Why Korea Is Really in Trouble
by Tom Coyner
July 7, 2004

(Coyner's Comment: When I first read the below opinion piece I was sorely tempted to write a rebuttal but for several reasons chose not to bother. Then one of our subscribers, an European professional Korea analyst, forwarded the same article with the following comments: "This is crap, but maybe you should send it out as a sample of "progressive" thinking in the new ROK..."

Unfortunately I cannot agree more.

Call it intellectually flabby and/or dishonest - or simply an example of this generation's version of the age-old "Korean disease" of taking credit whenever things go well and blaming the outside world like adolescents when things go wrong - the cultural problem persists.

And just to set the record clear on this, I don't support Bush and have been from the very beginning against the war in Iraq - and I don't believe Korea should be sending troops there.

But in this tragedy we are not grieving the senseless loss of life of some drafted ROK soldier but that of someone who volunteered, as did his employer, to go to Iraq - to MAKE MONEY.

Let's face it, the Koreans may blame the US all they want but the fundamental reason they are in Iraq is to make money following US troops and to secure their long-term rights for cheap Iraqi oil. (How many ROK troops are there in Afghanistan? How much oil or significant economic advantage for Korea being in Afghanistan? Answer to both questions: zero.)

The other stuff about being hammered by the US is just window dressing for the current Korean politicians - and their supporters - to cry about events being "beyond their control" when things go unexpectedly wrong. 

I could carry on but some things never seem to change.  Many of us who count ourselves as friends of Korea dream of the day when this nation achieves full psychological adulthood.)

Right Way for Anger to Go
By Cho Hee-yeon
Korea Times
July 6, 2004

June was a horrible month for all Koreans because Muslim militants abducted and beheaded Kim Sun-il, a translator working for a South Korean firm supplying the U.S. military in Iraq. His captors committed brutal acts against humanity despite all the hope for his safe return.

We are confused and do not know who to blame for the tragedy as some Koreans would feel betrayed at what the extremist groups do with innocent people's lives in no relation with the U.S. or its occupation of Iraq.

So some people might call on the government to send more troops as soon as possible to show them Koreans are brave and firm.

However, it is more than natural to many, at this time of national grievance, that we turn our eyes to the anti-dispatch movement going on in Korea.

Many civic groups have been raising their voices against the troop dispatch plan following the death of the 33-year-old Kim.

The Korean government should first take the responsibility for his death, they say, but I believe we should broaden our view and let this anger flow into the right direction.

The real actors are those who pushed the Islamic militants to take nothing but the most extreme choice, who pushed the Korean government to commit to the troop dispatch, and who cause a war of hatred in Iraq in the first place.

We should turn all our anger towards U.S. President George W. Bush and the neo-cons, the present "abductors" of the U.S. leadership that they made the war against Iraq, based on false accusations and with no proof of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

They are the ones that forced the sovereign country in the Middle East into a vortex of attacks and counter-attacks, lies and counterlies.

To come to think of the current Iraqi situation, we can pinpoint one particular "division," which took the obscure war on terrorism and pre-emptive strike doctrine to the level of a new form of "militaristic imperialism" planned to implement over the impoverished regions of the world - the U.S. "unpresident" Bush and his guarding neo-cons.

It is them who opened the Pandora's box of this unstoppable swirl of hatred, confrontation, and genocide in Iraq, Afghanistan and etc.

These people, Cheney and Rumsfeld included, on full board of the Bush administration now for policy making, are somewhat "outsiders" of the American traditional Republicanism.

They are called the neo-conservatives and what makes them so "neo" is that they shrug aside the past rules on defensive national security or multilateral diplomacy such that they turn to secrecy and military forces when others demand democracy and opentalks.

I understand those who blame the Roh administration for its attitude toward the U.S but it is still Bush and his neo-cons, who forced our government to send the troops for saving their butt in the wrong war against the wrong people.

The abductions and murders in Iraq, including the beheading of Kim Sun-il, would never have happened if the U.S. administration had never invaded Iraq. In reality, they have this imperialist and unilateral militarism, due to the strongest military power in the world and its trans-national capital flow, which divulge conflict and devour the sweet differences of the globe.

Bush and his neo-cons are using the September 11 incident as motive and tools for pushing forward their belligerent and unilateralist foreign policy and carrying out the internationally unwanted war against Iraq.

We are on the way to find the right way to bring them to justice. But is it possible, when we're not Americans?

We do not have the right to vote against them, we don't have the right to put them on impeachment trial. After all, we are not U.S. citizens.

But we cannot just sit here and watch innocent people die.

We should find a way to punish the unlawful perpetrators across the borders since they threaten our brethren exactly the same way.

So I think the most relevant and important way is that we actively take part in the worldwide antiwar, pro-peace movement on such issues by saying "no" to the hollowed-out Iraqi sovereignty restoration and to re-election of Bush and the neo-cons.

And we should take it as Korean citizens' duty to go for a real action to defeat those responsible for this international-scale turmoil of war and hatred.

The writer is a sociology professor of Sungkonghoe University and concurrently serves as executive manager of the Asian Defeat Bush Network.