More on the shelving

ABC News reports

Rhie said he would consider how to change the book and would undertake an "all-out revision."

"I'm sorry to see things like a frog in a well," Rhie said Thursday, referring to a traditional Korean saying that a frog in a well is unaware of the larger world outside. "In the future, I will write books in a more responsible way."

What is it with this guy and the stupid frog in the well? What is the obsession? He drew that same damn picture of the cowboy in the well so many times, and he's still harping on it. Find a new simile, Rhie!

Rhie describes his 2002 visit to Disney's California Adventure as "like five thousand frogs of every stripe secreted away in the depths of wells of every possible description, like a well made of frogs inhabited by yet another frog, all the while unaware of his own well's inferiority to other wells, like a frog-and-well based version of the Matrix."

Here's my translation of the article in the Hankook Ilbo.

Jew disparaging "Monnara..." pulled, contents to be revised by mutual agreement.

Jewish group visits Gimm-Young Publishing

On March 15th following protests by Jewish Americans saying parts of the comic "Monnara Iunnara: America" [sic] disparage Jews, representatives of the Jewish human rights group The Simon Wiesenthal Center visited Gimm-Young Publishing, which pubished the book. Vice president of the group Abraham Cooper and others metGimm-Young president Eunju Park and author, DeokSeong Women's University professor Rhie Won-bok at the comany's offices in Gahoe-dong, Seoul this morning and agreed to withdraw Monnara Iunnara: America from the market and to publish a Korean version of the book "Dismantling the Big Lie, which digs up the plots against Jews that are out there.
Professor Rhie said he "would take into consideration the Jewish group's explanation about the problem passages, remove or alter them and then put it out again."
Last month American Jews demanded the book be corrected, pointing out the passages that said "Jews are the great power moving America" (p242, 247) and "Koreans in America can succeed but run into the barrier called the Jew" (p220).

Here's MBN TV's brief report on the story, most notable I think for the most negative or at least questioning take on Monnara that I've yet seen in the Korean media by the anchorwoman introducing the story. Could the media's slant on the story be turning from the original "this is a waste of time" stance that the earlier stories took?

Anchor: There are likely few people who don't know of the
educational comic "Monnara Iunnara". The series sold over 10 million copies
domestically, but following the indication by a Jewish group that there are
problems with the content, The decision has been made to pull the book with the
problem.

Reporter: An Yeong-Ju reporting. Representatives from the
international Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center have visited
Korea. They are here to urge the revision of the 10-million selling educational
comic "Monnara Iunnara" that they say contains parts that disparage the Jews.
The problem part is in the volume on America that says "The Jews move America".
Simon Wiesenthal and the publisher's side have agreed to stop printing and pull
all the copies of the volume on America currently being sold and to revise the
contents.

Yonhap TV reports that the Wiesenthal Center invited a group representing Gimm-Young to Los Angeles to see Jews and Koreans living together first-hand. President Eunju Park was quoted as saying "We will examine the parts of the book to be revised and the invitation positively and will give a concrete answer soon". They also report that after the meeting at Gimm Young Wiesenthal reps met with U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow to discuss their opinions on the incident and had a meeting with international reporters at the Hyatt.

Wiesenthal Center Press Conference

I received this in my inbox today. Too late notice for me to go, I'm afraid, but if anyone is in the area check it out. Naturally I will be following the outcome of Rabbi Cooper's visit closely.

PRESS ADVISORY March 14, 2007


WHAT: WIESENTHAL CENTER BRIEFING ON ANTISEMITIC COMIC BOOK CONTROVERSY

WHEN: Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 4:30 PM

WHERE: GRAND HYATT SEOUL, 747 7 Hannam Dong Yongsan Ku, Seoul 140-738


On Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 4:30 PM at the Grand Hyatt Seoul, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, will give a briefing about a volume of the popular Monnara Iunnara (Distant Countries and Neighboring Countries) series that recycles Jewish conspiracy theories that “echo classic Nazi canards” The briefing follows a meeting earlier with Eu-ju Park, the CEO OF Gimm-Young Publishers, who released the series. In a letter last month, Rabbi Cooper urged Ms. Park to “carefully review the slanders in this book that historically have led to antisemitic violence and genocide.” and instead “consider providing facts about the Jewish people, our religion and values to young Koreans.”

