Over at Gusts of Popular Feeling, Matt has an interesting post about a "wrong-headed" book titled Koreans Are White. The book apparently argues that Koreans are originally Greek, and that Korea is a "long-lost Greek colony." Must be seen to be believed.
Tuesday, April 05, 2022
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3 comments:
Wow. That is quite incredible. Basically: "We must respect Koreans because they are ethnically similar to us. But screw the rest of the deceitful, scheming 'Asiatics.'"
I've been reading through the book and shaking my head. There are some astounding leaps in logic, and plenty of examples of "cloud illusion" thinking, i.e., seeing patterns where none exist. At the same time, some of the information in the book strikes me as either legitimate or at least plausible, and it's this admixture of fact and fantasy that makes the book feel as if I'm witnessing a train wreck—fascinating and appalling all at once. If I thought my boss had been pulling theories out of his ass, well, this guy has my boss beat by a mile.
Oh, and I haven't even touched on the idea that any of this guy's work might be deeply offensive to the modern reader, Korean or otherwise. I do give the guy credit for at least trying to be earnest and, at least from his point of view, as fair as possible, but he is a product of his time. And as far as I can tell, he has no actual background in linguistics, cultural anthropology, or genetics. He's just a guy who thinks somewhat systematically, and who grabbed a bunch of dictionaries and convinced himself he was doing actual research. Just wow.
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