Oh, I don't doubt your reading of it at all; I'm just baffled by how I completely missed the subtext when I was watching. Certainly, (modern) Koreans have really conflicting/mixed opinions about the Chinese, ranging from the extremely xenophobic to slavishly admiring (I have seen both extremes expressed by the same people!). So yes, I'm not surprised that they resorted to a stereotype of the Other to stand in for Evil. (I guess I'm just more used to recognizing Evil Japanese stereotypes, heh.)
Re: cynicism regarding history, yes, I don't necessarily condemn nationalist historical revisionism because the nationalism is very much a response to the contant violations of sovereignty during the last century, but it does make you take most things with a grain of salt.
On a related note, I would really like to know more about the history of the ethnic Korean communities in China--some have retained the language, others have not, but even some of the latter seem to still identify as Korean. (E.g. this one guy I met, who despite only having spoken Mandarin at home and having a Chinese name, introduced himself as Korean.)
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Date: 3 Nov 2010 06:17 am (UTC)Re: cynicism regarding history, yes, I don't necessarily condemn nationalist historical revisionism because the nationalism is very much a response to the contant violations of sovereignty during the last century, but it does make you take most things with a grain of salt.
On a related note, I would really like to know more about the history of the ethnic Korean communities in China--some have retained the language, others have not, but even some of the latter seem to still identify as Korean. (E.g. this one guy I met, who despite only having spoken Mandarin at home and having a Chinese name, introduced himself as Korean.)