The Era of Unlimited Service Competition (A Bank for Gays Opens)

Here's a black and white Rhie Won-bok comic which I believe comes from a newspaper. I found it here. It was placed on the website as some kind of proof of Rhie's racism, but it's highly incorrect to present it as such.

The Era of Unlimited Service Competition: A Bank for Gays Opens

1. This is a time when the marketing war among banks to attract new customers is heating up - we've already discussed in this cartoon series the bank in the Netherlands attracting young people in middle and high school.
2. In March 1999 in America the world's first bank for gays, G&L Bank opened its doors.
3. But it's not a real bank, just an online bank, and there are plans to open a real bank in 2002.
4. Steve Dunlop, who revealed himself to be a homo [sic] is the man from Pensacola, Florida, who came up with the idea for the bank.
5. Just as blacks seek black banks and Jews frequent banks managed by Jews, the gays are the same and the market is now ripe for it.
6. Just because G*Ls [gays and lesbians] are homosexual they experience difficulties borrowing money in banks.
7. Even when they handle their finances jointly like a married couple they face many hardships,
8. So this online bank was created so that G*Ls could freely and conveniently use a bank without such difficulties.
9. This idea came out of Dunlop's own difficulties in dealing with banks.

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.

Volume 11: American History, pages 248-251 (America must create enemies without end)

I thought the last pages of volume ten, about America's myopic ignorance, were anti-American enough, but volume eleven's final sentence is easily as bad. Rhie claims that America's great energy stems from America's refusal to lose ever, and that, seeing the exmple of the decadent Roman Empire, America must stay competitive by constantly creating 'competitors and enemies', i.e. China, Japan, and Terror! Read on if you dare.

p248)

In the end the Americans, who left their homelands and traveled 10,000 miles away to a strange land and fought through innumerable ordeals armed only with the pioneering spirit, brought down the Soviet Union and became the world's only superpower. But looking at the example of the Roman Empire, having no healthy competition leads to decline. America is keeping its eyes on a gradually rising China and getting ready. China, land of great culture and great population; in the future it is obvious that it will become an economic powerhouse and a frightening competitor for America. But America has battles to fight before it can tackle China. More than anything it must close the growing gap between rich and poor. One out of ten Americans live in persistent poverty. America must seriously solve the internal disputes among the races as well as its disputes with the rest of the world.

p249)

More than anything in order to do this, if America doesn't learn cultural humility America will never be the world's leading nation. When America understands the world's cultures and gains the cultural humility to recognize and respect them America will be able to truly become the world's watchman.

(Graphic shows a cowboy gawking at a turbaned man)

Cowboy: East Asian culture is 'mysterious'.

Turbaned man: That means 'irrational'. You need to
throw away that prejudice, we're all the same!

We're all the same. I am sure glad that we Americans could learn this beautiful lesson from the likes of you. We're all the same, with minor differences, like Japanese people's buck-teeth and black people's huge pink lips, right Professor Rhie?

But since young America has barely been in existence for 200 years, and even though it's a pluralistic nation that looks like a museum of the races, The problem is that Americans can't understand anything that's not American, and they don't even want to or try to understand. America is the birthplace of globalization, and yet America is the least globalized nation in the world. Unlike Europeans, Americans can't understand the notion of 'coexistence' properly, that coexistence is not merely living together, and that you must respect and understand your neighbors, having the friendship to not discriminate against them. But it is said that America is only comfortable with ruling and leading (dominance).

p250)

Because neighboring Canada's population doesn't even pass one ninth of America's, and since most of its population lives within 100 km of the American border it's as if it's dependent on the U.S.

(Graphic shows an American looking over the border at a Canadian, standing in a corridor defined as 100km from the U.S. border)

American (thinking): America's 51st state?

Canadian: [Beyond 100km from the U.S. border] it's too cold and there aren't any jobs.

Since in the south Mexico can barely come close to America economically and militarily America has always reigned over Mexico like a big brother. It's not just America; when you become a leading nation you can do no different.

(Graphic shows a cowboy and a samurai)

Samurai: The more the rice plant ripens the lower it bows its head [i.e. The greater the individual, the more humble they are]

Cowboy: When corn ripens it stands up straight as an arrow!

