Chapter 7: Credit is Life part 2, pages 195-198

This passage is interesting mostly for Rhie's fearmongering about the so-called 'economic death sentence' of bad credit. Although Koreans certainly have a lot more cash than Americans do he also doesn't acknowledge the prevailing American view of this disparity, in which Americans are enjoying their houses and cars while they pay them off, while Koreans are going without in the time it takes them to buy things outright with cash.

p195)
In America people with no credit that is to say an unverified credit rating, cannot do anything. When such people first come to America they still have no verified credit rating, they can't get a credit card, and for people in America once you are stuck with the label of bad credit, that is the equivalent of an economic death sentence.
Good credit is not just having a lot of money, creditis the evidence that you repay the money that you borrowed or the things that you bought on installment plans, and that you aren't the kind of person who borrows money and then fails to pay it back. The only way to have good credit is to build up a record of faithful repayment.
You can only get a credit card by building a credit history. Once you do that banks that had haughtily refused to issue credit cards will fiercely compete to offer their credit cards to you.

p196)
In America you can't do anything without a credit card. You can't rent a car or reserve a hotel and in many cases you can't even rent a house.
(Graphic shows the author and a real estate agent)
Rhie: I want to rent this house.
Agent: Oh, you came to America as an exchange professor.
Rhie: Yes, I would like to rent this house for two years.
Agent: Professor, you have no credit history, so I can't rent this house to you.
Rhie: I'm a college professor, but you still think I won't pay the rent?
Agent: It's not important to me whether you're a college professor. There's no guarantee that you will pay rent at the right time, professor. You have no credit history.
Rhie: Can't I just show you my bank book? There's enough money in it.
Agent: That's your money, not mine. If you don't give me the rent I'm the only victim.
Rhie: Oh, I'm angry. Even though I have enough money I can't rent this house because I have no credit. How about I pay one year rent in advance.
Agent (eyes exploding and jaw dropping): No problem. I'll give you a 10% discount. (thinks) In America it's a dream t touch this much money at once.

p197)
There are many times when credit is more important thatn cash. Let's say you're buying a car.
(Graphic shows a man and a salesman)
Man: OK, let's make a contract.
Salesman: $22,000 at 7.75% interest. How would you like to pay? Over 36 months?
Man: Installment plans are too complicated. I'll just pay all at once.
In this case the salesman will make a strange face.
Salesman (thinking): Naturally Asians have a lot of money. No American can buy a car with cash.
It's nice that you don't have to pay interest every month like you do on the installment plan, but the reliable monthly payment is decisively recorded in your credit history, and your credit points pile up regularly. If you come to be recognized as a trustworthy person you get accepted for a credit card. What Americans call a credit card literally means "trust card", so people who have one are people who've been economically verified to be trustworthy people. Before a credit card company issues a card they perform various meticulous checks. The basic information is where you work and how long you've worked there, and how much your income is, whether you have your own house and ho long you've lived there.

p198)
They check how much money a person has in the bank and whether he's paid off his loans on time and exactly. They must thoroughly check his economic power and ability to repay, and if the investigation company puts him on a "credit risk" or "bad credit" blacklist, we can see this person as economically already dead.
Even when the card is issued you don't get complete credit. For a fixed period, a so-called "secure card" is issued. In this case you can never take out more than the amount you have in the bank. Even though the monthly limit that you can use is high, it is strictly limited. In American society credit is so important that it is the same as life. If you have a credit card you can live your economic life even without a penny [of cash]. The credit card issuance process is strict and picky but America is also a capitalist society and if you can get a job there you can use that company's credit to get a credit card.

Dear Korean Readers/한국 독자 여러분께

오늘 내가 첫번째 한국분께서 질문 많은 이메일 받았어. Mr. J씨 한국말로 아래 있는 이메일 보내셨어.
I received my first email from a Korean today, asking several questions about this blog. "Mr. J" wrote the following in Korean:

어째서 당신은 한국인과 유대인을 이간질(싸움) 시키려 합니까?

유대인에게도 한국인을 비난시키려는 의도입니까?

그런 책은 학교에서 학생들을 가르치는 교과서(text book)이 아닙니다.

