U.S.-South Korea Spat Isn't a Split
By Michael Breen
Los Angeles Times Op-Ed Page
January 21, 2003[The L.A. Times wanted a column on Korea from someone other than a "policy wonk," so they asked our old friend Mike Breen, journalist turned consultant turned PR person. Tuesday they ran his column, but not before they slashed much of the spunk out of it, leaving it reading like it had been written by a...a...a POLICY WONK. You can find THEIR version at the URL below. Meanwhile, Mike's much more entertaining -- but just as pointed -- original version appears below that. He still plans to use some of the spark they excised, so any writers among you should consider this all copyrighted -- specifically the planetary allusion.]
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-breen21jan21,0,2237721.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2DopinionsTHE UNEXPURGATED VERSION:
Early last year, an Australian judge at the Winter Olympics ruled that a Korean speed skater had blocked another in a gold medal race and disqualified him. When the gold went to the second skater, an American, the normally pro-American Koreans went apoplectic. McDonald's and other flagship US brands were boycotted. Commentators foamed that the entire Olympics were being rigged in favor of the US to soothe the wounds of September 11. Americans in Korea, meanwhile, were asking, "What is speed skating?"
Later in the year, Koreans went ballistic again after a US military court acquitted two American soldiers of negligent homicide following a nasty accident in which their vehicle crushed two little girls on a public highway during military maneuvers. Many, fed by Internet disinformation, thought the killing was deliberate and even those who knew it wasn't thought the two men should be sacrificed anyway to assuage public anger.
Right now, the new James Bond movie is raising temperatures. The fact that the baddie is a Korean, albeit from the communist North, and that the goodies aren't is seen as further proof of US contempt for the peninsular. Westerners in Korea are bracing for a big one but so far the fact that it's a good movie seems to be keeping the fruitcake aspect in check.
What to make of all this?
It's pretty obvious when people get so worked up by relatively minor events, that there's a bigger underlying issue. There is. The US and Korea are in a relationship crisis and, frankly, need therapists, not policy wonks, to work through it. Any therapy should start by recognizing two points: first, Americans are from Mars and Koreans are from Venus. Enough said. Second, the US has many wives.
And there's your problem in a nutshell: Korea is fed up being treated like the little girl in the harem. Europe gets treated special because she's the first wife, Russia because she was hard to woo, China because she's a big woman, Japan because she flutters her eyelids. But Korea just gets ordered around.
Nowhere is this more manifest than in the military relationship. The main US military base is on a huge piece of real estate slap in the center of Seoul. Imagine the Mall in Washington as a base, and a foreign one at that. American soldiers face North Korea on the frontline in the crucial invasion corridor north of Seoul. In the event of war, the Korean military would fall under American command.
We might ask, what other major industrial power relies to this extent on foreign power for its defense? But this is not a question you hear from Koreans. Their gripe lies elsewhere.
Up until the 1980s, when the authoritarian leadership relied on US backing, Koreans believed in an altruistic America dedicated to her, Korean, national interest. The fact that in the 1970s, it was illegal in Korea to criticize American policy helped sustain this rather juvenile perception. In the 80s, this view turned on its head and ever since it has been widely accepted that the US is in Korea for its own national interest and against Korean interest. In other words, the Americans are in downtown Seoul because they insist on it.
This misperception -- and the failure to understand that US troops are in Korea because it is in the shared interest of both nations -- is sustained by a certain intellectual cowardice on the part of opinion leaders and politicians who are reluctant to publicly articulate the positive aspects of the alliance and will not condemn acts of anti-Americanism out of fear of being branded traitors.
They justify this cowardice because they recognize anti-Americanism for what it is -- passing emotion. Best let it pass. To take it literally is a mistake. Indeed, recent calls in the US to remove the troops from Korea because of anti-Americanism has been criticized by activist groups here as a "failure to understand" Korean sentiment.
Maybe so, but what Koreans fail to see is that bitching and screaming with impunity at your allies, while being unfailingly polite to foes you are trying to win over, like North Korea, or countries you know would retaliate, like China, is both dishonest and immature.
If the US has to recognize Korea as adult -- and she (or he?) should -- then Korea for her part has to grow up and recognize that words and actions have consequences.
Michael Breen has worked in South Korea for 20 years as a journalist and a consultant. He is the author of "The Koreans: Who They Are, What They Want, Where Their Future Lies" (1999, St. Martin's Press).