the target of hatred and oppression as a parasite race living in other people's lands. The Jews spread out to all the compass points, but there were two main groups. One group followed the Arabian conquest of the old Roman Empire into Spain and
Portugal. The other is the group that scattered into Germany and Central Europe.
The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Arab world are called
Sefaradim. The Jews of Germany are called Ashkenazim. Even
today there are two religious leaders, one for each group. The Sefaradim and Ashkenazim existed in equal numbers during the
Middle Ages, but in 1492, Spain issued a complete order of deportation and the Sefaradim numbers fell.

(Graphic shows a voice coming from under a flag and sword)

Voice: "Since we're expelling the Muslims, expel the Jews, who are of a different religion too."
Up until World War 2, their population didn't pass 1.5 million
out of a total 16.5 million Jews.
p224)
During World War 2, Nazi Germany achieved the slaughter
of 6 million Jews. They killed 1/3 of the world's Jews in
this act of barbarity. But why would Christians hate Jews so much?

This is nearly the only reference to the holocaust in the book.

The first reason is that in their religion, central figures say that the Jews killed Jesus, but that's ridiculous. Jesus was a Jew, and his first believers were Jews. That's just an excuse for hating Jews. The second and biggest reason for hating Jews is that they will never give up their religion and reject Christianity, because they believe they are the chosen people and that a Messiah is coming.
To make them a groveling race, they were not allowed to own land. They couldn't join clubs or engage in commerce and industry. They were gathered together and made to live in ghettos.

There's plenty more on it's way. The general gist is that the Jews are a particularly unpleasant kind of Arab from Palestine twisted by years of oppression into a malevolent and unbeatable force.

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Forwards

Volume 10 of the series has two forwards. The first is included only in volumes 10-12 (Americans, American History, and American Presidents). Author Rhie Won-bok opens up the preface to the American volumes by saying that

Korea has complicated feelings about America. While it's true that one either glorifies the U.S. or opposes it, to look at it another way, the fact that it is so difficult to objectively discuss America demonstrates Korea's interest/care (관심) for the country.
우리는 미국에 대해 참으로 복잡한 감정을 가지고 있다. 그 특징은 찬미 (찬미) 아니면 반미라는 것으로, 미국을 비교적 객관적으로 바라보기 어렵다는 사실인데 거꾸로 얘기해서 그만큼 관심이 많다는 증거이기도 할 것이다

Rhie identifies the problem with Korea's perception of the U.S. as a lack of accurate information, which is

on the one hand, due to underlying racialism and xenophobia (or rejection of outside influence), and on the other hand due to insufficient experience with Europe and Asia, and also because we had a subjective experience with the U.S., the strongest nation, at a time when our country was backward.
한쪽은 민족주의를 바탕으로 한 와세배격 차원에서, 다른 한쪽은 유럽과 아시아를 충분히 겪지 못한 채 우리가 후진국일 때 세계 최강 미국을 주관적으로 경험했기 때문일 것이다.

He goes on to explain that the series was always intended to include the U.S., but that at the time that the original 9 volumes were done, he knew little about the U.S. (funny, that hasn't stopped many other writers) and, since so many others in Korea know so much about the U.S., he expected huge rebukes should he attempt a book. For these reasons, he put off writing the last three volumes for 20 years. Although he only spent a year and a half in the U.S. as an honorary professor, Rhie points out that during his 10 years living in Europe not a day went by when the U.S. was not in the news.
Finally Rhie explains why The U.S. should get three volumes. He goes out of his way to defend the importance of the seemingly superfluous volume on presidents
because the American president is

more than any other leader, the world's most powerful person, it is difficult to understand America properly without knowing about his appearance, style, and behaviors.
미국의 비중이 다른 나라보다 커서이기보다는 전세계 최고 권력자 할수 있는 미국 대통령들의 면모와 스타일, 제도를 알지 못하고는 미국을 제대로 알기 어렵기 때문니다.

I'm going to go ahead at this point and say I find his justification for adding the book about U.S. presidents a serious stretch of credibility. If I were a cynic, I just might say that Rhie, whose actual experience in America amounts to a year and a half, decided to pad out his series by writing a book about the presidents because that book would be really easy to research and write without a lot of first-hand knowledge. Also, the addition of America to the series in 2004 seems like a very mercenary attempt to capitalize on the vast market for these education-lite books. We'll see, maybe those two years really had a deep impression on him.
As for the second forward, which is an addition to the 2003 edition of the series, it mostly discusses the decision to colorize the illustrations and update the information in the books, but it contains one dynamite expression for any of you currently studying Korean as I am. When thanking those who helped him color the plates, he says 모두에게 고개 숙여 감사드립니다 ('To all of you, I bow my head in thanks'). Awesome.

About the author

Monnara was conceived by Rhie Won-Bok (이원복) . Born in Daejeon in 1946, Rhie (vexingly pronounced like the letter 'E') graduated from Seoul National University (long thought to be the best university in Korea). He subsequently attended University of Muenster, receiving a degree in design as well as Western art history. He is currently a professor of graphic design (산업미술, lit. industrial art) at Deoksung Women's University. He is also the author of (나란나란 세계사 도란도란 한국사), Rich Citizenry, First Rate Economy (부자국민 일등경제), A Comic Book Voyage into the 21st Century (만화로 떠나는 21세기 미래여행), Loyal Country, Human Country(신의 나라 인간 나라). He really likes that repetitive pattern for his titles. He was the president of the Korean Comics and Animation Society from 1998 to 2000, roughly coinciding with the beginning of The Simpsons' (which is animated in Korea) slide in quality. Hmm. Rhie is also an honorary professor at UC Irvine, according to his bio. A cursory search for him turned up no results in the University of California directory under the names "Won-Bok Rhie" and "Won-Bok Lee", although there does seem to be a scientist of some sort with the same name at USC whose name pops up with some frequency.