On a related note, Rabbi Cooper yesterday condemned a student group in Taiwan that promotes the ideals of Adolf Hitler. The group is seeking NGO status in the international community.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, and the Council of Europe.
Rabbi Cooper can be reached via e-mail at acooper@wiesenthal.com or at the Grand Hyatt Seoul, 82-2-797-1234. For additional information, please contact the Center's Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036 or mlavina@wiesenthal.net.

Something positive coming out of all this

Well, it looks like we have something to thank old Mr. Rhie for today. The LA Times reports that in the wake of this controversy, Korean American leaders have formed deeper bonds with Jewish leaders. The Korean leaders made their first visit to the historic Wilshire Boulevard Temple, where they were welcomed as friends. That's nice to see.

Contrast that with what they're saying over at Ktown213.com, for example (about Rhie Won-bok)

"We need MORE people like him and less stupid korean americans who don't know
what they are talking about."

and

"In fact I think these so called 'leaders' are a bunch of idiots who are bending down and sucking every zionist c*ck thinking they even had a friendly relationship with the ashkenazi jews in the first place. . . The fact the jews are so concerned about some CARTOONS a korean in korea produced shows the zionistic nature that DOES exist in the media. That rabi just proved the professors point of view. "

Very classy, bl**ping out the curses like that. But in fact that last point is the major reaction that I've heard here in Korea. "This proves that the Jews control the press!" Is it the conspiratorial mindset that makes people in Korea instantly assume that only a Jew-controlled media would care about this?

LA Times reports on the story.

Here. It looks like Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center is coming to Seoul March 15th to see about getting the book taken off shelves. The article describes the response of Gimm Young Publishing's director Eun-ju Park as a brief email to Rabbi Cooper explaining that she had sent an apology to Charles Kim, national president of the Korean American Coalition. Utterly shocking, still.
Mercury News writes of a protest by Korean American groups against the publisher, and the same story was also reported in the Fresno Bee.
At last check 83 papers have picked up the original story through the AP, according to Google News Search

Chosun Ilbo tells us "What Monnara's Mistakes Show Us"

This is an editorial by Shin Mun-yeong, chief editor of Veritas Books, published in the Chosun Ilbo on February 19th. I just translated it and I must say it is fascinating, definitely worth a read. It starts out telling a story about how the Wiesenthal Center and Rabbi Cooper caused a popular Japanese magazine to be shut down and a writer to commit seppuku over a quibbling disagreement about the scale of the Holocaust. the writer then tells an anecdote about an extremely rich Jewish family he tutored for when he was studying in America, and their obvious unhappiness despite being rich. To read the story, it seems obvious that the woman in it's reaction probably had more to do with his clueless assumption that all things Jewish come from Israel than anything else. He then goes on to remind his readers of all the pain the Jews have gone through and how they are victims, inevitably tying it back to the comfort women. It strikes me that even chief editors can't stretch their mind enough to avoid simply projecting their own feelings of victimization on the Jews. This is a very common thread that we can see both in Rhie's book (page 20, where he compares the diaspora to the Japanese colonial period) and the Prometheus article (in which the Jews' history is again compared to the Japanese colonial period). It is almost unbelievable that not a single person writing about this in Korea has been able to form a single idea in which the Jews don't have to be likened to the Koreans in order to explain their reaction. It seems to me that what these writers are actually doing is co-opting the Jews' 'specialness' by claiming that they are the same as the Koreans. That is certainly what Rhie does when he says that the Jews and the Koreans are the most 'severe' (지독하다: anyone want to help me find a better translation for this unique word?). I'm truly struck by the lack of imagination going on here, but also at the strident way that these people, who seem to have scant years of international experience, seem to think themselves worthy to answer these questions that they barely understand. Truly fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

