Archive for Korean Society

A Quick Thought on this Psy business

December 14, 2012 An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, Korean Society, Useful Idiocy 6 comments

My ten year-old can already tell you that one of my life’s newer objectives is to die an old man without having heard “Kangnam Style” even once. Pop culture has never been my thing, but I sure did get tired of all the forced Kangnam-Style allusions and cliches in just about everything written about Korea during Psy’s 15 minutes.  Anyway, if you’re wondering whether I’m even a little bit surprised that Psy once sang, “Kill those fucking Yankees …. Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers …. Kill them all slowly and painfully,” well, no, I’m not surprised.  Not even a little.  In fact, I’m sure there was a whole mob cheering those applause lines when he sang them. Some of the rhetoric in South Korea in those days would have made Hamas blush.  It also enjoyed a significant amount of encouragement from — and exploitation by — South Korea’s ruling party. If you doubt me there, then you haven’t read that last link.

You know who made a lot of good points about this? Someone I disagree with more often than not, The Metropolitician.  I agree with him that Psy’s apology was certainly insincere, and the fact that Psy’s “art” has as much to do with Korean culture as a Samsung knockoff. (I allow that Psy may have been just one more ambitious person who exploited the popularity of anti-Americanism for his own selfish reasons, but that excuses nothing.) Having served as a soldier in Korea at the time when Psy was spewing his hate, I don’t deny my feelings of satisfaction that Psy, unlike me, was capable of making millions of Americans aware of the depth of many South Koreans’ hate. I worry that he may also make South Korea as a whole infamous for hate. Like many other things in life, including South Koreans’ own views of America and its soldiers, this would be unfair.  Psy’s promoters must be awfully thankful that their client shares a peninsula with an even more repulsive individual, who provided a timely distraction.

Flower Indeed: Lim Su-Kyung and the Bigotry of the Korean Left

June 27, 2012 Korean Politics, Korean Society, Refugees 2 comments

For several days, I’ve hoped to find time to write about the new hit TV show in South Korea, “Now on My Way to Meet You,” featuring (and humanizing!) photogenic North Korean women:

Each woman also entertains, some by singing and dancing. Others perform comedy skits, including several who mimic North Korea’s iconic, stern-faced female TV newsreader.

But the ending turns sad as the women send video messages to family members back in the North. Everyone in the studio sobs as one woman tells her father, held in a North Korean jail, how she can’t forget the way he smiled when she visited.    [....]

The emotional public response has taken them by surprise.  One guest, Shin Eun-ha, even has her own fan club.  “I wept for the first time in 10 years, along with my husband,” wrote one female viewer. Another said the show had persuaded her and her husband not to divorce.  [Reuters]

More here, video here.

I love this story on several levels (my wife also does a wicked impression of a North Korean anchorwoman).  So often, South Koreans perceive North Koreans in the way Europeans perceive Roma (aka Gypsies) — as feral vagabonds who can never quite be brought into their circles of trust, whether socially or economically.  The greatest barriers to reunification will be psychological  — mutual stereotyping, tribalism, and exploitation.  And when we see the views of some in Korea’s political left — including one who was elected to the South Korean National Assembly by a majority of one district’s voters — you get a sense of how difficult unification will be.

Allow me to introduce Lim Su-Kyung, who in 1989, before it was routine for South Koreans to visit the North, defied the warnings of her own government to attend a youth festival in Pyongyang.  The North immediately made a propaganda superstar out of her, dubbed her the “flower of unification,” and even granted her an audience with Kim Il Sung.  Last April, Lim got herself elected to the National Assembly as a representative of the main left-wing opposition party, the Democratic United Party.

In Seoul recently, Baek Yo Sep, a 28 year-old a North Korean defector, university student, and human rights activist recognized Lim in a restaurant, where she was drinking with some advisors.  Baek asked Lim to pose for a picture, Lim agreed, and all seemed to be cordial until one of Lim’s advisors insisted on deleting the pictures.  Somehow, the soju set free Lim’s inner Mel Gibson, and showed us the worst of the Korean Left’s bigotry toward their oppressed brothers and sisters:

According to Baek [...] Lim made the comments to him on the 1st at a restaurant in Seoul, saying, “Defectors who have no roots should just shut their mouths and live quietly in the Republic of Korea. Defectors with no idea should not talk back to a Republic of Korea National Assembly lawmaker.”

[....]

