..."Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully"
He's speaking of American soldiers.
You can understand his frustration - everyone knows South Korea is a backwards economy ruled by a dynasty of psychopaths threatening the very existence of its neighbors because of American imperialism.
Or is that the other one?
I get them mixed up because I'm a dumb American.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I thought he was speaking of Americans who had tortured Iraqis?
ReplyDeleteBrad DeLong
There are a number of ways to read it, I think. If he was only talking about Americans actually torturing Iraqis I still think his advocacy of collective guilt is nothing short of barbaric.
DeleteHowever, even that's not the only way to read it. He was responding to the Iraq war in general and even more specifically the case of a Korean missionary getting killed by terrorists in an effort to blackmail Korea into backing down from supporting the United States.
In other words - lots of soldiers that did not torture Iraqis.
I took the "torture Iraqis" line to be a distorted view of what all American soldiers were there doing (since the Korean missionary was killed to get South Korea to stop supporting the broader American effort, I think I have grounds for reading it this way).
But like I said, even if he was thinking specifically of the soldiers that have tortured I don't see why we should slowly kill their daughters for that. I think we should lock those soldiers up for the rest of their lives and leave their daughters unmolested.
I say all this as a guy that didn't even think we should have gone into Iraq.
Notice that he has been protesting the American presence in Korea too. It's quite clear that his concerns are not restricted only to American soldiers that torture Iraqis. We weren't even in Iraq when he was protesting American soldiers the first time.
One of the links in that article seems to imply that the song was supposed to be satirical. (http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-26840321_ITM)
DeleteAlso, it appears they weren't protesting the presence of Americans in South Korea but the specific terms of the agreement. There is a jurisdictional provision which provides that US soldiers are not to be tried by Korean courts, but instead by US courts. (It's standard. The US policy is to not let anybody but US court martial try US soldiers.) A pair of US soldiers drove a military vehicle, running over a pair of Korean schoolgirls and the court martial found them not guilty of anything. Regardless of the merits of the verdict, it appears many Koreans did not feel this was a fair trial.
Did Psy kill, rape, murder, torture, or otherwise hard another human being in expressing his musical art? Now, how about those who are the subject of the song?
ReplyDeleteThat should be "harm", not "hard".
Delete