어느 나라나, 인종 혐오 감정이 있는

private book(사적 출판물) 이 발간될 수 있습니다.

실제로 거의 유명하지 않는(that book is not famous in korea) 그 만화를 유명한 만화라고 말하며, 큰 문제가 있다는 듯이

말합니까?

어느 나라나 출판의 자유는 있다. 그 책은 public serive를 위한 public education book 이 아닙니다.

학교의 text book도 아닙니다.

그렇게 유대인을 묘사하는 책은 일본에도 많고 중국에도 많습니다.

Which I translate as follows:

Why do you want to create this discord (fight) between Koreans and Jews?
Is your intention to make Jews denounce Koreans?
That book is not a textbook used in schools to teach children.
A privately published book expressing hatred of a people could be published in any country.
In all truth that book is not famous in Korea, but are you calling that book famous to make it seem that there's a big problem?

Every country's publishing is free. That book is not a public education book for the public service. It's also not a school textbook.
There are many books that describe the Jews that way in both China and Japan.

I wrote the following reply to Mr. J.
내가 아래 있는 이메일 답장으로 보냈어.

If you read the blog from the beginning you can see that I didn't start writing knowing that the book contains racist and antisemitic content. I started writing because I was curious about the books that Korean children read. Professor Rhie Won-bok is honestly a famous man and his series 먼나라 이웃나라 did sell 12 million copies, even if it isn't a school textbook. I certainly didn't write the blog to start a fight. Also, when I saw that some foreigners who had heard about the book from other sites thought that are mostly antisemitic I translated a part of "Jurassic Park's Steven Spielberg" to show people the truth.
In all honesty, I started the blog to make sure that Korean children could read good books. I wrote thinking that it would be great if Korean people whom I love could read good books free of lies. I don't know where professor Rhie learned about Jews but most of the readers of the blog think his writing is shocking, and the only people who agree with him find the site through anti-immigration white supremacist websites.
I have written on my blog before about a video that teaches hate for Koreans in America. I know that there are many books that describe Jews similarly in Japan and China, but there's nothing I can do about it because I can't read those books. If I spoke Japanese I would be translating Japanese anti-Hallyu (anti-Korean Wave) books into Korean.
Thanks for asking be these questions. If you have any others, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Joe Mondello


제 블로그 처음부터 보시면 제가 이 책 인종차별이나 반유대교 내용이 있어서 번역 하는게 아니라, 대한민국 아이들은 어떤 책을 읽는지 궁금해서 하는거 알수 있습니다. 이원복교수님 정말 유명하신분이고 '먼나라 이웃나라' 시리즈는 학교에서 쓰는 교과서 아니라도 1,200만권 팔렸습니다. 저는 싸움 시키고 싶어서 쓰는거 절대 아니예요. 그리고 소수의 외국인들은 이 이슈에 대해서 다른 웹사이트에서 읽어서 한국사람들은 대부분 반유대주의자라고 믿는 거 제가 봐서 한국사람들 다 그렇게 생각 하지 않은 사실을 알리기 위해서 "쥬라기 공원의 스티븐 스필버그"에서 유대인을 의한 부분 번역했습니다.
실 은 내가 한국 아이들 좋은 책 읽도록 이 블로그 쓰게 된것입니다. 제가 많이 사랑 하는 한국사람들은 거짓말 없는 좋은 책만 읽었으면 좋겠다는 마음으로 썼습니다. 이원복교수님이 유대인에 대한 지식 어디서 배우신것 잘 모르는데 대부분 블로그 독자들은 말도 안 되는 거짓말이라고 덧글을 쓰고 이원복교수님 쓰신것 맞다고 하는 사람들 미국 반이민 백인 우월주의자 웹사이트에서 온사람들이예요.
제가 한국사람을 혐오한 비디오도 제 블로그에서 폭로하도록 글 쓴적도 있습니다. 저도 유대인을 그렇게 묘사하는 책 일본에도 많고 중국에도 많은거 압니다만 제가 저 책들 못 읽으니까 어찌 할수는 없습니다. 만약에 제가 일본어 읽을수 있었으면 제가 꼭 혐한류 만화 한국말로 번역 하겠습니다.
메일 주셔서 감사합니다. 또 아시고 싶은거 있으시면 꼭 연락 하세요.
Joe Mondello

