Korean Attributions

When the Koreans are forced to change their family names to Japanese ones, their Korean identity is weakened. Going through this traumatizing experience is

The autobiography illustrates personal experiences of discrimination and prejudice while also reporting the political occurrences during the United States’ involvement in World War II. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government unleashed unrestrained contempt for the Japanese residing in the nation. The general public followed this train of thought, distrusting the Japanese and treating them like something less than human. In a country of freedom and justice, no coalition stepped up to defend the people who had lived there most of or all of their lives; rather, people took advantage of the Japanese evacuation to take their property and belongings. The government released demeaning propaganda displaying comical Japanese men as monsters and rats, encouraging the public to be vigilant and wary toward anyone of Japanese descent. The abuse of the Japanese during this period was taken a little too lightly, the government apologizing too late and now minor education of the real cruelty expressed toward the nation’s own citizens. Now we see history repeating itself in society, and if we don’t catch the warning signs today, history may just come full

The murder of Vincent Chin’s influence also had a nation-wide influence on the Asian American civil rights movement. Never before had such an influence from one event had such an impact on uniting Asian Americans. Many incidents relevant to Asian American history are taught in schools, such as anti-Chinese legislation, Japanese Internment camps, or even the multiple wars against Asian countries such as the Philippines, Korea, or Vietnam (Wu). However, none of them caused a pan-Asian movement like the Vincent Chin case was able to, and the Vincent Chin case isn’t taught in schools (Wu). The Vincent Chin case united Asian Americans from multi-ethnic background and gave them something to rally against- the killing of innocent Asian Americans (Wu).

On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old college student, shocked the nation when he perpetrated the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. The violent rampage took place on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho was a senior majoring in English. Before turning the gun on himself and delivering a fatal gunshot to the head, Cho murdered more than 30 of his classmates and University faculty; numerous others were injured. In a strange twist, several days after the tragedy, a package determined to have been mailed by Cho during the shooting spree was received at NBC News in New York. The package contained photos of Cho posing with guns, as well as video clips and various pages of Cho’s writing.

In his essay, “Racial Identities”, Kwame Anthony Appiah addresses the topic of racial identification. He describes how and why it’s hard not to identify someone based on their race. Today in the United States, racial identification is quite relevant. People judge and stereotype others based on race. Classifying people based on their looks isn’t bad, it’s the negative attitudes and labels that come with it. Racial identification is hard for most people to avoid, is detrimental due to the bad attitudes people have, negatively affects people’s lifestyles, and divide people.

Next, On April 16, 2007, Cho Seung Hui, a student at Virginia Tech College, apparently had nowhere else to turn in his life other than to go on a massive killing spree. According to CNN News, a timeline of exactly what happened during the massacre was explained. It all began at 7:15am in the West Ambler Johnston Hall, which houses close to 900 students, a 911 call was made claiming that two students had been shot. Between the hours of 7:30am and 9am police and school board members discussed who on earth would possibly do something like this. Shortly after the school began to send students notices via email to notify them of the shootings. Around 9:45am another 911 call was made claiming that more shootings had taken place in the Norris Hall and this time 31 students were killed including Cho, who shot himself after going on the viscous rampage. Several messages were sent to the students of Virginia Tech notifying them of the second shootings via email. Shortly after noon the president of the college released information that classes

In this essay, I attempted to lay bare the issues of being an Asian-American and being labeled as an ethnic “other” in modern America. This label of “other” causes them to become marginalized and lose their sense of identity, belonging neither to Western culture nor Eastern culture. In order help stop this loss of identity in Asian-Americans, we must tear down the social construct of the “other” and integrate the different cultures into the melting pot of popular culture. Once we have stopped alienating different cultures, we can then have a moral society that upholds diversity and identity.

