History really flows in the blood

Racial stereotyping really is not my thing. But truth be told, there is a reason why race is stereotyped. People do it all the time yet no one wants to talk about it. It is convenient and easy and makes life simpler for everyone. That's why people search for dog breeds instead of looking for dogs, because for purebred dogs you can track its ancestry and see what its parents have done, guess a general temperament. Whether that guess is true or not is really up to the individual dog, but the belief still holds that genetics really is stronger than social training. And this kind of mentality holds true for anything we see in a living organism, and is honestly true for people as well.

That being said, it seems that South Koreans still have monarchy strongly flowing in the blood. I guess you really cannot erase four millennia worth of slave training by couple of decades worth of democratic protests. Seriously, if the people forced and herded to mourn the death of the late president Roh's suicide (And yes, it clearly was a suicide. Regardless of the reason behind the suicide the fact is he chose to kill himself and leave his loved ones to tend for themselves rather than live and face his opponents. There is nothing glorious about a suicide, period.) and not have an opinion of one's own, I have to say that the country is hardly even close to the democracy that Roh had fought so hard to achieve. It seems the mentality is hard wired to mourn for a dead "monarch" and the entire nation must do so uniformly. Any show of happiness, and the happy person is immediately shot down as unpatriotic. Showing the most grief as possible of his death seems to be the most patriotic act ever. I just came across news that a college student chose to kill herself out of grief of Roh's death. That kind of news, is just downright embarrassing.

No, happy people have the right to be happy on any day that they choose. Honestly, a person has a right to be happy even on the day of their own father's funeral, let alone the former president's funeral that they may or may not have voted for. Korea is no longer (technically) governed by a king, and the truth is president Roh, although was popular, only received roughly half of the people's votes during his election, meaning the other half did not vote for him. Seriously, life goes on regardless of the fact a high profile figure died. People get promotions, get married, get children, or just generally happy because the weather is gorgeous. This is life. There is nothing unpatriotic about being happy on the day of a late president's funeral. It is unpatriotic to force everyone to mourn the death of the president. Because South Korea, as a democracy, should be ruled by its people and the voters, not by an all powerful god figure that is supposedly the president "ruling the people." A president's death is not the death of a god, nor is it the end of the world. Although the fact that a human being died should be grieved for its own sake, there is no need to force the entire nation to mourn and be sad and stop living. He was not your king, he was a public servant. Get your facts straight.

May Roh's soul rest in piece, because in this sort of commotion, I doubt that I will be able to rest in piece myself.