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

Chapter 7: Credit is Life, Pages 192-194 ("'I'll sue you' is the most commonly heard statement in America")

I love how Rhie seems to feel that the law is some kind of last resort when heart and common courtesy fail. More on 'heart'. The original Korean word is jung (rhymes with 'sung') and it is a word that Koreans claim is untranslatable and intrinsically Korean. I think the reasons Koreans claim that it is untranslatable are twofold: one, the best English translation would probably be 'warmth', and only in a specific context that I think most of the Koreans who talk about jung are not proficient in English enough to really understand, and also it feeds into this idea of Korea's uniqueness to say that normal everyday interactions between Koreans have some sort of added emotional dimension that other people can't even conceive of, let alone match. Mind you, now, this 'Koreans own warmth' concept is bandied about by a small minority of Koreans, usually for nationalistic purposes. I have had many personal encounters with jung. a Korean tour guide in Japan told the busload of tourists I was with that one shouldn't trust the Japanese because they lacked jung (said while shaking his two fists, wrists up, to demonstrate the gravity of this ancient and intrinsically Korean concept). Here again Rhie is making the same claim at length, that the problem with America, indeed the need for out litigious society all springs from lack of jung between the races. The false premise of all this is that there is a certain baseline jung between members of an ethnic group. Perhaps so in a country as thoroughly leveled and de'class'ified as Korea is now, but I wonder what th actual level of jung would have been between a Korean yangban (nobleman) and a servant in the 19th century. Certainly the same people, by Korean standards, but how much intrinsically Korean jung would there be?

Anyway, I find it interesting that he ascribes this dependency on credit and law to America in particular and suggests it is due to the lack of jung and general mixed up multicultural atmosphere.

p192)
Even though all Americans share the pride of calling themselves American and a love of their country, this doesn't form sympathy between the races and peoples. They put up their protective wall to protect themselves and thoroughly demarcate their territory from others' territory. That's why in America they have no choice but to solve everything with the law. They often even solve trivial issues with the law.
One example was in the U.S. branch of a Japanese company.
(Graphic shows a Japanese man and a Black woman)
Man: Hello Ms. A.
Woman: Director Kimura.

Incidentally isn't Kimura the zainichi Korean version of Kim?

Man (patting woman on the shoulder): Isn't working tough? Keep up the good work!
Woman: !
Man: Yeah, how's your husband? From the look on your face I'd
say things are going pretty good.
Woman: !
This Japanese executive never forgot to give a "warm" [not jung, literally 'warm', and quotes are his, not mine] greeting to his many female subordinates in the name of "encouragement". Graphic shows Kimura patting a shocked woman on the back) But some time later these female employees filed a class action lawsuit against him and the company received a demand for an astronomical amount for reparation for damages. Man: sexual molestation, defamation of character, interfering in personal life? $100,000 compensation per person times 100 people, so Ihave to give $10 million? I was just encouraging my workers with a warm heart and this is the response?

p193)

(Graphic shows Kimura and an American man)

Kimura: In Japan we encourage our female workers by patting them on the shoulder.

Man: That's a cultural difference. Laying your hands on another person, especially a person of the opposite sex, falls under sexual harassment and sexual molestation.

Kimura: What about the defamation of character?

Man: You know over half of American couples get divorced. Asking a woman how her husband is is interfering in her personal life.

(Graphic shows a woman looking at Kimura and thinking "He's raking up painfu things from the past. What's this, is he trying to make me angry?")

Man: Whether or not it's intential, bringing up someone's divorce as a topic of discussion falls under defamation of character. When did she tell you to care about her married life? Did they say to touch them without permission?

This is a famous case that happened at Mitsubishi in 1995. In America the most commonly heard statement is "I'll sue you." America has the highest number of lawyers per capita. American society's standard of judgment is not codes of conduct or ethical feelings, rather it is law that is equally effective for all races and people. In America the most important principle is that you must live by the rule of law.

p194)

They say the principle of American society where everyone lives behind a protective wall is fundamental premise of mistrust. But to live we must maintain economic relationships and exchanges. But who can trust who in this society where people of many races, many peoples, and every type swarm together? The only thing people can trust is law, and systematically confirmed credit!