We could say that they are in the grips of an obsession with being the world's greatest and strongest in every challenge and test, and that they must never be surpassed as the world's strongest. That's why they endlessly make competitors and enemies. (Graphic shows a racer shouting "Who challenges me? Whether China or Japan, and if not Terror . . .") To fight and win they must never stop moving. This energy is America's biggest prime mover, and they must constantly move quickly and busily making problems and fighting wars in order to make sure they never
extinguish this great productive engine. (이 에너지는 미국 발전의 가장 큰 원동력인 만큼 이를 생산하는 거대한 엔진을 꺼뜨리지 않기 위하여 미국은 끊임없이 문제를 만들고 전쟁을 하여 바쁘게, 빠르게 움직일 수밖에 없지.)

That's the American secret. Never stop fighting wars, or we'll lose our edge. The thing that I really love about this book is the level of projection that goes on in Rhie's mind. Everywhere he looks, he sees Korea. I mean, Korea's been at war for the last how many years, and it's certainly helped their economy, eh? He's like a rabbit who reads a book about the Hundred Years War and declares the underlying cause to obviously be carrots.

p251)

If there had been no great frontier in the West of America it's possible that America would have been forever consumed by internal strife and troubles.

(Graphic shows explosions of hostility coming out of a well)

I've discussed the well before. This is Rhie's favorite symbol for ignorant America, The frog in a well. The frog in the well doesn't realize there's a whole wide world outside his well, and instead brags proudly about its greatness. again, this is a term that some people tend to use in reference to Korea.

But America's energy went into spreading westward without problem, and it's now spreading limitlessly to the rest of the world. Other ethnic nations that were blocked on all four sides and whose energy had no place to spread out expended their energy in factional infighting and disputes and stand in contrast to America. John F. Kennedy said "The United States has to move very fast to even stand still." America will keep on moving just as he said. If that great body stands still, it will be torn down by fat and the diseases of old age. To produce its overflowing energy, America must create enemies without end.

Volume 11: American History, pages 245-247

Up until now I'd ignored the other volume of the series that I have, but tonight I flipped through it and again found that the last chapter expresses most of Rhie Won-bok's opinions. Here are some of the last few pages of Monnara Iunnara Volume 11: American History, Chapter 8: The Lonely World's Only Superpower: Today's America, from the New Frontier to the Iraq War. Fascinating stuff, for sure. The book has 251 pages, so I'll do the last four in my next post.

p245)
The presidential election of 2000, at the dawn of the 21st century, ended in victory for Bush. Al Gore, the candidate for the opposition Democratic Party outpaced Bush, but because of the 'indirect election' system Bush and the Republican party came back to victory.

Incidentally, I think that these pictures by GRAPHIC DESIGN PROFESSOR Rhie Won-bok may be the worst caricatures I have ever seen

As opposed to his father, President Bush is extreme and became outspoken about American hegemony through his stubbornly conservative policies. Bush's extreme rightism, super-stubborn diplomacy and American superiority [complex] wounded the pride of the many countries angry about their losses due to America's prime concern, globalization.
(Graphic shows an angry Italian, Mexican (likely due to NAFTA) and Arab)
Arab: Hamburger, cola, jeans, Hollywood. Is that all you think culture is?
Because of a lack of understanding of many cultures, America clashed with the Muslim world and had the effect of strengthening hostile powers with their high-pressure diplomacy. In particular, America, feeling the effects of the financial world and the media in control of the Jews took sides with Israel and made the Arab powers into enemies.

In particular, America, feeling the effects of the financial world and the media in control of the Jews took sides with Israel and made the Arab powers into enemies.

p246)
On September 11, 2001 America suffered an attack. Terrorists took over passenger planes and suicide attacked the World Trade Center in New York, the heart of America, and Headquarters of the Defense Department, the Pentagon. Thousands of innocent lives were lost in this first notice that America has many enemies and the beginning of a war unlike any America had seen before, the War on Terror. Bush immediately declared war on terror, and to catch the man behind the scenes of the terror, Osama Bin Laden.

