Beyond the Korean Chutzpah: Dr. Hwang’s Pratfall
December 17, 2005
Author’s note: for functionally illiterate Americans (11millions of them, one in 20 Americans), the Yiddish word, “chutzpah” is not familiar one being used in daily conversation but an intellectual property for some scholars and journalists: According to the Wikipedia internet dictionary, it generally describes someone who outstepped the boundaries of accepted polite behavior for selfish reasons, such as gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible guts, or presumption plus arrogance.
One humorous example of chutzpah is: a boy who killed his parents begs on his trial to the presiding judge that he is an orphan.
Some synonyms: cheekiness, nerve, daring, gustiness, hubris, gall, attitude, cojones, gumption, and impudence.
While the world of science has been emphatically watching over the gradual downfall of a Korean Geneticist who claimed he succeeded in human embryonic cloning and stem cell research, a majority of the South Koreans are wringing their hands over the audacious skullduggery of their national hero, Professor Hwang of the Seoul National University, whom they dare proudly to compare with another legendary hero, Admiral Lee Soon Shin.
For sometimes, the South Koreans had staged numerous and enthusiastic demonstrations of support for the Geneticist Hwang in front of the TV Station that initiated an investigative inquiry over the suspicion of Professor’s research and forced the producers of “PD Notebook” to apologize to the public. They even compelled the more than dozen companies to withdraw the advertisements from the TV program and embarked on the vicious ad hominem attacks against the producers and journalists of the TV Station.
The point here is not that Professor Hwang is a charlatan, but rather it is a sui-generis character of the South Koreans whose jingoistic and narcissistic “Korea-Number-One” bias allows the Professor to trick his own people and finagle some unwarranted prize for selfish reasons as we see in the following cases the predominant national characteristics of Koreans during past half a century: there were dozens of politicians, generals, scholars, businessmen, and other celebrities that became instantly and fraudulently the historical figure and later fell pratfall a disgusting felon, cheater, or prevaricator.
These Korean shenanigans have generally remained as the dirty infightings in the boundary of domestic issues up until the Vietnam War, when the military dictator, General Park CH, dispatched tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers to help massacre the Vietnamese men, women, and children in order to save them for democracy…the Korean Marine Expeditionary Forces have paraded the street of Danang with a convoy of trucks decorated with the blood-dripping heads, limbs, and torsos of alleged Vietcong Guerrillas in order to frighten the civilians off to attack the Korean soldiers: The “Korean-Number-Oneness” began to go international!
With the war profit and robbery, the South Koreans built highways, renovated the thatched roofs, sent kids overseas, and bought the technologies from Japan paid with blood money.
Now the Koreans have a chutzpah to pay handsome tribute to the tomb of the blood-sucking General in the national cemetery while they accuse Japanese Prime Minister of paying tribute to his heroes in the Shinto shrine: Would Koreans apologize to the Vietnamese if the poor gooks protest against General’s daughter becoming a next President of the South Korea?
World witnessed another shenanigan when DJ Kim bought the Nobel Peace Prize with taxpayers money…he pretended that peace could be bought and sold like a commodity in the market and paid billions of dollars for the price that he wines, dines, whines, and hugs with the Northern brother in a feel-good-summit. During his presidency, he filled his jail with his own sons for bribery, distortion, fraud, and influence peddling.
He even had a chutzpah allowing his secret agents to wiretap his enemies during his presidency as his enemies of military did to him while he was in opposition.
And he has a gall to keep mum about it and goes around the country to celebrate his fifth year anniversary to steal the Nobel Peace Prize.
The South Koreans love to monkey around with their body…the BBC called it “the kingdom of plastic surgery” where becoming a look-a-like-Caucasian is a must for job-seekers, partner-finders, or teen-age hamburger eaters.
A group of pregnant women lines up at the departure lounge to the Los Angeles-bound airlines for impending delivery of the plastic-laminated US citizenship babies, while their fist-pumping hubbies are yelling “Yankee Go Home” at the front gate of the US Embassy in Seoul.
And they all have a chutzpah adding, furtively hiding in their bathroom, to “Yankee God Home” with “But Please Take Me With You”. (They are pathologically envious about Japanese privilege of the US entry without visa. You can guess there would be not many young gals or boys roaming in the streets of Seoul if Koreans were allowed to enter the US with no restriction.)
Since the word, chutzpah is derived from Yiddish Khutspe used by Jewish people and in order to help educate the millions of illiterate Americans, it is noteworthy to view briefly about the Jewish chutzpah in conjunction with the Israeli-Palestine conflicts…. For example, when the Jews shoot or kill you, an Arab, in Palestine, you are viewed by definition a deadly militant through the western-civilized lens, no matter whether you are 6 months old baby, 12 years old kid, or 80 years old grandpa, and when the Palestinian kids throw stones to the Israeli tanks and want to end the Israeli occupation, they are called a bunch of vicious terrorists.
The Jewish chutzpah reaches in its apex when the Israeli Zionists fashion the Nazi Holocaust into an ideological weapon to immunize Jews from any criticism, making Jews rather than Palestinians the victims echoed by Jewish-controlled news media: when a rabbi’s son living in Russia was punched in the nose in 2002, the story made the national headlines in America.
The remembrance of what the Nazis did to Jews is utilized as justification for the Israelis using Nazi tactics against Palestinians and as weapon to silence other holocausts like Armenian massacre and the annihilation of the American Indians.
In other words, any criticism of Israeli state policy is ipso facto anti-Semitic.
Returning to the Korean chutzpah idolizing Professor Hwang’s achievement on the human genome project, a 26-year-old Korean student succinctly opined: “I tend to feel that Koreans put too much focus on the results of things, and less focus on the process, on the transparency of the process. Korea is always hung up on being No.1 in the world.” (Italics added)
As if the Jews increasingly become blind and deaf in their cruel endeavor to quell the Palestinian uprising, the South Koreans also become jingoistic and narcissistic holding an illusion that their heroes are an exception to the rule, showering them with all kinds of perquisites, privilege, financial give-out, and celebrity treatment.
The South Koreans were too excited, smelling another big prize, to detect the upcoming debacle as they miss a tree in the forest, until two of the whistleblowers sought after the permanent residence in the US where the co-author of the project withdrew his name from the paper.
Imagine that Professor Hwang travels luxuriously and pro bono in the first class for 10 years while his team members always squat in the economy class, even though the work was a combined research and scholastic endeavor requiring a team play…
But alas, there would be no two, three, or team heroes but one and only hero allowed to be cloned in the real world, because the multiple hero would be less glorious and more cumbersome in idolizing and ritualizing process.They also were hungry for a hero desperately for sometime, because there were no heroes but a hero who became later charlatans such as General Park CH, President DJ Kim, or a look-a-like-Caucasian- Korean. Pity the nation!
