Category: Anti-Americanism

Fifth Column Watch: The USFK, Free Speech, and Subversion

Nothing really surprising here: North Korea on Tuesday criticized the U.S. military for giving American names to certain areas in South Korea, arguing that it is part of a ploy to “permanently Americanize South Korea.” Americanize South Korea? Perhaps you can be forgiven for suggesting that if you live in an oppressed, suffocated, isolated tyranny where reading up on current events can get you killed. Since we’re on the subject, where has the U.S. military given an American name to...

My Testimony at the House International Relations Committee

[Update: For some strange reason, the document was coming up as a previous, incomplete draft. Sorry for any who saw that one; you should be able to see the final version now.] [Update 1/2007: , including my verbal testimony, written statement, and photographic exhibits, at pages 59-94 (pdf). Other witnesses that day were Amb. Chris Hill, Undersecretary of Defense Richard Lawless, and Korea experts Balbina Hwang and Gordon Flake.] Well, I can’t thank Rep. Henry Hyde’s staff enough for believing...

Self-Fulfilling Demagoguery

The background research for Roh Moo Hyun’s national security policy was a “progessive” TV documentary. The claim: The USFK could strike North Korea and lead the South Korean army into a war without even consulting Roh first: A ruling-party official quoted Roh as saying at the time, “Could the U.S. carry out a bombing raid on North Korea as it wishes without our knowledge? It is possible. South Korea can’t even claim the status of a sovereign state. The truth:...

There’s Nothing New About Korea’s “New” Anti-Americanism

How could the U.S.-Korea alliance ever survive another day with this tension between President Bush and President Roh, and what, with that nasty debate over wartime command? What if I said that I actually refer to George H.W. Bush and Roh Tae Woo? If you really want to track down the point at which the U.S.-Korean relationship went over the cliff, set your Wayback Machine for 1989 and a year of ferocious anti-American demonstrations — complete with fire-bombings — that...

Anti-Americanism Goes Freudian

This post by the Marmot is a must-read. As represented by USFK’s illegal release of formaldehyde into the Han River, the tragedy on the Korean Peninsula began with the unclean sperm of the United States fertilizing the egg of the Han River. The monster’s outrages and its eating of people shows the similar tyranny displayed by the United States toward the Korean Peninsula. Let me see if I can find just the right words for my reaction to this:

Kim Dae Jung: Neocons Made Up N. Korean Nuke Crisis

[Updated for your pleasure, and here’s one back at the Marmot, who has much more.] It’s a ruthless totalitarian regime with a history of selling WMD’s to terrorist backers, and its state ideology revels in violence against America. And if the fact that they have a few nukes worries you, it’s obviously all in your head, says ex-South Korean Prez and Nobel prize winner Kim Dae Jung: “How North Korea will do with its missiles and nuclear weapons… Those will...

I Propose an Exchange

I love irony. The fellows on the left are in Korea. They’re angry that their President is trashing their country’s alliance with America, and they want him prosecuted for treason. The fellows on the right are in Seattle. They’re angry with America, of course, but also with their President. They think he’s plotting to sell their country to top-hatted Yankee capitalists. They want him brought before a People’s Revolutionary Court for bourgeois splittism, but they’ll probably vote for him until...

Anti-Americans Head for Seattle; Anti-Anti-Americans Fill Void on Streets of Seoul

GI Korea points to an impressive turnout for an anti-anti-American demonstration in Seoul. Although it’s not clear whether 50,000 or 200,000 showed up, it was at least comparable to the turnout at the anti-American protests of 2002. There was word that early presidential front-runner Park Geun-Hye even planned to show up. The word I often use to describe the Korean street is “mercurial.” The America-hating left isn’t just going away, though, especially when it can count on local reinforcements …...

The Death of an Alliance, Part 49: The Perception Gap

[Update: The U.S. and Korean authorities are now denying that the Humphreys move is on hold. The Commanding General of the USFK admits that “minor adjustments” may be necessary, but that they can be “easily handled within the framework of the current plan.” H/t GI Korea] It begins with the apparent perception that Roh Moo Hyun could expect a state dinner or a 21-gun salute. I guess he perceived wrong: Unlike the incumbent, former presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung...

You’re Welcome.

Today is Liberation Day, at least for those of us on this side of the International Date Line. And because we’ve recently been on the subject of things that happened at Incheon, I thought I’d mention that the Incheon landing pictured here took place on September 8, 1945, when the United States Army arrived to liberate South Korea for the first time … from Japanese rule. You did hear that, right? Funny how no one ever talks about it. If...

Referendum

I don’t really have much to add to this, because I’ve thought a referendum on the alliance was needed since I was serving in Korea myself. While there, I could see the tension between Koreans’ desire to keep the alliance’s benefits and their contempt for the soldiers and the country who bore its burden. My small quibble with Kim Dae Joong is that “wartime control” is only the first of many dominos, and phrasing the question that way benefits those...

The Death of an Alliance, Part 47: What Henry Hyde Said at Incheon

Last September 11th, a band of violent quislings to a pathologically murderous regime tried to tear down a statue of the man who saved their country and the system of government that would eventually protect their right to call for its destruction. The statue survived, but the relationship between two nations suffered one more of many injuries that cumulatively may well be mortal. True alliances cannot be unilateral. As the United States and the Republic of Korea both ask what...

Fifth Column Watch

Conspiracy theories always labor against a presumption of neurotic inspiration, but even paranoid people have real enemies, and some conspirators make the error of supporting such theories with their own words. (In the conspiracy business, Rule Number One is, “Be discreet.”) Recently, I finally got around to compiling some of the public statements by leaders of South Korean labor unions and political groups that would support a reasonable inference that those groups were either willing servants of the North Korean...

Can Anyone Still Save the FTA?

The South Korean government has concluded that its proposed Free Trade Agreement with the United States has a P.R. problem. Workshop to be announced; head-scratching to follow. Let’s hope whatever discussion comes of this will be more productive than previous warnings about CIA microphones disguises as insects. Thus far, the government has been afraid to take on the extremists, thugs, and demagogues who have seized control of this debate, often forcibly, but if those people comprise a significant portion of...

Reading, Writing, Rodong

One reason I don’t think the North Koreans would invade South Korea is the simple fact that their infiltration of the South has been so successful as to render war unnecessarily strenuous. Now, the powerful and well funded Korean Teachers’ Union — remember them? — is caught in the act of flogging juche to its members. The ultimate recipients would have been South Korean kids. Although the KTU didn’t disclose the source of its information, this should have been a...

Free at Last?

The Koreans have been relatively free for some time now. But if a new bill passes, the American men and women who help secure that freedom may be able to put outrages like these behind them: The bill aims to prevent discrimination in all public and private sectors including employment and education. Discrimination would be defined based on 20 criteria, including gender, physical disability, religion, age, nationality, race, skin color, appearance, pregnancy, ideas and sexual preferences. Under the bill, indirect...

And They Wonder Why Relations Are Deteriorating

Update: Ouch. You can clearly see how this administration has moved to the left from where it began. UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok says the United States “failed the most” when North Korea launched its missile. You thought, perhaps, those whose main event exploded 45 seconds after launch? The rising superpower whose uncontrollable satellite managed to cement a U.S.-Japanese alliance? The government whose incalculably costly and increasingly unpopular appeasement policies were exposed as a worthless sham at the push of one...