It’s Official: South Korea Is a Lost Cause
After opening last week in 350 theaters across South Korea, “Crossing” is now showing on 289 screens. As of Tuesday, 654,000 people had seen it ““ a modest number by local box office standards. In fact, the film’s producers are not certain if they will recover the investment of $4 million ““ a hefty sum by local standards.
“Crossing” aims to remind South Korean viewers of an issue that they tend to overlook in a society concerned with its own economic problems. [Christian Science Monitor, Don Kirk]
Let me be more blunt: most (and I do not mean all) South Koreans are simply too vain, self-absorbed, and self-centered to care how many North Koreans die, and all of the “We Are One!” UniFiction talk is unadulterated pablum with no basis in either conscience or reason. As if you didn’t already know.
I do not suggest that these are uniquely Korean traits — in their personal and family relationships, Koreans more often epitomize selflessness. My point is that the unrestrained pursuit of vanity and self-interest has become an accepted part of a political culture where the leaders lack any sense (as my wife often says) of noblesse oblige. And it’s because of things like this that I question whether Korean unification is viable, or whether its democracy is sustainable. If it is, I don’t see how America’s asphyxiating maternal suckling of its dependency and irresponsibility is improving matters.
It’s taken quite a bit to cause me to doubt my own masthead, but the more I see of what drives Korean public opinion, the less sense it makes to me, and the more I question whether the majority of Koreans have the good judgment and the sense of duty to others that’s necessary for a self-governing democracy. I doubt that any country could be a more perfect illustration of the difference between nationalism and patriotism than post-386 Korea.
Clearly, the long-term political trend in South Korea is not going our way, and if the only way we can gain even temporary favor in South Korea is by sacrificing our greater security and economic interests, the cost of the alliance is prohibitive. Why isn’t poisonous Chilean pork of any concern to South Koreans? Because it’s not American, silly.
What this means for our policies with the South is that we should adopt the same approach the North Koreans and the Chinese have used with great success from a greater diplomatic distance. That means abandoning any policy that requires support from the majority of the South Korean population or the support of its government, and shifting our focus to building a Fifth Column of our own. We can see now how it’s possible for any country that controls one to paralyze South Korea’s government without having to put a single boot on Korean soil. We can also see the potential to recruit forceful minority constituencies in the entire region among Asians who share our values and interests, especially among Christians, North Korean defectors, and dissident organizations we could more actively support within North Korea and China.
The question then becomes whether any significant U.S. military presence in South Korea hinders that goal. In the past, I had kept my mind open about leaving an air component behind in Korea, depending on how the post-Roh era played out. I think that jury has come in. Increasingly, I see even that as an obstacle to greater U.S. political interests and lean toward projecting conventional power through our navy and a stronger alliance with Japan.
“That means abandoning any policy that requires support from the majority of the South Korean population or the support of its government, and shifting our focus to building a Fifth Column of our own. We can see now how it’s possible for any country that controls one to paralyze South Korea’s government without having to put a single boot on Korean soil. We can also see the potential to recruit forceful minority constituencies in the entire region among Asians who share our values and interests, especially among Christians, North Korean defectors, and dissident organizations we could more actively support within North Korea and China. “
Many Chinese believe that the CIA does, in fact, sponsor fifth columns through the Free Tibet movement and the “Dalai Clique” and through human rights activists and NGOs for the purpose of destabilizing China. Since both Chinese and Koreans rely so heavily on the internet for information and debate and since there so few outside voices in those forums, I would like to see the US government form its own “Fifty Cent Party” with smart Korean and Chinese speakers who can avoid sounding like propagandists and race traitors.
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One day, after the North finally disappears, probably in a cloud of smoke that takes a lot of American soldiers in South Korea, South Koreans, and just maybe some Japanese with it in a very short but intense lash out…
…..the media and academic pundits are going to start telling people about stuff like this —- as they viciously attack the US government for leaving Americans in harms way under such conditions.
………either that…..or……..they will, with equal ferocity, attack the US government for……..not doing more to save North Korea when we could…..