What Monnara's Mistakes Show Us
Shin Mun-yeong, Chief Editor, Veritas Books

It seems that the part of the 'Americans' volume of the best-selling series Monnara Iunnara, which introduces us to many countries in a fun and easy way, in which it says that the Jews wielding money and the power of the press led to the 9-11 terror attacks will eventually be changed. The writer, Professor Rhie Won-bok, and the publisher have expressed regret, saying they were "apologizing for hurting the feelings of Jews".
The Wiesenthal Center, which is now making this an issue, also once brought about the discontinuation of an education current events monthly magazine published by the Literature Chronicles Company called "Marco Polo" in Japan. In 1995 one Japanese neurologist said in this magazine that the Nazis' mass murder of the Jews was true but that the infamous gas chambers of Auschwitz could have been an exaggerated fabrication.
Marco Polo, with its 250,000 readers, suddenly became the object of protest by Jewish groups, and the Israeli government officially brought this problem to its embassy in Japan. The chief editor of Marco Polo suggested that he would load up on reporters for the rebuttal who would act as a mouthpiece for Jews claim, but this was refused. The Jewish groups exercised their real power, moving the advertisers. Cartier, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Philip Morris and other companies canceled the advertising they had planned to place in Marco Polo. What's more, the Japanese government released a public statement that this writer's work was inappropriate. This eventually ended in his suicide by disembowelment. Rabbi Cooper and President of the Literature Chronicles Company Tanaka had a meeting and announced that the entire staff of Marco Polo had been disbanded.
It was 1995 and I was studying in St. Louis, U.S. The family where I was tutoring as a part time job was Jewish American, and their house was in one if the richest neighborhoods. It was Saturday afternoon and I saw a sign announcing a garage sale where Americans sell the things they don't want anymore. I bought a table that would be perfect as a speaker stand at a great price. I noticed a figure carved into it that I may have seen in the bible or a movie and so I asked the owner "Did this come from Israel?" Her face instantly went cold. "How did you know that? So what if it did?" she inquired. I just asked because I was curious, but it was different for the woman. If we can make a distinction between that bank president's family's social standing and wealth, their garage was full of things, but there was a shadow lurking on their faces.
Andy Grove, well-known even in Korea as one of the three founders on Intel, is a Jew who was born in Hungary but went to America as a poor foreign student and made his way up in the world. In the book about his dramatic success story "The Giant Andy Grove", he says that he doesn't even want to go to Budapest, where he spent his childhood, nor does he want to remember it. It's not just Andy Grove: many Jewish scholars, bankers, businessmen and movie-makers are uneasy even now. So they teach their children not to loosen their self-consciousness. They teach them not to forgive the over two thousand year history of hardship etched bone deep in their history.
In Korean society Jews are known for their great brains and as a people who kept their history for a long time, or for their vague responsibility for the powder-keg-like state of affairs in the Middle East. But if we can pay attention with a broader view, we can understand empathize with their painful scars. Even if we don't bring up the comfort women who are now having a hearing in America's Congress, we can understand the reason that the Jews brought up this problem. The rapid decision to fix the book's contents was an appropriate response. In the future Korea, surrounded by large and powerful nations, must rise up to find the horizon and thus understand other people and nations a little deeper, and thus show a Korea to be a nearer, more attractive nation.

Rhie according to Rhie

According today's article in Herald Biz, Rhie Won-bok says:

"During my ten years living in Germany I visited concentration camps and I know as well as anybody how much the Jews suffered and how cruel the Nazis' barbarity was."
"I have no bias of any kind against Jews and I have always opposed racism." Starting with the next edition he plans to replace the problem portions.

Pardon me, Mr. Rhie, but that is demonstrably not true. Also, no one called you a Holocaust denier. I think what you learned during your ten years in Germany is classic antisemitic conspiracy theory, plain and simple.

Monnara Iunnara, volume 10 page 240:

Rockefeller was the top American conglomerate. There is ongoing dispute about whether or not he was a Jew but the matter is not clear. But the reason he is mistaken for a Jew is that his enterprise technique was exactly the same as the Jews. His number one business rule was to destroy the competition. He used intrigue, tricks, threat, menace, and naturally he mobilized industrial spies to steal information from his competition. He used bribery, violence, and to top it all he didn't hesitate to sabotage companies. This was cold hearted industrialist who cruelly knocked down the competitors who faced him.

