Like North Korea, Only Further South

I wonder if this article by the Chosun Ilbo’s Washington Correspondent, Lee Ha Won, pissed you off as much as it did me:

[U.S. Ambassador Kathleen] Stephens should inform her government of the very real problems facing Korea’s automotive market, since the issue has the potential to fray ties between the Lee and Obama administrations.

Korea has no regulations discriminating against U.S. automobiles. What is not widely known in the United States is that last year alone, 50,000 Japanese and European cars were imported to Korea. According to the democratic principles so beloved of American people, the Korean government cannot force its people to buy American cars of inferior quality. If the intention is to save troubled American carmakers by sacrificing Korea, then Stephens must convey the message that doing so could damage the bilateral alliance.

When two Korean girls were killed in an accident involving a U.S. military vehicle back in 2002, the then U.S. ambassador to Korea failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. Since then, anti-American sentiment among Koreans has increased, scarring Korean-U.S. relations.

If bilateral relations worsen before the Obama administration is launched, and Korean left-wing forces rally behind the anti-American banner, we may end up seeing a situation that rivals the anti-U.S.-beef protests. Stephens should consider engaging in “preventive diplomacy” and rapidly inform her government of Korean concerns about the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement. That way, she could benefit the Korean people who have warmly welcomed her as well as U.S. national interests. [Lee Ha Won, Chosun Ilbo]

Translation: give us our demands or we’ll riot against you. This does not sound like a relationship worth having, much less sacrificing U.S. interests for. It doesn’t matter to Lee that the 2002 protests were irrational or that the beef protests were based on fiction, because the conservative South Korean business interests for whom Mr. Lee speaks have joined the left in an unspoken (we hope) conspiracy to extort us. That’s only slightly more subtle than the way North Korea deals with us. What other “ally” so brazenly manipulates us?