UPDATE: GI Korea contributes his own thoughts about the prosecutors waiving jurisdiction on the beer bottle dudes. He also makes a very good point I should mention here, since I made the mistake of condemning the guys when they haven’t been convicted. Rather then saying “The point is, these guys took part in the maiming of a Korean national during an off-duty incident,” I should say, “The point is, these guys are accused of taking part in the maiming of a Korean national during an off-duty incident…”
My bad.
ORIGINAL POST: As GI Korea points out, USFK has turned down the Korean authorities’ request for jurisdiction in a case involving the U.S. soldier who was driving the truck that struck and killed a woman back in Dongducheon in June. GI Korea points comments:
I do not think that this will cause to much of an uproar because I would think most fair minded people would understand this was a tragic accident. However, I’m sure the usual suspects (anti-USFK groups) will use this to further try and create the image of US soldiers getting away with crimes against Korean citizens.
Well, GI Korea, this from the OhMyNews report (written by a member of the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crime by U.S. Troops in Korea):
In particular, with such extraordinary measures as U.S. military authorities apologizing and expressing regret immediately after the incident, and even the U.S. president expressing regret, some carefully predicted that the U.S. would give up jurisdiction. But with the refusal to give up jurisdiction in the end, it appears [U.S. authorities] will have a tough time dodging critical opinion that [their apologies] were just wordplay.
What should get people angry, however, is that it has been belatedly learned that Korean prosecutors gave up jurisdiction over two of the three suspects behind the Uijeongbu “beer bottle” incident from July. According to Yonhap, an official from the prosecutors’ office in Uijeongbu said that in accordance with the SOFA, which calls on the one side to give sympathetic consideration to waiving jurisdiction when the other side asks, they were dropping jurisdiction over two of the three suspects, namely, the two who assisted in the assault that left an Uijeongbu resident’s face severely cut up. Prosecutors did, however, indict the soldier who actually struck the victim with the beer bottle. Said the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crime by U.S. Troops in Korea:
It’s become practice for U.S. military authorities to request that jurisdiction be waived, regardless of whether the crime was committed on duty or the severity of the offense. This is a clear violation of Korea’s judicial sovereignty.
Me thinks their anger would be better directed at the Uijeongbu prosecutors. Korea had primary jurisdiction over the case, given how the incident occurred when the soldiers in question were off-duty. Just because USFK asked them to give up jurisdiction didn’t mean they had to comply. USFK had primary jurisdiction over the Dongducheon incident, since it occurred when the soldier was on-duty. Did USFK consider giving up jurisdiction when the Koreans asked them to? Maybe. Did they give it up in the end? No. So there was no reason for the Korean prosecutors to give up their right to stand the two suspects before a Korean court, unless, of course, they thought trying them would be more trouble that it’s worth, in which case they need to get a bigger set of balls. The point is, these guys took part in the maiming of a Korean national during an off-duty incident, and the prosecutors owe it to the victim and the taxpayers who pay their salaries to do everything in their power to ensure justice is served on their terms. And the fact that they waived jurisdiction should in no way be read as a victory for USFK, because ultimately, it’s going to be USFK that gets blamed for the fecklessness of the Korean prosecutors who apparently have other things to do than try individuals that smash beer bottles in the faces of the people they supposedly serve.
I don’t blame USFK for trying to protect its personnel, but sometimes, I wish the Korean prosecutors would show the same determination.
UPDATE: The SOFA article referred to by the Uijeongbu official reads:
The authorities of the State having the primary right shall give sympathetic consideration to a request from theauthorities of the other State for a waiver of its right in cases where that other State considers such waiver to be of particular importance.
Or in Korean, if you like:
??1????? ??????? ??????? ??????? ???????, ????? ??????? ???????? ????? ??????? ?????? ?????????? ??????????? ?????? ??????, ?? ?????? ???????? ????????? ??????? ???????? ?????.
Straight from the SOFA itself (Korean version here).
35 Comments
“everything in their power to ensure justice is served on their terms”
Don’t worry, I’m confident they’ll get more harsh punishments under the UCMJ than otherwise received in the Korean legal system.
Don??t worry, I??m confident they??ll get more harsh punishments under the UCMJ than otherwise received in the Korean legal system.