Friday Greetings Joshua Stanton and OFK community,
The death of housewife and tourist Park Wang Ja spurs two distinct if related lines of reflection. Firstly, concerning the moral fiber of the younger generations in today’s free Korea, Mr. Stanton’s various unflattering observations seem quite justified. One free Korea seems about as likely as one free Germany during the Pershing missile protests. Compare if you will the moral qualities of the respective populations – “west†Germans in the eighties, “south†Koreans in the oughts. The focus of the latter on bovine nothing when their kin in Hwanghaedo and elsewhere just a stone’s throw away are in the most pitiable state, screams to the high heavens. Yet, even as late as August of 1864, W. L. Garrison could hardly have bet the mortgage money on the overthrow of the slave power, what with Union forces stalled before Atlanta and Petersburg, and the likes of Vallandigham and McClellan politically ascendant. There is something to the old adage that the horizon seems darkest just before dawn.
Secondly, I much concur in the need to reduce the USA military in free Korea to literally nothing more than the usual corporal’s guard at the embassy. That means removal of the USAF units stationed in Kunsan as well as the rest. Free Korea is materially more than capable of meeting any threat, air-land-sea, that originates on the peninsula, if only Americans completely leave the room and let free Koreans smell the coffee. No agreement, commercial or security, ought to be entered into or maintained between the USA and the RoK until the poisonous inequality of obligation, exemplified by the long out-of-date permanent USA military presence, is finished.
So are we to expect you to flip-flop and take a pro-Obama stance and stress the U.S. to finally pack up and leave the peninsula to its own? j/k.
I don’t understand your point. Is it your premise that “a pro-Obama stance” is that “the U.S. [should] finally pack up and leave the peninsula to its own?” When did Obama say that? I hear Obama saying that we should flee from a certain other country where our military presence really is necessary to protect our vital national interests, but I haven’t heard him suggest that we should pull out of South Korea or Europe, where it isn’t.
Joshua right about Obama’s stance on where US troops are stationed. In places where we have crucial security interests but with high cost to treasure and lives like Iraqi… he chickens out. Of places where it is in against our interest to stay any longer or there is a need to dramatically reduce current troop levels like the Balkans, Western Europe, and Korea…. he wants to keep throwing tax payer money down the toilet by keeping the status quo. One only need to read his website, that means you A Listener. Obama is so Machiavellian it is disturbing.
When discussing the US military’s goals in relation to the Korean peninsula, let’s think strategically. Of course the US military is here to deter resumption of hostilities but its presence also provides a balancing effect. Having forces in Japan and Korea keeps the two from each other’s throats over something like Dokto or the Yasukuni Shrine. Moreover, it helps keep China in check. If you think that China doesn’t want to be the lone power in the region that has the military power to dominate Asia; wake up, you’re late for work. More over, I think we tried “leave a guy at the embassy” trick once before; with June 25, 1950 being the result. As an aside, I’m curious to know what our national interest is in Iraq; sure hope it isn’t oil–$4.19 a gallon…
I saw “Crossing” last week in Seoul. I recall that there was no more than 15 viewers in the audience, including myself.
2B, Do you actually draw a comparison between South Korea in 1950 and today? As for keeping China in check, that’s only going to happen when the South Koreans get alarmed about things like Chinese thugs running amok and stoning South Korea protestors on the streets of Seoul. Maybe fewer U.S. security guarantees would focus minds, since nothing seems to as long as we absolve South Koreans of all responsibility for rational self-government.
If you don’t see a national interest in crushing Al Qaeda in the place it calls its “central front” in its war against us, you’re determined not to see it. National interest isn’t always inversely proportional to cost, you know.
South Korea has become less strategically significant for the same reason that Iraq is significant: the broader implications of surrender — let’s just call it as it will be perceived by the fence-sitters in that part of the world — to a predatory ideology.
As for the relationship between Iraq and fuel prices, I’d like to see you support that with any evidence. Iraq is now producing more oil than it did in 2003. Fuel prices are higher because of (a) speculation, (b) higher Chinese and Indian demand, (c) flat U.S. production because we’ve placed most of our oil fields off limits, (d) and insufficient U.S. refining capacity. The Iraq link sounds like a cheap election-year canard. Or maybe you can prove me wrong.
Having forces in Japan and Korea keeps the two from each other’s throats over something like Dokto or the Yasukuni Shrine.
