[ks-open] Re: Why honor Elizabeth "Kim" Chambers?

[brian myers]

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As those who have read the book know, "Kim" is speaking of the northern 
outskirts of Seoul, an area surrounded (in her own words)by high, 
purple-capped mountains. There is no labor in a rice field in Seoul at that 
time, if one can speak of a rice field at all, which would match "Kim"'s 
description. This is a crucial point, for what "Kim" is describing in such 
impressive detail (in defiance of infantile amnesia) is the day of her 
mother's alleged murder.

You know, it is a tad irksome to find people who have not read the book 
bending over backward for some way, any way, to make all "Kim"'s nonsense 
add up. We have already had someone point to three isolated, historically 
remote incidents as evidence that Korea indeed has a "sanctified" tradition 
of honor killings sufficient to have kept the South Korean police, in 1958, 
from prosecuting a murder. (This as if you couldn't find a half dozen 
similar anecdotes from Irish or Russian or American history.) No doubt some 
anthropologist is now going to pipe up and say that on some remote island 
off of Cheju, Koreans bow down to their toddlers before every meal.
Brian Myers


>From: "Richard C. Miller" <rcmiller@students.wisc.edu>
>Reply-To: ks-open@iic.edu
>To: ks-open@iic.edu
>Subject: Re: Why honor Elizabeth "Kim" Chambers?
>Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 17:12:19 +0900
>
>REPLY sends your message to the whole list
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>
>At 04:45 AM 12/27/00, Brian Myers wrote:
> >gusty December wind…in the rice field…We were working quickly, trying to
> >keep ourselves as warm as possible. I straightened up …Omma stood up,
> >rubbing her tired back…(7)
> >Bear in mind that Chambers was three years old when farming this 
>miraculous
> >winter rice!
>
>Actually, the idea of a December rice crop is not that miraculous,
>depending on where you are. There are perfectly happy green rice fields not
>ten minutes' walk from my place here in Osaka right now, even though there
>is up to 50 centimeters of snow in areas farther south. The elevation,
>local topography, and orientation of the land has as much or more to do
>with the possible number of annual rice crops as latitude does. As long as
>there is no snow load, no killing frost, and adequate sunshine/water,
>there's no reason some low-lying area in southern Korea couldn't likewise
>support a winter crop.
>
>I have no idea whether the author was in some area of Korea that supports
>double-cropping and I gather that where exactly she was has been something
>of a mystery. But that's a different issue, as is the three-year-old's
>activities and the author's memory thereof.
>
>Richard
>--Richard C. Miller
>--UW School of Music
>--National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka Japan
>--rcmiller@students.wisc.edu
>   http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~rcmiller/

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