That’s probably true, and from what I’ve read and been told, that’s usually the case. Regardless, in incidents like this, the prosecutors should be doing their damn jobs rather than handing the guys over so USFK can do their jobs for them. At the very least, if the prosecutors are handing the guys over because they think USFK will punish them more severely (which I doubt is the intention of the prosecutors in this case), than they need to explain that to the public (and the victim!) rather than simply wringing their hands of the matter by pointing to the SOFA. All that does is make USFK look like the bad guys and, in the end, reinforce the belief that the SOFA lets misbehaving GIs get off scott-free.
This is a clear violation of Korea??s judicial sovereignty
Well, actually not. Korea exercised its sovereign power in entering into the SOFA by making a choice to waive certain relatively minor aspects of its sovereign power in the interest of securing the most important objective of the exercise of sovereign power - state security. A violation of soveregnity could arise only if Korea were compelled by US force of arms to enter into SOFA. That’s not the case. ROKGOV may have felt that circumstances (i.e., Korea’s relative weakness - purely it’s own responsibility) didn’t give them the bargaining power they might have wished to have - a situation similar to that of the 1965 normalization treaty with Japan - but that’s the price they paid for hundreds if not thousands of years of military irresponsibility.
Sperwer — Be that as it may, the quote cited in the Yonhap piece is wrong for another reason — SOFA gave the Koreans first crack in this case. If anyone violated Korea’s sovereignty, it was the prosecutors. Or perhaps better put, they simply refused to exercise their sovereignty. And come to think of it, the prosecutors weren’t alone in dropping the ball in the case — as was noted by OhMyNews (see my post in July — linked above — following the incident), the Korean police also did a piss-poor job handling the matter. And they pointed to SOFA to excuse their own laziness as well. I mean, shit, if the police/prosecutors aren’t going to exercise the authority they already have under the SOFA, what the point of amending the treaty? To give them more power they won’t use?
Jesus.
I ave to ask, is the SOFA agreement translated in both English and korean? I ask for two reasons; One, I’d liek to read it. Two, I doubt that many of the law enforcement in this country have.
Well, here’s the SOFA in English:
http://www.korea.army.mil/sofa/docs.htm
And in Korean:
http://www.usfk.or.kr/kr/infocenter/sofa.php
Enjoy!
You know, though, at this point, I’m almost want to say scrap the whole treaty. At least the when the police/prosecutors decide to let USFK handle incidents — which they are apparently keen on doing — then at least they won’t have the SOFA to blame.
“And they pointed to SOFA to excuse their own laziness as well. I mean, shit, ”
I’m not trying to defend the Korean police here, but could it be that the reason why they weren’t so enthusiastic to handle the case because they thought it really wasn’t worth it? A bottle attack is really a minor offense that would hardly make the news if it wasn’t for the fact that there has been a massive squabble over the SOFA issue in the last few years.
“Don??t worry, I??m confident they??ll get more harsh punishments under the UCMJ than otherwise received in the Korean legal system.”
That’s probably true, and I have much more faith in the US justice system than the Korean one. But that’s not where the problem lies. The problem is the perception (or misperception) in Korean public’s mind that they don’t have a full control over their own legal system. The public is not interested in whether the guilty is punished heavily or not, they’re only interested in seeing Korea have full control - this is a particularly touchy subject since Koreans traditionally have viewed themselves as always being under the thumb of foreign powers. It’s matter of nationalism and national pride. I don’t know what the US can do to counter that.
Because it’s understandable that the US military try to protect their personnel, especially in light of the fact that the US and Korean laws and legal systems are very different from each other. Koreans should try to be in the shoes of the others, but that’s not a strong forte of the Korean way of thinking.
i’m with marmot on this one. but at the same time, it’s important to point out that these are not amorphous entities we’re dealing with here. we tend to look at these cases, for instance, as if all the prosecutors were the same, or that someone in particular is pulling all the strings overtop the nation’s police officers. without doing the investigative journalism required, it’s hard to know why the prosecutors in this case were “lazy”. maybe they really were lazy. beneath the surface of news reports is a world full of people, their personalities, and circumstances often not brought to light. us/them dichotomy is surely too simple.
Because it??s understandable that the US military try to protect their personnel, especially in light of the fact that the US and Korean laws and legal systems are very different from each other. Koreans should try to be in the shoes of the others, but that??s not a strong forte of the Korean way of thinking.
I’m not sure if its any particular nation’s forte to be particularly sympathetic to issues of comparative law when crimes are committed on their soil by foreign nationals. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the gut instinct of most is, “I don’t care how you do it in (fill in the nation), this is (fill in the nation)!” And there’s nothing wrong with that, IMHO.