미국 역사상 최대 재벌의 하나였던 록펠러. 그가 유대인이냐 아니냐의 문제는 두고두고 논쟁거리였지만 그가 유대인일라고 뚜렷이 밝혀진 건 아니야. 그러나 그가 유대인으로 오해받는 것은 그의 사업수법이 유대인과 똑같기 때문이야. 그의 경영원칙은 경쟁을 원칙적으로 없애는 것으로 음모, 술수, 공갈, 협박은 물론 산업스파이를 동원하여 상대의 정보를 훔치고 뇌물, 폭력에 심지어 공장 파괴까지 서슴지 않고 그에게 맞서는 경쟁자는 잔혹하게 쓰러뜨린 비정한 사업가였어

Anybody seen the letter itself?

MBC News report

This MBC News report actually repeats the same stereotypes that Jews are complaining about in the first place. Tactless in the extreme.

Anchor: Jews in America are demanding that the Korean best-selling world history comic book Monnara Iunnara defames Jews.

Kim Won-tae Reporting

Reporter: American Jews are lashing back at Deokseong University professor Rhie Won-bok's comic book Monnara Iunnara, saying it describes the Jews negatively.

The problem passages say, among other things, that 9.11 terrorist attacks occured because Jews use money and the media as a weapon to twist America in whatever way they want, and that Koreans in America can succeed but in the end the wall called the Jews blocks them.

Suzanne Scholte of the Defense Fund (Original English): Well, I find that this writer is producing comic books that are very offensive to Jewish Americans and to the Jewish people. They're clearly antisemitic and they're clearly anti-American.

Reporter: Jews have demanded Rhie Won-bok's apology and a revision to the book and discussions with Korean groups in America.

Reporter: Jews in America have small numbers but they have the strongest influence (유대인 사회는 미국 내에서 소수계지만 가장 큰 영향력을 행사하고 있습니다.)

So koreans living in America are worried that the troubles and arguments with Jews over this comic book will spread.

The SBS-TV report on Monnara

Here's my translation of the SBS transcript, seemingly the meatier one. The more I think about it the angrier I get:

Anchor: Jews in America claim that the ten million-selling educational comic book 'Monnara Iunnara' deprecates the Jews and distorts their history and a Jewish group demanding it be revised.

In Los Angeles, O Dong-heon reporting

Reporter: In part of educational comic Monnara Iunnara, it is
written that the Jews are the real power behind the scenes in America and control Hollywood movies and portray themselves positively as victims while lumping together the Arabs as a barbaric violent group.

The book also says that Koreans living in America can go far with hard work but can never surmount the wall of Jews.

North Korean human rights group the Defense Forum's director Susan Scholte wrote a letter to Korean politicians saying that this comic could hurt Korean-Jewish relations and demanding that the book be revised.

[Michelle Park/ California Tax Equity Comittee: [We] interpreted the letter as a request that [Korean American groups and Jewish groups] come out with the same position on the issue]

Some say the reaction to the part of the book about the Jews taken out of context was overly sensitive (일부에서는 전체적인 맥락과는 관계없이 유대인에 대한 일부의 인식을 묘사한 데 대해 지나치게 민감한 반응을 보인다는 지적을 하고 있습니다).

I would argue that, when placed in context, these passages that people are reacting to are much more shocking.

But there are many indications that merely this situation could pour cold water on the relation between Koreans and Jews and that this situation needs to be dealt with prudently.

Overreaction indeed! I'm quite shocked by this report, actually.

Special thanks to Robert Koehler for setting my hasty and awful translation of this article straight.

TV takes notice.

Both SBS and MBC have picked up the story today. The gist of their coverage is that this problem is a bit of a pain for Koreans in America Here's a transcript of the MBC report and here is the SBS-TV report. I will translate as soon as possible.