In the process, Lim also heavily criticized Saenuri Party lawmaker Ha Tae Kyung, who used to be a pro-North activist himself, saying, “You work with that Ha Tae Kyung right, on that North Korean human rights stuff? Ha Tae Kyung that turncoat I’m going to kill him with my own bare hands.”  [Daily NK]

Different papers offered different accounts of the incident, all of them ugly:

According to the North Korean student who happened to meet Representative Lim in a restaurant last Friday, Lim began to lash out at him when he told her that a waiter had deleted photos taken with Lim from his cell phone, as ordered by Lim’s aides. (See story on Page One.) Lim allegedly responded to the defector by saying, “You are doing the weird things, dubbed a fight for North Korean human rights, with Ha Tae-keung, right? Ha is a son of a bitch betrayer and I will kill him with my hand .?.?.” Ha is the president of Open Radio for North Korea, who became a lawmaker for the ruling Saenuri Party in the last April legislative election.

When the defector rebutted Lim’s violent language by saying, “Who betrayed whom? Do you mean Representative Ha and us, North Korean defectors, betrayed the murderer Kim Il Sung [founder of North Korea], whom you called ‘your father’?”

Lim reportedly kept shouting, “You stupid turncoats!”  [Joongang Ilbo]

Full disclosure:  Ha Tae-Kyung is a friend of mine.  Ha, a disaffected ex-leftist, was imprisoned by the old right-wing regime for possession of pro-North Korean literature.  He later became disgusted by North Korea’s human rights abuses and oppression, and by the willful blindness of his fellow leftists toward those abuses.  He became a human rights activist, founded Open News, which publishes clandestine reports from North Korea and broadcasts them back into North Korea, and was also recently elected to the National Assembly.

Baek quoted Lim as denouncing North Korean defectors as traitors and having “no roots.” She also vilified Rep. Ha Tae-kyung of the ruling Saenuri Party, who had once worked with Lim in the 1980s, as a traitor for his conversion to an anti-Pyongyang activist, Baek said.

Lim was also quoted as saying she will “kill the traitor (Ha) with my hands.”

[....]

As the traitor remarks drew strong criticism, Lim offered an apology Sunday, claiming in a statement that she was referring to only Ha as a traitor for joining the conservative ruling party, and that she never meant to describe defectors as such.

On Monday, Ha accused Lim of lying and demanded she sincerely apologize again.

“Rep. Lim holds hostility toward North Korean defectors and thinks of defectors as traitors,” Ha said. “But she said in the statement that she never called North Korean defectors traitors, but she said I am a traitor just because I joined the Saenuri Party, not because I engaged in a human rights movement helping defectors.”  [Yonhap]

Lim later apologized.  Her own party took no disciplinary action against her, although her party’s leader said that lawmakers should be more careful about what they say (as in keep their bigotry hidden from view lest it embarrass other politicians).

Oddly enough, Lim seems to have escaped the current scandal over two other alleged North Korean sympathizers in the National Assembly.  Unlike those other individuals, Lim appears to have been duly elected, and Lim is a member of a “mainstream” political party.

Maybe when Korea finally does unify, some sympathetic South American dictator will allow people like Lim Su-Kyung to live out their wretched lives in an isolated compound on some remote scrap of unused farmland.  Maybe Venezuela.

Patty Kim and Saemaul Nostalgia

December 10, 2010 Korean Society One comment

Isn’t this a great, jaunty old song? I’ll bet at least one reader will remember where he’s heard this before:

President Lee Leases Tokdo to Japan for 100 Years to Build Porn Studio

October 28, 2010 China & Korea, Korean Politics, Korean Society 9 comments

islands.jpgOh, wait — that’s not it. It was North Korea that actually leased two islands to China to build (what else?) casinos. Yes, casinos. File that one under “stuff Chinese people like.” It might also go under “stuff that North Korean money launderers like.”

The difference being, the islands of Hwan Geum Pyong and Ui Hwa Do actually consist of arable farmland. Not that North has any shortage of that, of course.

I eagerly await the Hankyoreh’s reaction and the impact on North Korea’s impeccable nationalist credentials.

Correction: The Global Times, a not-all-that-well-loved ChiCom broadsheet, citing the Hankook Ilbo, says the islands will be the site of a “free trade zone.” Hat tip, Chris.