That being said, and I want to make this clear, I fully understand why foreign military personnel — in this case, U.S. military personnel — require special rules (and special agreements like the SOFA to deliniate those rules). Unlike myself, who came to Korea on his own free will and can leave anytime I like, the soldiers are here thanks to a treaty relationship between Korea and the United States, at the invitation of the South Korean government. The United States send troops all over the world to nations with a myriad of legal systems, some more on the up-and-up than others. Obviously, if Washington is going to send its men somewhere, it has a duty to ensure they don’t get screwed. If the host nation doesn’t like it and would prefer to maintain the right to, let’s say, publically whip a GI for having a beer, well, I’m sure there are plenty of other nations other than the U.S. that would love to deploy troops in their nation to take care of the host’s security needs.
seeingsomethingelse — Points well taken. Sure, it’s possible that someone was pulling strings. Maybe the prosecutors got a call from the Justice Ministry telling them to turn the guys over to USFK. I’ll even grant the possibility that USFK was leaning on officials. Perhaps it’s better to say it’s my gut instinct that this was simply a case of the prosecutors not wanting to go through the hassel of going after GIs and the legal council they’d bring along for the ride. And as I said before, starting with the police investigation way back in July, it’s seemed like the authorities wanted nothing to do with this case.
I’d imagine your average prosecutor wouldn’t wanna touch that case with a 10 metre pole. It was clearly an accident and everyone thinks so, so scoring a court victory for however weak a charge wouldn’t be impressive while the work itself would be a major headache. If it had been a case about which there was a national outcry I can see a prosecutor wanting to try to kick @$$.
Hey, leaving the USFK to try the accused will probably advance the cause of anti-Americanism…
“?? in this case, U.S. military personnel ?? require special rules ”
Correct. I too want to reiterate that point, lest some Korean think I’m overly apologetic to the American cause. If you’re civilian, you should be held accountable to the laws of the host country. You can leave anytime you want. But alas, the USFK are not civilians who came to Korea voluntarily. The USFK have every right to try to protect their personnel. It’s a reasonable trade off for Koreans who are reaping the benefits of the protection of the American forces. USFK right, Korean public wrong.
The National Campaign for the Eradication of Crime by U.S. Troops in Korea is about as influential as a 21 year-old ESL teacher named EaTmYbOJi on Dave’s Cafe.
HardyTiny (#13), I’m not so sure I agree. They are a very loud part of a very resilient “Jinbo” group that has managed to influence overseas perceptions of these issues.
Oranckay:
I??d imagine your average prosecutor wouldn??t wanna touch that case with a 10 metre pole. It was clearly and accident and everyone thinks so, so scoring a court victory for however weak a charge wouldn??t be impressive while the work itself would ba a major headache.
See, that’s the weird thing. I wasn’t talking about the Dongducheon case, which was an accident and occured on duty. In that case, the prosecutors asked for jurisdiction — the Americans had primary jurisdiction because the incident occured while the soldier was performing his duties — and it was left to USFK to say no. The one that bugs me is the Uijeongbu case, which was by no means an accident (unless you call smashing a beer bottle in someone’s face an accident), and occured off duty. There, the prosecutors had primary jurisdiction, and they gave it up because USFK asked them to. It’s like the prosecutors wanted jurisdiction in the Dongducheon case (OK, probably an exageration — I’d imagine they asked knowing full well USFK wouldn’t waive jurisdiction) when they didn’t have it, and refused to exercise jurisdiction in the Uijeongbu case when they had it.
It will be interesting to see what the army does when SGT Onken is released from Korean prison.
“The Army could prosecute Onken after he serves his sentence but not for the same charges brought by South Korean authorities”, Boylan said.
http://www.estripes.com/articl.....chive=true
Kushibo, that “group” used to have a site that contained a lot of inaccurate information concerning US personnel crimes and the SOFA agreement. I haven’t looked at the site in a couple of years. You’re probably correct, and I should have checked the site before I said anything. I remember ??them?? as one guy and a flimsy personal website with a lot of speculation and inaccuracies.