And it's at this point that Rhie does something I don't get, which is placing an asterix next to the Korean spelling of 'Osama Bin Laden' and footnoting it with the English spelling 'Osama Bin Laden' . Why? I just don't know. [Update: He does this most of the time, and for some reason I didn't notice until now. I think the reason is that he often does it beneath an actual photo of the person, whereas in this case the asterix is below another completely unrecognizable caricature that is too chubby and fat nosed to bear even a passing resemblance to Bin Laden.]

The war in Afghanistan began on the pretext that Osama Bin Laden was hiding there. And the richest and greatest military power in the world wound up going to war with the world's poorest country.

"The war in Afghanistan began on the pretext that Osama Bin Laden was hiding there. And the richest and greatest military power in the world wound up going to war with the world's poorest country."

In this war they chased out the anti-U.S. government, but they didn't find Bin Laden and they turned their eyes and the barrels of their guns to Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein which they fingered as a terrorism-supporting state.

p247)
America started the Iraq War to eliminate Hussein. Naturally Iraq eventually submitted to the powerful U.S., and Hussein was captured, and Iraq was liberated from dictatorship. But the WMDs that were the reason America went to war in the first place were never found, and America asked many nations to contribute troops and make a "war of everyone", but domestic criticism and other factors placed the Bush administration in dire straits. So the transfer of power to the citizens was dropped and already a serious dispute between the Iraqi people has begun, and the Iraq war still hasn't ended, with endless suicide bombings and attacks on Americans and American soldiers. Quite the contrary, we don't know that the real war isn't just starting.

Chapter 7: Credit is Life part 3, pages 199-205

Update 3/5: Rabbi Cooper won't be able to give a talk when he comes to Seoul this month. It's a busy life when you're fighting the good fight. I recommend to all that you do your part to help by going to any book store, picking up a copy of the book, flipping through it and tsk-ing loudly with an angry look on your face. You know, get the word out.

The really funny thing about this book, for me, is that it reminds me of when I had been in Korea for a year and a half, like Rhie had been in America for a year and a half. That’s the point where you start to tell yourself that you’ve got everything in your host country all figured out. The funny thing about it is that you form your sense of the country from the most trivial garbage. You see significance in the way people do insignificant things and extrapolate them out into great theories. The folks over at Peer-See (who I believe are currently in that year to year-and-a-half sweet spot of half-knowing their host country of China) have dubbed this process extrapohating.

In Rhie’s case, he extrapohates American stores’ return policies, service in stores, and operating hours out into a theory of “America” in today’s longer than usual installment.

p199)
In our country, about 4 million people have bad credit. Many people commit suicide or crime because of card debt. Card companies are being ruined because of their costumers’ procrastination. In America this would be views as unimaginably “disturbing”. Customer’s economic power and ability to pay are absolute preconditions for credit card companies , and as we see card companies ignoring credit history and in a time when competing companies fight with each other, carelessly giving credit cards to people with no economic power in their 20s and 30s who rack up huge debt that they can’t bear, and walk the path to ruin, some card companies going bankrupt, and as we see out national economy deeply dominated [by this trend], isn’t it time that we took another look at the idea that credit is life?

This was, of course, written in the period in 2003 and 2004 in which the major credit card companies in Korea were issuing credit cards indiscriminately to anyone with a pulse, giving many Koreans enough economic rope to hang themselves. Rhie is saying that perhaps Korean companies should take a better look at their prospective customers and stop issuing so many cards to young people without jobs who could never pay off their debt

p200)
If we consider the credit card in America as one’s economic life, the driver’s license is like another life that protects your freedom of mobility. In Americans’ wallets you will always find two kinds of cards, and those cards are the driver’s license and the credit card. America is a huge country and in that huge country the people live very spread out from each other, and so it’s difficult to even imagine life in America without a car.

Sad but true, and naturally one of the truly positive things that one can say about Korea. Great mass transit.

