The Oranckay’s got a hunch about how Kim Sun-il’s kidnapping went down, and he thinks you’ll be hearing more about it in the days ahead.
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8 Comments
The explanation of his kidnapping-to-execution makes a lot of sense.
But what is the full story on the guy before he was kidnapped? Was he simply ‘hanging around’ like the American was?
I hate guessing on issues like this, because above all else…….way, way above all else…..I feel for the grief this man’s family is going through and the fact that he lost his life so young and for such a terrible reason….
But a couple of things about his story in Iraq have interested me.
The first is that he was preaching to the Iraqis around him. That isn’t a very good idea. He apparently was a very strong Christian, and he was telling his faith and religion to his Iraqi co-workers and others in the country. A couple of American young women found out that wasn’t such a great idea in, I think Afghanistan, not long before the war began over there. I don’t think they were officially in country to convert people, which neigther was the Korean man, but they were doing some such work on their own — and you know what the fundamentalists think about things like that!
The second item that interests me is the anti-US military/gov notes in his email he sent to friends in Korea. On this note, I am more skeptical of the use of such emails by the Korean media, but in so doing, I wonder about the guy’s motivation.
First, he was working in Iraq to save money for grad school, and I have met enough Korean grad students in my day, especially ones whose studies involved things outside of Korea, to know how frequent it is to find them very anti-American - there is a reason the percentage of college educated Koreans who bash the US is much higher than the non-higher educated Koreans.
Also on this issue, the man wrote that he would tell his friends about the inhuman nature of the US military in Iraq when he got home, which is fair enough, but he said he would do it with pictures and images he witnessed or got in Iraq, which is also fine, but in this connection, he mentioned “especially Rumsfeld and Bush” which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in relation to firsthand experience since I’m sure he didn’t see either of these men in Iraq or doing things in Iraq. Which pushes me further toward the idea that the man was probably staunchly anti-US before he went to Iraq.
But that is really neigher here or there. It does nothing to touch on the tragic nature of his story. Again, I’m mainly thinking of the nature in which the Korean media is reporting these email letters he sent back and trying to think around them about what the situation is like.
As for seeing brutality in Iraq — war is brutal in itself, and I’d have to know what kinds of actions he was talking about to give weight to them one way or another.
Even then, I am sure my own bias would tend to make me figure a comparison of the brutality of the Iraq regime vs the brutality of the US occupation forces would be favorable to the US forces…….
Big fan of the site and a first-time poster. Reading this blog is one of the first things I do every morning.
First a comment: not to disparage this guy’s memory, but why was he working for a company that was working for the U.S. military? Wasn’t he, in effect, helping the U.S. with its mission in Iraq? I could see where someone would experience a bit of cognitive dissonance over the first video of Mr. Kim bashing America while taking its dirty money. Doesn’t this sort of behavior generally earn one the designation of ‘collaborator’?
And a question. You mentioned that many college-educated Koreans are anti-American and insinuated that you were aware of the reason(s) for such sentiments. I’m curious, could you elaborate? What’s happening to these kids once they get to university?
They are taught a steady diet of anti-American views. This isn’t surprising. We get our fair share of it in higher education in the US too. In America, it is supposed to make us broaden our thought. In Korea, it doesn’t. Also, over the last few years, the indoctrination of Koreans has reached down into elementary school education. Marmot posted an example of this a week or so ago. It is rather disturbing. In fact, in 2002-2003, it even disturbed a good section of Korean adults when it made news in Korea and the US. This is a new thing, I think. I really didn’t notice it when I was teaching kids in Korea.
I’m a Korean student doing grad studies in the US. I’m very pro-US. I guess I’m an odd ball.
WJK - If you are a grad student, didn’t you grow up in the time before Korean/culture media became virulently anti-American?
What are you studying by the way?
If you are a grad student, didn’t you grow up in the time before Korean/culture media became virulently anti-American?
Don’t know how old WJK is, but the media has been virulently anti-American for at least two decades. It only stands out more because there is a leftist president in office who is sympathetic to a few too many chinbo/progressive ideals of the pro-Pyongyang student groups.
As for the culture being virulently anti-American, I think a superficial read of the media makes it easy for that to happen. For the students I taught in an education seminar last year, the US was the second most preferred place to visit (the first was Japan).
Quite a different result from what the agenda-driven press and the loud-mouth yell-your-answer-first-and-shout-down-dissenters “Netizens” would have you believe. Of course, their vocalness could be explained in part by their awareness that so many on not on their bandwagon.
Remember that
a) the SK media has ALWAYS been anti-American despite the official rhetoric of US-SK friendship. Note the prevalence of cautionary Itaewon stories and adoption horror stories in newspapers and cinema under Park and Chun, the KBS “public service” announcements equating the purchase of American products with treason, etc.
b) the right-wing is as anti-American in a cultural and trade-related sense as the left is in a political sense.