A friend in Silicon Valley, California, United States of America sent me a video link. The video claims the 13th century (1200’s) Italian explorer the Venetian merchant traveler Marco Polo while a guest of the Kublai Khan in The Middle Kingdom, China, stole pizza from Korea. Huh?
The video (link below) if not a hoax interviews a number of educated and notables in Korea all of whom claim pizza was a Korean creation stolen by Marco Polo. The video also shows a lone Korean with a protest sign in front of a Pizza parlor in Brooklyn, New York (A & L Italian Ristorante & Pizzeria).
Looking at a map of Marco Polo’s travels throughout his long stay in The Middle Kingdom it does not show he traveled to Korea. Perhaps he stole the pizza from the Kublai Khan and not Korea? Allow us to hallucinate and agree Mr. Polo did steal Pizza from China or Korea, was it really a pizza? The three main ingredients to pizza are: dough, tomato sauce, and cheese.
One problem: Tomatoes were not known to the Europeans until two hundred years after Marco Polo. Tomatoes were discovered in South America after Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World in 1492.
So did Mr. Polo on his way back to Italy from China stop off in South America to get some tomatoes to bring back to Italy to make the tomato sauce for the stolen pizza? Did he also stop off in Brazil to get some real tomatoes?
If the Koreans in the video want to claim something Italian, how about they claim the Mafia, the La Cosa Nostra? Are they going to claim the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci was also stolen from Korea? Better not claim “America” was named after a Korean, because it was named after the Italian map maker “Americo Vespucio.”
Video accusing Marco Polo being a pizza thief:
NEW INFORMATION:
Disclaimer and/or note: I do not know if the video this is a response to is a hoax or not. However I spoke to the owner of the pizza parlor the Korean was protesting in front of. He said the Korean had the film crew with him, then after making the video in front of the pizza parlor the Korean with the film crew flew back to Korea. Meaning the protest was staged just for the video. Now whether the Koreans who staged this actually believe Marco Polo stole the pizza or not that is another question.
Now here is where it continues to get interesting: In the video the narrator types an address on the Internet www.trueorig.... Then the video breaks away to the corresponding web page. However if you look at the address bar on that web page it reads: www.addictmediafilms.com. A further search shows “Addict Media Films” is located in Seoul, South Korea. Was the video a hoax or real? Hmmmmm?
Credit: Music at the end “Italian Romantic Comedic Italian” from JewelBeat.com
3 comments:
lol... If you seriously think that video is a real documentary you must be out of your mind. It's obviously a joke and a ridiculous commercial made to commercialize a korean pizza franchise. Didn't you see the "Mr.Pizza" logo at the end which shows that the video was a commercial. Sure the commercial was ridiculous to begin with, but to overreact to a video which is obviously fake is another thing. I'm not here to criticize your opinion, but next time you post up something like this make sure you get your facts straight.
The whole thing was a well crafted commercial for Mr Pizza that spoofed nationalism in Korea and elsewhere in East Asia.
Have you watched [Endangered Japan: A Small Survey on the Conflict between Japan and Korea] ?
I really want you to see this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=sW4H2PGj6JU&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_583788&v=FaOCQ9AQyP0
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