Credit-- the measure of ability to believe someone. This is not trust, the belief in one's heart for another person. This is one's "score", one's amount of trustability as confirmed by the government or a specific organization.

In America they even call your school grades "credit".

(Graphic shows a report card. Caption says :Math 'credit' A = A level grade = his math ability is confirmed to be in the A level.")

Credit cards that you get at the bank are also called "credit cards". To speak of someone's credit rating and credit, in America credit is the secind most important thing after one's life.

What is the biggest difference between monoracial nations and immigrant nations?

That's the question Rhie Won-bok asks in Chapter 7: Credit is Life, How Americans Live. Seems unconnected until you understand Rhie's theory that American dependence on credit is based on racial factionalism, the underlying weakness of immigrant nations. A note to the reader: I have translated the word 민족국가 variously as 'monoracial nation' and 'nation state'. Be aware that this term refers to a country in which everybody more or less belongs to the same ethnic group. Also interesting to see homogeneity used as a positive term, something which took some getting used to for my American mind.

p190)
What is the biggest difference between monoracial nations like Korea and Japan and immigrant nations like the U.S., Canada, and Australia? In a nation state, the citizens have a common 'homogeneity'. Even without explaining, we can say that compared to the "citizens' heart" that everybody knows, the immigrant nation's citizens with their various and complicated origins fall far from this homogeneity. It's not only morals and ethics but in values as well, nation state citizens have these in common while immigrant nations' citizens are different from each other. Even if we say nation state citizens have various personalities, they have a strong commonality between them, while the immigrant nation's makeup of various races and peoples have a much higher likelihood of clashes and friction than nation states.

p191)
Even if they are very careful they can always suffer these clashes. So in order to minimize unnecessary friction and to keep from damaging others and being damaged by others, the best method is to erect a 'protective wall' between oneself and one's surroundings. This protective wal is a way to concea oneself and not to show one's true feelings and true self to anyone. Even though in a society where everyone lives behind a protective wall arguments are kept to a minimumm we can call this a society where people use fundamental rules and law to solve their problemsinstead of using faith in each other and heart (정). This is why even though the image Americans show people seems warm, the moment they turn around they are completely different.

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.

Suzanne Scholte's letter

Below is the letter Suxzanne Scholte of the North Korean human rights group Defense Forum sent to Korean American groups and politicians (as she put it, her Korean friends). She told me that she was very pleased with their response and that they had wanted to go as far as having a press conference with Rabbi Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center. Apparently this urgency and will to action was somehow lost between these people and the Korean news media, whose reaction went from "Jews in America have small numbers but they have the strongest influence, so Koreans living in America are worried that the troubles and arguments with Jews over this comic book will spread." to "Some say the reaction to the part of the book about the Jews taken out of context was overly sensitive."

Dear Friends:
This is the first time you've ever gotten
an email from me that was not related to North Korea, but I very much would appreciate your help on a matter of great concern to Rabbi Cooper, our dear friend and colleague on the NK human rights issues. Many of you are familiar with his great help to us on the North Korea human rights issues: his hosting a conference at the Museum of Tolerance for us and serving as the vice chairman of our NK Freedom Coalition. It has come to our attention that a popular South Korean writer and Professor has produced comic books that are very offensive to Jewish Americans and anti-semitic (and anti-American, as well). I hope that several leaders in the Korean American community would consider making a strong statement of outrage at this and I immediately thought of you all as leaders in the Korean business and the church community. All that would be needed is some quotes (a paragraph is fine) that we can provide to Rabbi Cooper that he could use in future statements and releases on this issue -- it would mean so much to come from all of you who are successful, accomplished Americans, who believe in tolerance and respect for other faiths. I know also that many Koreans, especially pastors, hold the Jewish people as very dear and travel to Israel often. Please see below the release from today and the attachment for an example of what these offensive cartoons depict about the Jewish people. Rabbi Cooper is always counseling me to keep speaking out for the North Korean people and reminding me that silence is acquiesence. I hope we can show him that we are willing to speak out for the Jewish people as well.
If you or any of your colleagues are willing to make a short statement please send along to me and I will put them together for Rabbi Cooper.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION OF THIS REQUEST.

Suzanne Scholte