??All that does is make USFK look like the bad guys and, in the end, reinforce the belief that the SOFA lets misbehaving GIs get off scott-free.?? (#2)
That??s what Koreans are afraid of. Since I learned a bit about the American justice system (i.e. people are innocent until they are proven guilty; it takes a while to get a case through), I??d say that the Am justice system is fairer than the Korean justice system (which I hardly know). What USFK could do is it should make it more public about the trial and sentencing stuff. Otherwise, Koreans assume that bad misbehaving GIs are set free.
Everything is case by case in the justice system. People could get off, convicted or dismissed depending on what kind of lawyers and judges they have and places the trial takes place. If GIs had American judges, GIs would have a better chance to get luck (I am not for sure about it though).
On Marmot’s original note, I thought part of the interpretation give by the GIs was that the two other US soldiers joined in to break the fight up after the 1 other GI hit the guy in the face with the bottle and that guy’s Korean friend joined in to help him out. And I thought the other two soldiers stayed on the scene until the police came while the one who used the bottle took off. I could be wrong on that though.
My opinion is that the sharp spikes in anti-US activity usually have little to do with the original trigger. 2 murders in the late 1990s didn’t produce much of anything. But, the 2000 minor, minor water dumping was an explosion. The difference? The 2000 SK-NK summit.
If Korea decides to take up the truck accident, the key cause will be the Pyongtaek issue, I believe.
Hardyandtiny,
I don’t know how long he was sentenced, but McCarthy is still in prison. There have been a few reports on him in the last few years in the Korean press. He got extra time, I believe, for a jail fight when, I believe, he cracked another GI inmate over the head with a plate in the mess hall in the special wing for housing either only GI convicts or foreigner convicts — I’ve heard both but haven’t seen anything official looking on it….
“What USFK could do is it should make it more public about the trial and sentencing stuff. Otherwise, Koreans assume that bad misbehaving GIs are set free.”
In the 2002 tank case, the US military opened up the court martial to public citizens, the family of the victims, the Korean press, and the Korean government. And it helped out —- squat.
I’m working on a recent MBC report on the “lies and truth” of the base relocation and returning issue that deals with the environmental situation on US bases. It is typical…
At one point, after the reporter goes through a short list of the cases Korea decided to make big, including the 2000 water case, the reporter adds that in each case USFK held back its tounge in silence not giving sympathy or retribution.
Which made me think of a 2000 example listed in the piece — an oil leak discovered in a subway tunnel near the Yongsan base. I remembered a Stars and Stripes piece on it. The USFK officer is reported as having said, on a bus USFK got to carry the reporters and others invited on base and around the specific places under inspection, that he hoped the Korean media would reserve judgment and give the Korean people the chance to hear what USFK was really doing about the accusations on that leak. It didn’t happen.
You can look at the efforts in Wonju at two use bases as well. USFK invites the media and even civic groups leaders to see a USFK explanation and it prepares reports in Korean and English which it hands out, and when the media does a report, it most usually either doesn’t report what USFK or even the Korean government has to say, focusing on just the civic groups and what the media thinks, or it uses that to undermine what the US says.
The part of the problem is the Korean government. It does not make a stand for the USFK. USFK is basically hung out to dry while it gets seized by the media and the leftist groups. The Korean citizens see all this and find no counter arguments. It’s only natural what the results will be. It’s immoral what the Korean government is doing (or not doing in this case). I’m frankly shocked and grateful that the US government has been this patient.
The dongducheon case is different from the beer bottle incident in that someone died which brings back the memories of the two middle school girls that were killed and all that anger. The beer bottle incident is more one of those “… damn, that sucks.” incidents that while people feel for the victim, the anger is not there-after all, the perpetrator probably had been drinking too and all Koreans know that if someone is drunk and does something stupid, there is a certain amount of sympathy for them. Kimbob makes some excelent points, particularly when it comes to understanding the GI situation-if the US govt sends them, they HAVE TO go and they will be prosecuted if they leave without permission while your average English teacher is not unlike a tumbleweed-able to go where the wind takes him. I agree that the Korean govt should do something to try and make the facts about the relationship and how business is really conducted known but I also think it would be very risy politically. The media is in business to sell papers or ad time and if there is not something that makes people mad, they have a harder time selling.
If Korea decides to take up the truck accident, the key cause will be the Pyongtaek issue, I believe.Maybe the converse is true, too.
usinkorea wrote:??What USFK could do is it should make it more public about the trial and sentencing stuff. Otherwise, Koreans assume that bad misbehaving GIs are set free.??