Many people use mass transit such as subways and buses in large cities with densely packed populations, but in small cities or suburbs the only way to get around is by car. Buses are not economical so they are few and far between. People with no cars, the sick and the elderly ride buses, but it’s unspeakably annoying to do so.

p201)

The biggest difference between American residential areas and our country’s is that there are never any stores in them. In America there are huge malls where all the stores are concentrated together, so if you want to buy a roll of toilet paper or a pack of gum, you have to go several kilometers to a shopping mall or shopping center to buy them. Since you can’t walk there and you have to drive even to buy a loaf of bread, the car is as necessary to the American as a pair of shoes. Cars were prerequisites for American development, so Americans and their cars have an intimate relationship. In a country like that a person without a driver’s license must be prepared for as must discomfort and trouble as a person without a credit card.

p202)

Most Americans get their license by the time they’re 18, and the US doesn’t recognize foreign cards. America doesn’t have a personal identification card like our Citizens Registration Card, so in America the driver’s license is their identification card. One can get a driver’s license by the time they’re 16, but in practice one can start driving when they are 18, and 16 year olds are permitted to drive only with a guardian present. So the credit card and the driver’s license are America’s two forms of necessary evidence of identification. Since people use credit cards or debit cards for almost every transaction, almost nobody carries much cash. Once a robber held up a New York City subway car. Because almost everyone was carrying credit cards he got almost no cash. The famous story goes that he robbed everyone on the whole subway car and he didn’t even get $100.

p203)

I love this page, it's a Rhie Won-bok special, full of lame observations of the kind that tourists make. Want to understand a nation? Go buy a rollof toilet paper, some gum and a loaf of bread, then ask a shopkeeper a question and write a book about it. Why not, you're a professor, you must be saying something of actual value.

Don’t they say that in a capitalist society the customer is king? Therefore the more developed capitalism is the more kind the service will be and the more kingly the customer’s reign will be. But the logic that developed capitalism means kinder service is not true. Japan is a “friendliness surplus” nation, where the customer gets extremely kind service, and all the service workers have a kind smile stuck on their faces, but the problem is that the prices are groundlessly expensive.

Rhie goes on to credit these high prices to a so-called "smile price". It doesn't seem to occur to him that in a country where everything is expensive, things like wages and overhead might drive up the cost of things in places like restaurants. Nope, all those high prices are just going to pay for all that obsequiously good service. Makes perfect sense.

In the most progressively capitalist Europe, the concept of service is totally switched. All the department stores and shops close early like all the other companies (e.g. Mon.-Fri. 9:30-6:30, Sat. 9:30-2:30). A few years ago customers raised their voices to the rafters complaining and the stores were forced to extend their working hours (e.g. Mon.-Fri. 9:30-8:30, Sat. 9:30-6:30). Of course on Sunday every business closes its doors like a knife [yeah, I don’t really get that simile either - Joe]. The shop workers are never around so if you want to ask something you have to wait for a long time, and finally when you get to ask your question you wind up getting a brusque answer.

p204)

When closing time arrives, without fail you won’t be able to buy what you want because the checkout counter will be crowded and they’ll stop working. That’s why a lot of people in Europe are very worried about losing service competitiveness, but in America, on the other hand, it’s the exact opposite. In Europe naturally and also in our country banks are closed on Saturday, but like a symbol [that they are part of] the service industry, banks in America are open on Saturday until the evening and to top it all, a service competition has started in which some banks are open even on Sunday. Americans can’t even imagine a store being closed on Sundays or holidays. They even place huge ads for holiday shopping to drag in the shoppers. It must be nice to shop everywhere whenever you want, but the problem is when the customer becomes a service worker they think quite the opposite way
(Graphic shows a woman talking to a man)
Woman: If I become a service worker I can’t rest on Sundays or holidays either?
Man: I’m sure they’ll give you more money or something.

It's funny to count the number of times graphic design professor Rhie Won-bok's imagination fails him. They take off other days, genius!

p205)
The “refund” is an amazing part of buying things in America.

Incidentally, I live in Korea and I get refunds for things all the time. I once got a refund for a bicycle I'd been using for six months.