Chapter 8, pages 240-242 (Wherein Rockefeller is a Jew and the most hated man in America and Jews control the news)

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

I'll be back with more later today. I think this is enough for now.

p240)
Rockefeller was the top American conglomerate (Top 3: Rockefeller, DuPont and Mellon) There is ongoing dispute about whether or not he was a Jew but the matter is not clear. But the reason he is mistaken for a Jew is that his enterprise technique was exactly the same as the Jews. His number one business rule was to destroy the competition. He used intrigue, tricks, threat, menace, and naturally he mobilized industrial spies to steal information from his competition. He used bribery, violence, and to top it all he didn't hesitate to sabotage companies. This was cold hearted industrialist who cruelly knocked down the competitors who faced him.

Here we see the ruthless practices of Rockefeller, not a Jew by any means, being claimed as exactly the same as those of Jews.

In 1863 Standard Oil was established. By 1890 the tycoon controlled 90% of America's domestic oil production. He was the most hated American industrialist of the 1900s. This Rockefeller grabbed hands with the Rothschild family. Chase bank, which Rothschild established, and Manhattan bank, established by Rothschild front Kuhn Loeb [actually Kuhn, Loeb & Company: here he has confounded the company into a single person], merged and America's biggest bank Chase Manhattan was born!

In researching Kuhn, Loeb & Co. I found a great explanation of the history of this myth of Jewish control of the Federal Reserve, which is very enlightening to any of you who are not familiar with many of the conspiratorial claims typically made by antisemites.

p241)
After the passage of the Antitrust Act, Rockefeller's Standard Oil continued, broken up into pieces like New Jersey Standard (later to become Exxon). Five of the current seven major oil companies come from this, and the other two (BP and Royal Dutch Shell) were ruled directly by the Rothschilds. This means oil, the most important thing in the world, was controlled completely by Rockefeller and the Jews. So if Rockefeller was a Jew, the whole world's oil was in the palm of the Jews' hand.
(Graphic shows a man wondering, caption says Rockefeller = Rocke (rock) + Feller (cliff))
Man (thinking): "To look at the name, you'd think he was a Jew . . ."

More 'is he or isn't he' obfuscating, this time to plant the seeds of the 'Jews control the world's oil supply' conspiracy theory. Rockefeller was a 'devout Northern Baptist'.

The Rockefeller family produced a New York governor who went on to be Vice President, and also churned out a string of governors. Along with the king of steel Carnegie and the king of cars Ford, they represented American capitalism. In 1890, the Rockefeller fund donated huge amounts of money to farming, medicine, and environmental science sectors. They started the Green Revolution, which propelled the development of seeds to improve food supplies in poor countries. Rockefeller, who seemed to give many billions of dollars, was thanked by many.
But this one-time most hated industrialist in America still can't shake his bad reputation
(Graphic shows angry man)
Man: "[They] still accumulate too much money to bear. He did all that to get a tax exemption."

p242)
Jews don't just control the finance and movie industry. In the modern world the all-too-important press is totally controlled by the Jews.
(Graphic shows the author in front of a chart that says "Legislature, Judicial, Executive, Press)
Author: "The press is so powerful it is called the 4th branch [of government]

Just a translation note. The Korean word eonlon (언론) was translated by others as 'public discourse', and I will use the word 'press', although I think a better, if less accurate, translation would probably be 'news media'.

"It is not going too far to say, in a word, that the American press is a Jewish thing and that it's voice is the Jew's voice"

(Graphic shows newspapers, magazines, TV and radio, all with stars of David on them)
America's three most influential papers (the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times) all are either owned by Jewws or have Jews involved in their management. The world news services AP and UPI naturally are owned by Jews. England's biggest news agency and the world's third biggest, Reuters was founded by Jew J. P. Reuters. America's top 3 channels, NBC, ABC, and CBS-TV are all under the power of Jews. The world's weekly Newsweek is too.
America's preeminent newspapers, broadcasters, magazines and other mass communication media are all owned by Jews. The newspaper king who established the Pulitzer Prize was also a Jew born in Europe who moved to America. New York Times' top writer Walter Lippmann was a Jew too.

Next time: The calm before the storm, how to spot a Jew, the crashing crescendo of Jewish conspiracy, and the summation of America's weaknesses. Plus: The 2 million Americans we must never hate!

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