Letters to the Editor
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Interesting post, but the bottle cap looks more like a bridge...
...specifically the Chongryu Bridge, which can be seen on this page:
http://www.enlight.ru/camera/dprk/phen_mang_e.html
The caption for this photo even says the bridge appears on beer bottle caps. Bridge or ship, though, this is a fascinating bit of history I knew nothing about, so I'm glad you posted it.
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Fascinating!
Your inimitable form of comi-tragic analysis. Thanks.
Now, would you mind turning your attention to the rising cost of beer, which my local food co-op attributes to a "world-wide hops shortage"? Has this "shortage" been manufactured by commodities hoarding? I mean, really. Hops is a WEED.
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Hop shortage is real
No, the the hop shortage is real. People often forget about the opportunity cost of growing one plant versus another. As American farmers shift to growing corn because of growing ethanol demand and government incentives, they have to plant less of something else. Hops is one of many plants not being grown as much, leading to rising prices... Bad for beer drinkers like myself.
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Fascinating, indeed
This is a very interesting story and I have read a bit more about the USS General Sherman. Apparently the USS Pueblo, the intelligence ship captured in 1968, is moored near the spot where the General Sherman was burned and is a tourist attraction. It is still commissioned in the US Navy!
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It's the Iraqi Information Minister
We committed suicide on the Gates of North Korea, too.
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AskDong,
Thanks for the info. I remember 15 or so years ago the coffee prices doubled because of a poor crop, and they never came back down. Time to start growing and brewing my own beer, I suppose.
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Interesting......at the time, of course, the country was not divided,
and the US was far from the only country nibbling at Korea. Japan was warming up to its invasion, seeing Korea as a handy land bridge to China & Manchuria; Korea was and had been for time a suzerain state of China; and Russia was busy protecting its interests. And there were western missionaries. Who got executed.
The second US gunboat incident you refer to actually occurred on an island, so it was somewhat confined, but did nothing to improve relations with Korea or its rulers. A pity, since Queen Min was walking a knife's edge trying to keep her country independent of Japan (although I don't think she was queen yet in 1866).
The division of the country at the 38th parallel actually did occur maybe 30 years later, before the Russo-Japan war, when Russia and Japan agreed that that line was a good place to divvy up their spheres of influence. Russia, of course, was looking for that legendary warm-water port, and wanted Port Arthur. Didn't do them much good, because Japan attacked them only a year or so later. Still, it makes me think the seemingly arbitrary division at the 38th parallel after WW2 had historical roots.
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Nice history, silly story
The whole basis of the story -- that the North Korean beer is referencing the General Sherman -- is patently silly. A very little googling, done wholly in English, reveals that "Taedonggang," the name of the beer, means "Taedong River," and that the Taedong is crossed by the Chungryu Bridge in Pyongyang, which looks exactly like the image on the cap.
So unfortunately your story is hyperbolic and inaccurate. You completely missed the boat on this one, so to speak.
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If the table were turned...
Imagine a technologically superior and expansive culture from somewhere else on the planet or from some other time and place showing up at the front gate of the USA demanding to be let in and allowed to set up shop where they'd spread their superior explanations regarding law, religion and sex. They could point there fingers at Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and exclude their backwards university perversions from speading while exposing them for what they are. They'd buy the best that our museums had and take it away from us and leave us with strange diseases the cures for which they'd sell us for what to them was a fair price.
It sounds ludicrous now, but history is long and human perspective is short in comparison. Who'd a thunk that the vikings would be best known one day as the founders of the Nobel Peace Prize..or that the Roman Legions would be reduced to funny costumes in movies and that the Italian army would be synomymous (justifiably so or not) with surrender. Or that a black mixed race son of a Kenyan farmer from a broken family would one day be in contention for the worlds most powerful position and be elected in a popular democratic vote in a nation that a few generations previous would have considered him sub-human.
We'd do well to read history for its message and not for its tactics.
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So how's the beer?
Oddly, the thing I want most in the world right now is to try some Taidonggang beer. C'mon... how can beer be anti-American??
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@doggu4
Yes, you have a point, but the Korean situation in the 1860's can be summarized a little differently:
US warship shows up in isolationist country A. Its overtures are rebuffed and fought off. Ship sails on, leaving country A unchanged.
US warship shows up in neighboring isolationist country B. They talk, make friends, and teach the natives how to build railroads, steel plants, modern artillery, and many things that help the natives compete in the modern world. The natives then become aggressive imperialists with designs against their old enemies, particularly country A.
Not only should country A NOT be surprised when they are invaded 30 years later, they should have realized, based on the history between these two nations, that it would only be a matter of time. Japan tried to conquer Korea in the 1590's under Toyotami. Then, under the Tokugawa, Japan became isolationist. Remove the Shogun and the Tokugawa tradition, and what should you expect?
Kim can blather all he wants, but if the Korean rulers in the 1860's had been a little smarter and accepted US trade and technology, the Japanese occupation and upheaval in the aftermath might have been avoided.
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That's an interesting point, cdunlea
Korea defeated Japan, after protracted hostilities, during the Hideyoshi shogunate in part because they had a masterful battle admiral, but also because they had more advanced technology, viz. the armor-plated turtle boats (with cannon in the turtle's mouth).