In the 2002 tank case, the US military opened up the court martial to public citizens, the family of the victims, the Korean press, and the Korean government. And it helped out ??- squat.I think the idea of being more open is a good idea, because there is a perception, real or imagined, where USFK personnel literally “get away with murder.”
But being open is not always enough. In the case of the two girls who were killed, there was a perception that NOTHING happened to anyone. And in part, USFK helped fuel that by disciplining some higher-ups (higher up than those who were on trial) but not being forthcoming about what that punishment/discipline was, or the changes they made as a result.
USFK also prosecuted the wrong people in that case. If the right people had been tried, a conviction for the legal equivalent of deadly negligence might have occurred, which would have satisfied most people.
One more thought about this.
I don’t think the goal of revising the SOFA is that ROK authorities handle and try every case. Instead, I think the purpose was to make sure that they would have the means to handle and try a case if USFK seemed to be doing too little or nothing.
I the two cases mentioned here (especially in the beer bottle case but also with the yogurt seller who was killed), they might feel that is not the case.
What’s the deal with “Your comment is awaiting moderation”?
And James hits on a good point.
The Korean media is reporting what Korean society wants to hear. It isn’t simply a case of the media misinformaing the public. The public wants to be misinformed.
Like back in 2002 when the students fire bombed the gate guard shack at a small US base in Seoul. The female anchor said after the reporting clip was run something like, “It’s a shame to see that.”
And she was canned the next day, because the station was flooded with complaints about her unKorean attitude. She tried to say what she meant was that it was a shame that Koreans had to resort to such things because the US military was untouchable even by the Korean government. No sell. She was out….
Those who are in effect blaming USFK for nt doing a better PR job are way off the mark.
This was borne home to me in a very drmatic fashion a few years ago, when I attended a forum in Seoul sponsored by, I believe, The Asia Foundation and the ROK-US Frindship Society. It was entitled something along the lines of “Press Perspectives on the ROK-US Alliance”; and brought together a group of panelists comprised of representatives from USFK, US Embassy, local newspapaers and foreign newspapers. My recollection is that the Dong-A Ibo and The Chosun Ilbo were represented by senior editors from their respective political or in’tl affairs desks. A senior editor of the Hanky also was on the panel.
This wasn’t too long after the accident in which the two schoolgirls were killed, so that incident provided most of the grist for the mill; but Gwangju also figured large.
USFK and the Embassy provided VERY detailed accounts of the ways in which the US effort to explain both its positions and, more importantly, just to get into play some of the basic facts regarding the accident and Gwangju, respectively, were simply stonewalled by the Korean press.
The most revealing moments came when the Dong-A and Chosun reps made the follwing admissions (I no longer remember which made which, but that’s beside the point):
1. One fellow admitted that when he had been assigned some years ago to look into a story concerning environmental damage at an American base and was refused admission to the base, he just went ahead anyway with a story in which he claimed that he had gained access and seen various things, which he then purported to report as facts. [That's shocking enough, but perhaps even more remarkable is that instead of getting sacked, he was promoted , eventually to his then position as a senior editor].
2. The other guy, responding to the well-documented charges made by USFK and Embassy reps of both the failure initially to report the facts correctly and then subsequently to report the attempted correction of the record by USFK/Embassy re both the accident and Gwnagju, acutally justified the editorial judgment involved on the ground that the paper “inevitably” [that word again] couldn’t report facts that would “upset the sensibilities of the Korean people”.
Again, there guys were from conservative papers generally inclined to favor the Alliance.
The other really sad incident at the conference for me involved a member of the audience. The ROK-US Friendship Assocoation, one of the co-sponsors, is (as one might imagine) pretty pro-US. It’s Korean membership consists mostly of increasingly elderly retired members of the ROK Army officer corps, including a lot of higher field grade officers and generals, and older members of some sectors of the business elite. The gentlemen in question was a retired general who, despite his obvious deep devotion to the Alliance was himself convinced by Korean propaganda,ironically originally launched by Chun Doo Won’s regime itself and then adopted and adapted by the Korean left, that Gwnagju was the fault of the US. What’s particularly galling about this charge is not just its inconsistency with the facts, but that if the US were to have taken the action necessary to intervene in the Gwangju incident, or earlier to have put down Chun’s rolling coup, it would have been just the sort of gross violation of the Korean sovereignity that suppposedly is the holy grail of the knuckleheads of anti-Americanism in Korea.