Once Again, South Koreans Prove Exceptionally Prone to Mass Hysteria

June 10, 2010 Korean Society, Technology 11 comments

There are times when I wonder if South Koreans will ever learn anything from the entire Mad Cow fiasco, when all it takes to spread mass hysteria in a prosperous, technologically advanced, industrialized society is a 16 year-old with high speed Internet:

Police said yesterday that the boy, resident of Yeosu, South Jeolla, identified only by his surname, Yoo, sent 15 friends an online message that South Korea had decided to “make a pre-emptive military attack on North Korea” because it was “only a matter of time” until the North, fully prepared for war, invaded.

“All males over the age of 17 should take part in the battle and all schools will be shut down,” read the message sent at 11:23 p.m. on May 26.

Yoo allegedly sent his message as military tensions between the two Koreas made headlines after Seoul blamed Pyongyang for sinking South Korea’s Cheonan warship. Yoo reportedly told police he wanted to “fool people.

Yoo’s friends soon started relaying the message to their own friends, police said. The spread of the message increased exponentially as teenagers in South Chungcheong, Gyeonggi, Gangwon, Seoul, Busan and Incheon passed it to their own friends on in the following 48 minutes, before one of them, a 12-year-old elementary school student, posted it on the online board of a major Internet portal site.

And to think they’ll all be voting in just a few years!

In what must be one of the great ironies of our time, a society known for technological Luddism is proving to be exceptionally capable at stealing online ID’s to circumvent South Korea’s lame internet restrictions, spreading conspiracy theories, and posting propaganda videos that become viral hits in South Korea. And the best response the hub of LG and Starcraft addicts can muster is … a couple of loudspeakers blaring K-pop to bored North Korean soldiers? Are you kidding me?

Why do the North Koreans have such a pathological fear of the free flow of information? My guess is, they’ve seen how gullible and easily manipulated South Koreans are, and they suspect that the same is true of their own subjects.

Where’s the Outrage?

May 28, 2010 An Alliance?, Anti-Americanism, Cheonan Incident, Korean Society, North-South 30 comments

South Koreans’ unifiction mania may have cooled for the moment, but B.R. Myers tells us that public anger toward North Korea doesn’t approach that directed against America after the 2002 accident, and that plenty have made the decision to disbelieve the evidence that North Korea sank the Cheonan:

It would be unfair to characterize these skeptics as pro-Pyongyang, but there is more sympathy for North Korea here than foreigners commonly realize. As a university student in West Berlin in the 1980s, I had a hard time finding even a Marxist with anything nice to say about East Germany. In South Korea, however, the North’s human rights abuses are routinely shrugged off with reference to its supposedly superior nationalist credentials. One often hears, for example, the mistaken claim that Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, purged his republic of former Japanese collaborators, in alleged contrast to the morally tainted South. [....]

South Korean nationalism is something quite different from the patriotism toward the state that Americans feel. Identification with the Korean race is strong, while that with the Republic of Korea is weak. (Kim Jong-il has a distinct advantage here: his subjects are more likely to equate their state with the race itself.) Thus few South Koreans feel personally affected by the torpedo attack. [....]

This urge to give the North Koreans the benefit of the doubt is in marked contrast to the public fury that erupted after the killings of two South Korean schoolgirls by an American military vehicle in 2002; it was widely claimed that the Yankees murdered them callously. During the street protests against American beef imports in the wake of a mad cow disease scare in 2008, posters of a child-poisoning Uncle Sam were all the rage. It is illuminating to compare those two anti-American frenzies with the small and geriatric protests against Pyongyang that have taken place in Seoul in recent weeks.

If demographics are destiny, accounts like Myers’s suggest that our alliance with South Korea has no long-term future. Like Robert, I don’t think this is the time to speed up our disengagement or appear to abandon South Korea, but it’s as appropriate as ever to proceed with an orderly transition to an independent South Korean defense from which both countries will emerge stronger.

Hat tip to a reader.

Mad Cow Revisionism

May 12, 2010 Anti-Americanism, Korean Politics, Korean Society, U.S. & Korea 2 comments


The Hankyoreh reacts to comments by President Lee by reinventing the Mad Cow riots of 2008:

During a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, President Lee said, “It has been two years since the candlelight vigil demonstrations and although many suppositions proved untrue, not one of those intellectuals or medical sector figures who participated back then has engaged in any reflection. The president also said, “Without reflection, there is no development of society. He added, “I would like to say that it is positive that one daily newspaper reevaluated this in the form of a focused feature piece to mark the second anniversary.

