Obviously. The American Ambassador makes a perfectly reasonable comment, which is completely MISTRANSLATED, as anyone with a decent knowledge of either language should know, and instead of back off, the Korean government says that the US should "speak more carefully." Huh? Vershbow DID speak carefully and diplomatically -- the Korean government should hire better translators. Quoting from Robert's page, in the original English:
"So we hope that Koreans will begin to learn more about the science and about the facts of American beef and that this issue can be addressed constructively. We believe there is a lot of work ahead in getting people to pay more attention to the science and the facts of the matter."
I see what happened. When he said "learn more about the science and about the facts of American beef," in a language that has no articles, Koreans get tripped up by it all the time. "The science" was mistranslated as the concept of "science" itself. So the translator parsed that as "learn more about science and about the facts of American beef."
A minor translation error, but a major misunderstanding. Vershbow was NOT saying that Koreans don't understand science itself, but was saying that people should learn the facts -- in that context, "the science of American beef" in terms of meaning "the facts of the matter" most certainly does not mean "science" as a field or mode of thinking. Still, don't let the facts, or what he actually said stop anyone. Why should they? Quoting Robert's post again:
"UDP chairman Sohn Hak-kyu said at a party executive meeting today, “For Ambassador Vershbow to say ‘Koreans should learn a little more about science’ is an insult to all Korean citizens… Because the Lee Myung-bak administration took a humilating posture towards the United States, an arrogant and impudent statement was made.” He then called the ambassador “very rude” for an earlier phone call in which he told Sohn that he was disappointed and that the UDP head’s statement were causing public insecurity."
Has it actually gotten so bad that reality itself is being distorted? Vershbow said nothing inflammatory and was diplomatic, and was calm and collected as a diplomat should be. And rather than admit that the Korean government made the mistake vis a vis a bad translation to which they completely overreacted, this is actually being pushed into the realm of policy?
Now, as the Korean government should be concerned about the fact that it is completely unnecessarily about to throw millions or even billions of dollars of trade in other industries (including beef) into disarray because of the actions of a few radical protesters, who've spread disinformation and outright lies -- now, government officials and translators can't even back off from a complete mistranslation?
These are reasonable people? These are government officials? These people are the nation's media?
If it wasn't true before, it's definitely true now -- the Koreans who matter the most: from government suits, media fools, and disaffected left-wing activists and cattle growers who are pulling out students from class now and citizens who really have more of a beef with an old-fashioned, unresponsive governance style than American beef -- now, these people have become completely unreasonable.
UnREASONable, as in the word and concept "reason," which Sir Francis Bacon expounded upon, and for better or worse, and through a wily combination of both inductive and deductive logic predicated on both reliable information and careful observation of reality, is what Koreans have taken so much offense at being accused of NOT possessing -- now, the government position is that yes, Koreans are NOT a reasonable people. Don't believe me? He said it himself:
"I think the American people, US government and you must understand our unique culture… In order to resolve this, both governments need to work with sincerity." [And I concur with Robert's excellent translation.]
Aaaaargh! As I've always lecture in my American and Korean "culture" classes -- in Korea, when I hear the word "culture," I reach for my gun. The worst deployment of the term is in the obfuscating idea of "cultural differences," a card that usually gets pulled when an Korean and non-Korean have reached an impasse, but no longer have the energy to duke it out anymore.
It's a cop-out, and the result of being too intellectually lazy (or incapable) of getting to the heart of the disagreement, which can generally be defined in concrete terms, rather than the meaningless cop-out of "culture." It's like the smart bomb in Defender -- when the humans have become mutants, the alien ships have morphed and get scary, and when those zingy flying saucers show up, you just freak and hit that special button. Then everything goes away.
Problem is, you only get two smart bombs at the beginning of the level, and they generally only delay the inevitable -- if you suck at Defender, you simply suck at Defender. And once you've started panicking with a smart bomb of any kind -- whether it be of an extremely advanced future technology that can focus amazingly powerful-yet-concentrated blasts of energy at specific targets throughout your field of view, or its a stupefyingly simplistic statement that relies on reductionist notions of cultural essentialism and obviates the use of specific and useful information as a means of shutting down any further discussion -- once you've started that strategy, things ain't gonna be so good.
And telling the US, which hasn't done anything wrong in this case, to "tread lightly" as a meta-response to a TRANSLATION ERROR is certainly a cake taker. And the funny thing is that the mistranslated words that Vershbow was mistakenly said to have used are actually now being borne out in truth: now, it's been said that this is not about science or, I assume the facts, but emotions and the fact that the rest of the world must understand "Korea's unique culture" (because the rest of the world's cultures aren't unique, right?).
Ahh, petty cultural nationalism and irrationality do indeed still rule the day in South Korea. I hate to be the voice of reason -- well, actually, I don't -- but this won't end well.
I've played enough Defender to know that.
