Thursday 23 October 2008

VANK loses funding; Academy of Korean Studies taken over by Japanese Collaborators?

The great VANK Cathedral in Iran

In a very disappointing turn, The Academy of Korean Studies, has cut funding for the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea's ongoing campaign to change the East Sea's name on every map in the world.  Yes, it's true, while it continues to support many of the civic groups that attacked the government with US Beef protest, the government has pulled the rug out from under the good citizens and patriots of VANK; included among those who will feel the pinch, of course is your very own DokdoIsOurs, who used to spend two days a week supported by VANK funding, during which time he looked at porn on the internet, and googled "Sea of Japan" "Takashima" and "Liancourt Rocks" six times a day each, looking for new outrages to mass-forward to the volunteer diplomat network.  It appears this reporter will now need to go out and work more.

Dong-a Ilbo opinion columist Kwon Sun-Taek points out the unfairness of these new cuts of public funding, "Who would want to pay taxes if the government offers financial aid to civic groups conducting illegal protests while stopping assistant to VANK?"  Indeed, it am true.  I am disappointing in these news because a who will help our country convince the world really it's Japan bad guy!

However, DokdoIsOurs, and Park Ki-Tae, founder of VANK will not go gently into that good night!  When asked about the funding cut, Park was irate.  "I suspect the Academy of Korean Studies has been taken over by Japanese collaborators, dirty, possibly half-blood traitors who are Japan friendly and like Totoro more than Mashimaro!  I have reported this to Korea's counter-intelligence agency, and expect a full investigation, and a thorough test of the loyalties of the Academy of Korean Studies' administrators.  We must correct the mistaken opinions of these ignorant academic societies, by providing the correct information they need to make more informed opinions."  

In a brave last stand, Mr. Park has made a call out to all VANK volunteer diplomats: 
"I think three-hundred e-mails a day will be enough to convince the Academy to change their minds.  Here is the text of the e-mail I suggest you send:  (you can copy it from the original page here)."

DokdoIsOurs can only reiterate that cry for justice:


Stop ranting and raving about this D-Wars. I really enjoyed the whole movie from the beginning to the ending credit.

The story is very interesting because it transforms the old Korean legend into the people of modern day LA very cleverly, which synergistically elevates the originality of the story line. The parallel arrangement of time and space enhances the cohesiveness between ancient Korea and modern day LA.

While the two main characters change from Koreans to Caucasians by means of reincarnation, the dinosaur like creatures and the evil army play the role of the missing links between the entirely dichotic time and place.

The LA battle scene is one of the most exhilarating movie battle scene in recent films. The missile and gun fight between Apache helicopters and flying dragons are nothing like any other movies. Whenever the helicopters collide into flying dragons, I felt as if I was attacked by those awesome creatures. The sound effects were succinctly utilized to boost the realism of the battle scene.

The plot is not as awkward as some people said. I found myself pretty well dove into the story line without many glitches. The plot flows fluently thanks to the well thought directing. Things are exactly where they are supposed to be. If any single element of the scenes are missing, probably the story would not connect well, however, when time and place change, the reasons of the transitions are well explained.

The oriental dragons are very different from western ones. For example, they don't have wings. They metamorphose from a serpent(Imoogi) into a sacred dragon with the power of dragon ball (Yuh yi joo).

In many Korean legends, Imoogi is depicted as an incomplete life form symbolizing the mundane average people of no novelty. An Imoogi is a mere local guardian god often guards a small town or village. Depend on the local tradition, some villages or towns were believed to have human sacrifice regularly to appease the guardian yearly or once in every ten or hundred years. Imoogi needs a human sacrifice (female virgin) to become a sacred dragon. Dragons are Gods governing the sky controlling the weather especially the rain, which is critical in traditionally agricultural Asian society. Being a sacred creature which can fly in to the sky is the ultimate purpose of the existence of Imoogi. So, some Imoogies threatened the unwilling village to earn human sacrifice often in a violent way. Many Imoogi stories involves sad lovers who lost their beloved as ceremonial sacrifice, and also the stories of failure of evil Imoogies from being transformed in to the dragons.

Director Shim adopted this Korean legend carefully and intelligently and created this modern day myth.

Just seeing an oriental dragon visualized in such a detailed manner makes this movie worth to see. Besides, old Korean villages, costumes and soldiers and guards are surprisingly well presented, which is very educational to any people who has little or no exposure to this long but unknown culture. The music used for ending credit is a famous Korean folk song called 'Arirang' which symbolizes unfulfilled love of young lovers.

Watch this movie. This movie is like a Christmas gift package. It has fun, excitement, culture, myth, visuals and music. The ten bucks you paid for you and your children have never been worth this much.


"We should also contact these academics' places of work and warn them about the kind of two-faced traitors they have in their employ, and if we can find the home addresses of Academy members, forward them to the rest of the volunteer diplomats, so that any diplomats who live near them can throw poop at their houses," Park reminded his loyal, patriotic followers.

And DokdoIsOurs reminds you to change the wordings of some sentences, from time to time, so that your E-mails will continue to get through spam filters. Meanwhile, grow, Korea! Down with Japan! Up with Dokdo! Up yours, Japan!

(...)

1 comment:

Brian said...

Holy crap I thought you actually wrote up that movie review. I mean, I know you wrote it on Yahoo, but I thought you wrote it originally just for this site.

I also had to reread that Sun-taek editorial excerpt a few times to realize he meant to write "stop giving assistance to VANK." He is distorting Korean culture and history with such unclear writing.