Let me state my agreement with the truth of the matter Lee asserts while questioning whether it might have been wiser to let this dog sleep. That being said, I can scarcely add up all the layers of delusion in the Hanky’s response, but start with the one about how this really wasn’t about beef at all.

He also pledged to improve his communication with the people, reshuffle positions in the Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) and Cabinet, and abandon his plans for the Grand Korean Waterway. This was an admission by President Lee that the candlelight vigil demonstrations were not only about the dangers of mad cow disease from U.S. beef, but also an expression of negative popular sentiments regarding the one-sided governance and expediency tactics he showed early in his term and the appointments of wealthy Gangnam elites and Korea University, Somang Church and Youngnam region individuals, the so-called “Ko So Young,” to prominent positions.

So … the guy they voted for didn’t win, I take it. And then again, maybe it was about beef after all:

Ahn Jin-geol, director of the Public Welfare Hope Team for People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, said Tuesday, “It is brazen for President Lee to apologize twice for giving concerns to the people and even promise to carry out additional beef negotiations, and then turn around and tell the people they need to reflect. Ahn also said, “This proves that the president’s apologies back then were lies.

No, Lee apologized for his “handling” of the beef import issue, which isn’t the same as acknowledging that the public panic that caused the mass demonstrations had any scientific basis. In his first apology, he just about called the scare “unfounded” before concluding that the angry mob was in no mood to listen to any amount of objective, scientific information — much less his own assertions. While the specific reasons for Lee’s apology remain somewhat vague, the main reason seems to have been to appease the mob and politely request that they shut up and go home (eventually, after the most of them got tired of the protests and did). To an extent, Lee was also apologizing for mishandling the P.R. aspect — not doing enough to get accurate information to gullible people soon enough. I don’t think that Lee was apologizing for the terms of an FTA negotiated during the Roh Administration, nor was he apologizing for not implementing the minutiae of trade policy through a series of popular plebiscites before misinformed voters panicking over false reporting and irrational, unscientific rumors. At that point, Lee would have thrown the Wonder Girls into an active volcano to appease the mob and get them to put down their their pitchforks and torches bamboo poles and candles.

The Hanky also predicts a groundswell of Roh-stalgia, just weeks after South Korea buried its dead from the Cheonan. I suspect that there will be sympathy for Roh, the troubled human being, but I doubt there will be much nostalgia for Roh, the man who should never have been the President of the Republic of Korea, and whose policies have been thoroughly repudiated by events during and after his term. My hopes are actually rising that South Korea’s unrequited infatuation with its abusive North Korean cellmate is about over with. Is it possible that South Korea is growing up at last? I hope so. I’d be disturbed, and surprised, if the Hanky is right and I’m wrong.

Oh, for F**k’s Sake: Not Another Do-Gooder Congressman Out to Rid the USFK of Juicy Girls

May 4, 2010 Korean Society, U.S. Military, UCMJ & SOFA 12 comments

Normally, I actually like Chris Smith, but it’s just plain dumb to go after U.S. service members who, while thousands of miles from home, pursue (a) human nature, and (b) a form of commerce that’s more-or-less openly available to 23 million South Korean men around them:

A bill to create a director of global anti-human trafficking policies in the Department of Defense was introduced Thursday in an effort to better monitor the way the military deals with South Korean “juicy bars” that cater to American troops and have often been linked to prostitution.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., drafted the bill to create the assistant secretary-level position. The office would “investigate links between trafficking in persons and … members of the Armed Forces and contractors of the department,” according to a copy of the bill Smith’s staff e-mailed to Stars and Stripes. [Stars & Stripes]

First, a point of order: juicy girls aren’t necessarily prostitutes. They are employees of “juicy bars” who charge customers, in some places U.S. military personnel, for the privilege of buying them overpriced drinks (usually colored water or juice) while cuddling with the girls or feeling them up. Some sell sex, some sell it to selected customers only, and some don’t sell it at all. (Hey, a defense attorney has to know these things! This is essential professional knowledge, people!)

And sorry, but with a few isolated exceptions, I simply don’t believe that most “juicy girls” were plying their trades involuntarily (if not always enthusiastically, but that’s not the same thing). If there really is a human trafficking problem in South Korea, just how effective can USFK really be in enforcing the laws against it if the South Korean cops — some of who stations were directly adjacent to some of Seoul’s most notorious red light districts until very recently — won’t?

Or perhaps you’d rather have them all hanging out in Hongdae?