Marmot:
You are entirely correct that the immediate (aupposed)affront to Korean soveriegnity in the case at hand is attributable to the Korean prosecution.
I just wanted to draw attention to the really fundamental flaw in the position of the anti-SOFA crowd.
I’d also like to add, apropos my immediately previous post, that another interesting feature of the revelations at the Asia Foundation conference is that they were never reported anywhere.
“launched by Chun Doo Won??s regime itself and then adopted and adapted by the Korean left, that Gwnagju was the fault of the US.”
On a side note, I’ve watched the MBC drama the Fifth Republic, about Chun Doo Hwan’s rule. For the episodes dealing with Gwangju, I was expecting the US to get blamed for the Korean Special Forces getting moved out of the DMZ, into Gwangju - which has been a popular gripe about the US role in Korea. But interestingly enough, the drama portrayed it all as Chun’s doing. From this show, I learned that Chun had a grudge aginst the US because the US military and intelligenza in Korea did not like Chun (and made it clear to him) when he first started climbing the power ladder. So that’s why I believe you when you say Chun probably engineered the rumour that the US allowed the troops to go to Gwangju to massacre hundreds of civilians.
“, the US had no business trampling on Korean soveriegnity by doing so.”
Yes, that matter also came up in the drama. I agree it was a tough position for the US to have been and I believe they made the right and the only call. After all they were fighting a Cold War at the same time also.
Chun had leaflets dropped in the Kwangju area and messages played on the Korean press that the US was in full support of the martial law actions including Kwangju.
In either the US Amb. in the Kwangju period or the USFK commander’s book it is said that a Korean officer (or was it high ranking government official?) came to him with information about a counter-coup that was in the works including top government people and high ranking military leaders who didn’t favor Chun. The group wanted to know what kind of support or reacion they could get. The US poured cold water on the idea, and the coup never took place.
That was a clear moment of decision, and whenever I bring it up with a Korean when the topic of US guilt for Kwangju or Chun’s rule comes up, and I ask whether the US should have supported a coup to put back in place the constitutional government or not, the question is avoided……
USinKorea, that’s the same version of what happened that appears in the MBC drama “The Fifth Republic”. Don’t forget, a lot of people are watching that drama. Also, Chun was smart enough that he cut off Gwangju from the rest of the country and the media. Ordinary Koreans (including lame duck president Choi Kyu Ha and all the civilian opposition forces) in Korea had no ideal what was going on in the country because Chun cut off the media. Nobody could do that now because of globalization and the internet, but it was easily done in 1980.
I think Kwangju 1980 is the milestone in Korea-US relationship. This is the point of time when Anti-Americanism in Korea began its root. Even today, the Cholla people overall are extremely suspicious of the US. Anti-Americanism is probably the strongest by far in that part of the country.
When the citizens of Gwangju rose up to defend themselves against the military regime which was on a runaway rampage (because Chun wanted to show everyone that he was not going to mess around), they were absolutely sure that the United States, symbol of democracy in the world, would come to their aid. And of course at that time, the US was in an understandable bind and could not come to the aid of people of Gwangju. The dissapointment and sense of betrayal felt by the student demonstrators in Gwangju was extremely bitter. So I can imagine that when Chun began to propagandize that the US was on the side of the Korean military dictatorship, many bitter Koreans believed it. Thus began the anti-Americanism in Korea. That is how I surmise and interpret what went on.
It seems that the leftists and other anti-American and anti-capitalists have mastered the art of propoganda in many parts of the world. Why can’t the US and capitalist supporters do the same? Not necessarily a criticism, but I just always wonder why the US and capitalism seem to be strongly hated throughout the world. Of course, I know that the US has not always been exactly what you’d call an exemplary example of honesty or civil behavior in other countries, but why do those from the other side seem to be often believed so readily, even despite evidence to the contrary? Is it jealousy? What can the US really do to counter completely false and distorted versions of events? It’s seems like they’re always in a losing battle.
Thank you usinkorea for the insight. I’ve found it to be a real source of frustration to see the rampant hatred of the US and capitalism here in South Korea and in Canada, and I know it’s strong in many other places. It sounds to me like it’s time to revamp higher education so that it isn’t such a swampland of leftist garbage-we need to hear the rightist garbage, too! Just kidding, I’d just like to get a balance in the news, in schools, and elsewhere, which just seems severely lacking. I guess that’s why blogs are great, cause we can get a massive variety of opinions and ideas while learning more and more.