OFK EXCLUSIVE–Congress Responds to MacArthur Protests

Post updated; scroll down.

Thanks very much to my deep-cover source in the House of Representatives (how important it makes me feel to use that phrase). Here is the House International Relations Committee’s response to the MacArthur protests, addressed to Roh Moo-Hyun. Enjoy. Newspapers, if you care, please include the URL of the site but don’t print my full name or discuss my work, wife, kids, home address, favorite color, etc.

Update 9/15: It’s not exclusive anymore. This is all over the Korean press. They appear to have gotten it not much after I did.

Update 9/16: The story has hit the papers in Korea and elsewhere. The Chosun Ilbo’s story tells you less than you’ve already read in this post, but its editorial reflects more of the “don’t make a scene” backlash in the Korean political establishment:

It is short-sighted to indulge in anti-American movements to your heart’s content in Korea but hope that no anti-Korean sentiment pops up in the United States. Two years ago, broadcaster CBS brought the American public a scene of Eighth U.S. Army commander Gen. Charles C. Campbell pouring out his feelings when he watched the U.S. flag torn down and burnt during anti-American protests in Korea. The public outcry that resulted made its way into the media and Congress, and is now having a decisive influence on U.S. policy decisions. The MacArthur statue issue, too, has now become a Congressional issue, and the day is not far off when it will influence White House policy.

It goes on to call for the government to oppose efforts to remove the statue, but the focus seems to be on suppressing speech that embarrasses Korea. It ought to be on letting people say whatever they want . . . up to the moment they incite or commit acts of violence, or surreptitiously meet with foreign agents with similar ideas. At that point, they need to do hard time, regardless of which candidate they support.

What else might help? How about requiring Korean college students to actually study, and flunking the professional agitators who don’t?

Meanwhile, the Chosun Ilbo unintentionally shows us how far the objective study of history has to go in Korea when it says that “phrases in the U.S. lawmakers’ letter like ‘liberating Korea twice’ are apt to hurt Korean pride.” The Chosun could stand to run that sentence through the same grinder as the slander about MacArthur. I suspect that I’m not the only American, Briton, Australian, or Chinese who is more than a little peeved that Korea has forgotten that it was pried out of the Japanese Empire because of things that happened at Tarawa, Okinawa, the Coral Sea, and a thousand forgotten battles between Nanking and the Burma Road.