User blog comment:ItsukoChan/Petition for Im Yong Soo?/@comment-119.206.113.37-20101013010140

The majority of those Korean fans that like Yong-soo most likely would be raised in America. They weren't directly taught what their motherland had gone through, just what they read up or heard from their parents, and have more of a sense of a multi-cultural person rather than a part of just a single culture. Entertainment of not, if we South Koreans made a series depicting Japan as a 'take this and claim it as mine' type of person, and generally unpopular stuff, they WOULD have done the same as we did (though I was harldy aware of the series when it happened, I only learnt of it watching the news, really). It's a rather painful jab to each other's pride, and scale is balancing on a rocky relationship. Basically, it's whatever the author heard on the net, which, in Japan's turf, is mostly filled with racism and insensitivity against Korea. Vice versa, Japanese are rather unpopular in Korea as well. If I was leading the petitioning/threats to put Korea out of the anime, I would've just said to delete any reference to Korea in any sort of entertainment, it doesn't do any good for our mending relationship...if it's mending at all at any rate... The so-called Korean Spirit is a mocking compliment at the hard work some of our famous people put into our independance and getting our nation back up on its feet. The 'this was invented in Korea!' crap is because they deny that some things were originated in Korea, or is a part of Korea as a matter of fact. At any rate, don't just compare the jabs at the pride of any nation that the series gives to the jab at Korea's. You could compare it to an entertainment series in Germany mocking the Jews, though I hardly think that it'd be the same thing. East Asia, Korea and China especially, were murdered, raped and abused by Japanese harshly. Whoever said that they don't give a shit to whatever Koreans think should slap themselves and actually think for once, and pay attention to history at it.