"I'm angry someone would do this to us. There are lives ruined, families ruined, and our whole school year is ruined" (Brackely 1). Casey Brackely, once a student that attended Columbine High School, remembers the tragedy of the horrific Columbine shooting that killed and injured many students. Mass shootings in the United States have been on the rise since the 1980’s, especially in the last decade. These shooters motives and profiles are almost all terrifyingly alike. Many of these shooters try to imitate and parallel the tragic shooting of the Columbine High School in 1999. These shootings have made peaceful organizations, such as an elementary school; become a place of violence and death. Currently, in the United States, an epidemic of

Under the Black Umbrella tells the many captivating stories about the 35 years of Japanese occupation in Korea through both world wars. The memories are all from the perspective of Korean men and women who lived through some or all of it. Many of their stories and the history during that time are influenced by several factors, some of which include their location in Korea or surrounding areas and the government’s involvement in recording history. The Japanese were not all awful to the Koreans, since they were humans all the same, but they committed enough atrocities to have a bad reputation with the Koreans. In attempts to unify, North Koreans employed nationalism and ethnocentrism to fuel their way to become a strong nation again. South Koreans did not rally around such extreme ways and did not utilize their northern brethren’s methods of fear for power. Back then and now, globalization is a part of life and it should not be stifled. Nationalistic thinking will bring about more pain and suffering rather than just trying to coexist. Korea faced many hardships with the Japanese occupation. In recovery to their rule, issues arose when it came to accuracy in history, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and the different roles they all took between the north and the south.

Massacres, wars, and shootings are very prevalent in today's world and society. Every week you hear about a large number of deaths from some event-and not just in dictator-led countries around the world, it happens in the US too. But why is this happening when the world has the most information and ways to stop killing as ever before? The simple answer is two things: for one, information is not so accessible about controversial things as previously thought, and people have been dehumanized by countries. In source A, the author brings up how the Americans referred to the Japanese people as the ¨Japs¨ in World War II. This helped allow the Americans working on the atomic bomb-which killed around 200,000 people in Japan-and the soldiers fighting the Japanese to justify the mass killing they did. But this

On April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech University, a student shot 32 people and committed suicide after the massacre. Seung-Hui Cho was mentally ill and was suffering from depressed. Even though his mental health was an issue he bought two guns at an unlicensed gun show that did not administered a background check on him (Gun Control Reform 1).

Koreans are very similar to Colombians when it came to communication. Likewise, Koreans are also respectful and passive people, which hindered them from confrontations whenever faced in situations. They were submissive and often afraid of communicating the errors in the aircraft to the flight captain, due to the authority he had. In addition, they wanted to make sure that the Captains were less intimidating and didn’t act the American air traffic controllers, so the workers on the flight wouldn’t be submissive when it came to speaking up in an emergency. This taught Koreans that they needed to improve their communication with one another, and learn from the little mistakes that all three countries, Korea, Colombia, and America were both doing. “Korean Air did not succeed – it did not right itself – until it acknowledged the importance of its cultural

Just as Malcolm X who had shed his personal attire for traditional white towels in an environment where “you could be a king or a peasant and no one would know”, I had temporarily stripped myself of my external Western context by entering a setting that would see superficially not as an adopted girl with white parents, but as an indistinguishable Korean. (Malcolm X 371) At first, when I was guarded by the cover provided by peers, I embraced this sense of unity from a distance, indulging in the fact that nobody notably labeled me as different based on my physical appearance. However, as Malcolm X’s travels show, no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to completely discard of your primary context when venturing into previously unexplored territories. For me, this revelation became clearly evident when I was forcibly removed from my veil of collective solidarity when physically separated from my friend group. While Malcolm X wrestled with standing out as a foreigner despite his role as Muslim minister back home, I struggled heavily with establishing an identity due to my inability to speak the Korean language. In this way, I faced the same sort of grappling with a double consciousness that can often be seen manifested in the complex struggle of African-American in their quest for

So, if I make the fried Kim-chi with the Kim-chi from a market, it is just not tasty as much as the one that my mom made. Yet, however the taste of it, every time I eat Kim-chi, it reminds me of my mom’s caring for me and the fact that I am Korean. Because when she tried to make me eat Kim-chi, she always used to say like ‘oh, Koreans should eat Kim-chi.’ By that time, however, what she said did not really come across my mind. Since all the people around me were Korean, I did not really know what being Korea means. But now I am in America, and being ‘Korean’ becomes one of the unique characteristics that represent me.

My return to Korea in the summer of 2001 was nothing short of a culture shock. I was in a country I thought I had learned by heart. It was the country I always rooted my identity and pride from. I wasn’t ready for the shock. I