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Koreans of mixed ethnicity are hoping that the newfound celebrity status of the half-Korean football star Hines Ward will help dispel the prejudice they frequently encounter here.
Johnnie Westover is one of them. Active in a group of mixed-race Koreans, he told a meeting Friday he has never seen a half-Korean become a general in the army, or for that matter reach any position of authority in Korea, and asked if anyone else had. ¡°In an era of globalization, where everything is becoming mixed together, Koreans know how to change the color of their hair to red, green or yellow, but it seems they still don¡¯t know how to change the thoughts inside their heads,¡± he said.
After three years of effort, Kim (Westover's Korean name) was able to find the serial number of his father Benjamin Westover and was reunited with him in the U.S. Five years on, he still celebrates the Fourth of July with his father and four younger half-sisters.
He implies there is a willful blindness at work. ¡°Although discrimination against Koreans raised in Japan is now being discussed, the treatment of half-Koreans in Korea is not even being considered,¡± he says. He suggests following the U.S. example and making it illegal to discriminate against people on the grounds of race. Like Hines Ward, he credits his mother with making sacrifices that enabled him to get on in life.
Westover says that sacrifice was the soil from which a champion like Hines could grow. Among the Korean virtues that Westerners lack, he points to the quality called "jeong¡±, a hard-to-translate word meaning something like caring, which functions as a sort of social glue.
Another member of the group said since mixed Koreans are often of stronger build, Korea could have secured some outstanding athletes if it had been more hospitable to them.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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