What gives this idea legs (!) is its appeal to a number of constituencies that don’t usually agree on much: religious nannies, feminist nannies, and Koreans of both genders who, for various reasons, can’t stand the idea of American soldiers getting laid in a country that happens to have a multi-billion dollar sex industry that is both illegal and mostly tolerated. And frankly, in a society where prostitution still has broad social acceptance and patronage, wouldn’t it be wiser to legalize and regulate it? I know, you’re going to compare it to the drug thing now, which I’d still argue is not widely accepted and more destructive than a natural bodily function with the added fact that money changes hands, though I personally disapprove if one of the persons is married or carries an STD (so regulate it!).

Sure, juicy girls are a waste of money, money that usually just pays for a lot of frustration and gets a lot of soldiers Article 15′s for bouncing checks. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve talked soldiers out of marrying juicy girls as an Army defense attorney. But then, if keeping soldiers from getting screwed — financially speaking — was our primary concern, why not start by shutting down the casino at Walker Hill and taking the slot machines out of the on-post MWR facilities?

Andrei Lankov on Ajumma Power

April 20, 2010 Korean Society, NK Economics 4 comments

Picking up the theme of North Korea’s indefatigable ajummas, Andrei Lankov writes in the Wall Street Journal:

A joke making the rounds in Pyongyang goes: “What do a husband and a pet dog have in common?” Answer: “Neither works nor earns money, but both are cute, stay at home and can scare away burglars.”

I’ve often thought that one of the most destructive consequences of socialism is the destruction it wreaks on families. That is especially so in Korean society, where the family unit retains such strength and importance. But in North Korea, women who had been herded into the factories and communes, and who had no intention of being “empowered” — to use a P.C. term — found themselves driven into founding a new merchant class out of necessity. I surmise that this was mainly a result of the system’s failure to fully employ their husbands, on one hand, combined with its refusal to let them abandon their assigned work units, on the other. As Andrei notes, women were “liberated” from the jobs that couldn’t pay them because the regime deemed their labor to be relatively expendable, and perhaps also out of local officials’ recognition that a family has to get by somehow.

Blasphemy in the Temple: Thoughts on Ramstad, Kirk, and the Finance Ministry

March 9, 2010 Korean Society, Media Criticism 9 comments

I’m going to add just one small bit to the fracas between the Korean Finance Ministry and two reporters with whose work I’m familiar — Don Kirk and Evan Ramstad. As to the questions themselves, sometimes, the function of a good reporter is to challenge official groupthink and corruption, especially in a place where groupthink is as prevalent as it is in Korea. I do not think that a country that aspires to be a hub of international business can nonetheless exempt itself, for cultural reasons, from ethical standards that have gained international acceptance. One of these is that governments ought not to ply interest groups or investors with prostitutes (which seems to be a reasonably good guess as to where the questions might be headed). If a reporter has a basis to believe that this has occurred, it seems fair to ask about it. The questions Kirk and Ramstad were at least as appropriate as the question that brought us this infamous episode of presidential mendacity. As for the context in which the questions were asked or the other issues between Ramstad and the Foreign Ministry, I have no particular knowledge and therefore nothing useful to add.

I will confess, however, that I am biased toward Kirk and Ramstad, am a fan of their work, and wish them both well. Long before this episode, I’d noted their role in a trend toward much-improved reporting about Korea lately. Some full disclosure would be appropriate: I consider Kirk a personal friend, and he arranged for his publisher to send me a free review copy of his excellent book about Kim Dae Jung. I don’t think this was enough to buy me off, but I put that out there for your consideration. Kirk’s book, like his original exposure of the 2000 summit scandal, are prime examples of questions that some Koreans no doubt considered pushy and inappropriate at the time, not just in spite of the fact that they contradicted Korean groupthink about DJ and North Korea, but because they contradicted it. Those who lived in Korea in those years know the extent to which those issues had become intertwined with Korea’s national pride and nationalism. For a time, it was blasphemy to challenge it.

Ramstad has featured my work, and Curtis’s, in the Journal. In addition to our lengthy conversation during which which he interviewed for that article, we’ve had a number of e-mail exchanges. These, in addition to my observation of his work, have been sufficient for me to get a sense of his subject matter knowledge, which is first-rate. His reporting has added a much-needed correction to past reporting of North Korea by reporting on conditions inside North Korea itself. Both Kirk and Ramstad are correspondents of the first caliber. To the extent that their questions drew attention to elephants that went unmentioned in a room filled with reporters, so much the better.

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