Korea and Japan like to play fight, but after a bit of fun and excitement slaughtering pheasants and the like, some other issue bumps Dokdo off the front pages as it lurks like a dormant virus, waiting for a chance to flare up again. Korea and Japan both have too much at stake to settle their differences militarily.
“Moreover, it helps keep China in check. If you think that China doesn’t want to be the lone power in the region that has the military power to dominate Asia; wake up, you’re late for work.
No, you wake up and look at the calendar. This isn’t 1950. The Chinese people were still in the honeymoon phase of CCP rule and gladly took up arms to fight alongside their North Korean allies from the days of Japanese rule. Nowadays, Chinese people just want the good life – a well-paying job, a spacious apartment, and even a car. Their government wants not land but energy and markets. China is a global competitor, and US forces in Korea and Japan are useless in stopping China from forming partnerships with resource-rich developing countries like Myanmar. China is capable of using its military to intimidate its neighbors, but any such intimidation would likely draw Japan and Korea closer together, in contrast to your dire predictions of war after a US military withdrawal.
If Canada completes an oil pipeline to the west coast, China will have access to oil from one of our biggest suppliers. Meanwhile, we spend billions of dollars keeping troops in Korea and Japan and elsewhere around the world to “keep China in check.” Right. Are we going to blockade oil tankers departing Vancouver for Shanghai?
That was a heartbreaking film to watch. I also saw it in Soeul yesterday. People need to see that film, even in the West.
Sorry if I didn’t make my points clear. To clarify: 1) I never compared South Korea of the ’50 to the Korea that exists today. The parallel was that if we leave as we did in the 40’s it sends the message that we are withdrawing support. Dean Acheson may not have intended to give the North a green light but that’s what Kim Il Sung perceived. 2) Countries go to war all the time even though it’s not in the best interest of the nation; Iraq anyone? 3) I’m wide awake. China doesn’t want land? Taiwan whispers about independence and the PRC is ready to go to the mat. And again, I never said that China would aid in another push South. I said they have aims on dominating Asia–that’s just a fact. For instance, why are they claiming sites from the Three Kingdoms as their own history. Yes, the average citizen probably wants a good job, a car and nice digs. Too bad the government has other ideas. Korea and Japan getting together to balance the power of China? They want to claw each other’s eyes over textbooks! 4) To close, I mentioned oil as the “national interest” as I wasn’t sure as to the reference. Sorry, shouldn’t have assumed. Iraq is absolutely the front line, because that’s where it is easiest to target US troops. If we weren’t there the line would shift. So if we leave it’s surrender…then I give up. For the fence-sitters, sticks-and-stones… Bring a force on force match-up and find out what happens when you mess with the bull.
DDN, I could not agree more: “People need to see that film, even in the West.”
If USFK departs Korea, we are withdrawing military support. That’s the idea.
One reason the US withdrew by 1950 was that both Rhee and Kim were threatening to attack each other, and the US wasn’t in the mood for another international conflict on the heels of WWII. In 1950, the North invaded with backing from China and the Soviet Union and drove down the peninsula almost to Busan. Today the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Chinese leadership might even go so far as to have KJI overthrown if they knew of plans to attack one of China’s largest trading partners. In 1950, the South, too was considering a war of reunification. Today it treats the road to reunification as a journey, not a destination. In 1950, North Korea was more industrialized than the South. Today an OECD nation looks north to a land that appears dark in nighttime satellite images of earth.
Ironic that you should bring up Taiwan, the one that got away. Today the Chinese rue their participation in the Korean War because it drew away resources during a critical period when China could have retaken Taiwan, so say Chinese historians.
Does anyone know if the film has a publicity website?
Also, any information on whether the film company intends to get the film out to the U.S. and Canadian markets?
I am a visitor to Korea who reads English only. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any further resources about the film on the internet. (A relative translated each line of the film for me, while we were watching it. Eventually I would be interested in viewing it again with English subtitles, and perhaps writing a review about it for English media, if indeed the film comes out in the West).
No need to hurry and provide an answer folks! I found the info using the Korean version of google. The publicity website is: http://www.crossing2008.co.kr/ although it is unclear if a North American release is expected.