Refunding means canceling a purchase. If you cancel any purchase and return the item for money, they don’t even ask the reason and just give you the money. Naturally you can’t return consumable items or things that you can copy like CDs, and sometimes they ask you why you want to return the item, but no matter what reason you give they will exchange the item. This system was legally mandated to protect customers from bad quality products, but in reality it’s because the service workers or store owners don’t have to return any money and thus suffer no damage.
(Graphic shows men labeled “store” “original company”, and “manufacturer”, and a box labeled “original price of manufacture”)
Store (thinking): If the original company refunds the money that’s the end of it.
Original company: If I pass off the refunding to the manufacturer that’ll be the end of it.
Manufacturer (angrily): People return things at the slightest provocation. Because of returns our profit is falling, so we must put the price of returns into our products.
(Graphic shows the author holding a layer-cake like box, with layers labeled “original price”, “tax” and “return price”)
That’s why in Japanese product prices there is a smile price and a friendliness price built in, and in American product prices there is a return price built in.

Just a thought here. If I’m a kid and I’m reading this book, how much is this going to make sense to me? Oh no, if I go to America I can get a refund whenever I want, but I have to pay a premium for the right to do so through added cost to the manufacturer. This reminds my of Rhie’s concept that America produces endless amounts of WMDs because of low population density. The concept just doesn’t carry through to the conclusion. It just loses me in the middle, and I know for damn sure that it would lose any kid reading this book. This book reminds me at times like this of drunk adults talking to teenagers at parties about things they’d never understand. It also, come to think of it, brings to mind being a kid and buying MAD magazine, only to find reprints of “The Lighter Side of . . .” strips from the sixties. In the words of Milhouse “They don’t care whose toes they step on.” Just like Rhie.

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?

The scale of the problem

I have received a couple of comments from Korean readers of this page asking that I make clear the exact extent of the racist and antisemitic content in the Monnara series. First of all, I have received some criticism for repeating the statistic that 12 million books from the series have been sold. I never intended to imply that volume 10 sold 12 million copies. Unfortunately I don't have any figures on exactly how many copies the book in question has sold. Let's say that it's reasonable to assume that each of the twelve volumes garnered around one twelfth of those sales, so we can estimate that this book sold between 500,000 and one million copies.
Although I have not read the entire series, I have heard from those who have read the whole series who tell me that the earlier volumes (written years before the three volumes on America) are much more scholarly and well-researched, as well as being based on the author's vast personal experience in the countries in question. I have seen volume 11, about U.S. history, and I can't say I found anything wrong with it. volume 12 is about American Presidents and I can't imagine it would differ much from any such book. Thus as far as I am concerned the problem lies only in volume 10.
Within volume 10 itself, the first 4 chapters of 8 are general history, with very little of the author's opinion injected. I find no fault with them. Chapter 5 is about immigration, and contains the cartoon about "white trash" that made its way around the internet. Although this chapter presents a generally negative view of immigrant nations, I can't find any huge fault with it. Chapter 6 is about the dark side of America, and my major fault with it is that it presents American workers as groveling and desperate, frequently using the imagery of a worker prostrate before his stern-faced boss begging not to be fired. Chapter 7, about credit, which I am currently in the process of translating, is a bit factually wrong in that it describes credit and the rule of law as a sort of desperate measure that immigrant nations resort to in order to force disparate ethnic and racial elements to live together in harmony. This is repeatedly presented as inferior to the supposed harmony that mono-ethnic societies like Japan and Korea enjoy. This is also the chapter in which the picture of the black girl saying that she and her baby would starve to death without welfare appears. But it is chapter 8 that has rightly garnered international attention as a piece of classic Jewish conspiracy theory.
So one chapter of one book in a series of twelve is absolutely intolerable. What's the big deal? The big deal is that by the time the reader has gotten through the first 9 books and the previous 7 chapters he or she is fully convinced of Professor Rhie's erudition and authority and ready to accept everything he has to say without question. Isn't that much worse than a patently false, easily dismissed work of junk propaganda?

Update:
According to a new AP article

More than 10 million copies from the 12-book series titled "Meon Nara, Yiwoot Nara," or "Far Countries, Near Countries," have been sold since it was first published in 1987, according to its publisher, Gimm-Young Publishers Inc. The company boasts that at least one volume is in every South Korean home in this country of 48 million people.

Straight from the horse's mouth. The 12 million figure I was quoting came from a Korean news article earlier this month.