Over at Pacific News Service, Charles K. Armstrong wrote a thought-provoking piece (even if you disagree with some of its assertions, as I do) on the disconnect between Americans and Koreans concerning intra-Korean relations and the “Cold War” on the Korean Peninsula. Read the whole thing, but here’s just a sample to get you started:
If the United States and South Korea are increasingly drifting apart, it’s mainly because America doesn’t want to admit that the Cold War is finally, though belatedly, ending in the Korean Peninsula.
Sixty years ago on Sept. 8, U.S. soldiers in Korea accepted the surrender of Japanese forces, ending World War II and signaling the birth of a special relationship between South Korea and the United States. The alliance would be forged by the founding of a U.S.-backed Republic of Korea, the Korean war of 1950-53 and the Mutual Defense Treaty of 1954. Memories of shared sacrifice and the stationing of tens of thousands of American troops cemented this partnership.
Among South Koreans, however, new critical attitudes toward the U.S. have risen, mainly because of its longstanding military presence and hardline stance toward the North. This sea change is often simplistically portrayed in the Western media as “anti-Americanism.” But there’s more to it than that.
The loosening of Cold War alignments and the Soviet collapse did not fundamentally alter the mindset that the U.S.-South Korea alliance was part of the defense of “free world” against Communism from the North backed by China and the Soviet Union. Subsequent events have.
Like I said, read the rest on your own.
15 Comments
“62 percent of South Koreans in their 20s, and 72 percent in their 30s, wanted to restructure the U.S.-ROK alliance to make it more equal.”
This only tells me that the Korean youth really don’t know what they really want.
Equal relationship with the US? What does that mean? How can you have an equal relationship when it’s the US who has 30,000 troops in South Korea, protecting South Korea - with over two thirds of the cost paid for by the US tax payers? How can you have an equal relationship when your markets are closed while you’re allowed to sell your goods completely freely in the US with an one sided economic benefit going one way to South Korea? Korean youth don’t really want to have an “equal relationship”.
As a person of Korean background, I do tend to identify one thing with them though. It’s the frustration that for decades, Korea has been a jilted lover of the US. Korea had put in lot of attention to the US (naturally because US policies heavily influences Korea), but in return has gotten only apathy and lack of acknowledgement. I think a big chunk of anti-Americanism in S.Korea comes from this. It’s like a jilted and ignored lover with one sided love where upon by numerous rejections, love turns to resentment then hatred. Then a new love interest comes calling in the form of China.
I hope that the Chosun Ilbo article was printed in Korean for the benefit of all living in a democratic and free Korea.
Just another professor compiling American newspaper articles to reinforce what Americans WANT to believe; that it is time to withdraw from Korea.
Then what? A war in Korean peninsula? Get back in or stay out? Stay out? Serve up Korea to China?
Sissies.
Get back in? Who pulled the troops out in the first place? It is costing tripple in terms of human lives to get back in.
The liberals do not think ahead. Like the New Orleans mayor. “Man, we had buses all lined up to move people, man. But, bus drivers did not want to go into slums, man. it ain’t my fault that they don’t want to. I’ve got the buses ready, man.”. It WAS his job to think ahead and make REALISTIC preparation!
The Domino theory still holds in Asia. When SK goes, Japan is the next target. And, when Japan goes, the continental USA.
Cuba was such a valuable bargaining chip for the former USSR. Now SK is for the USA, against China.
Don’t throw it away for free.
The professor conveniently left out the fact that Korea maintains the highest number of troops in Iraq next to the U.S. Korea deserves to be called the number one ally of the US.
Yet these liberals only list the data that trashes Korea.
The professor conveniently left out the fact that Korea maintains the highest number of troops in Iraq next to the U.S. Korea deserves to be called the number one ally of the US.
Did we just up and forget about the United Kingdom? Last time I checked they had at least three times as many troops in Iraq as Korea does.
If I had my way, I rather want to see the US pulling out of Japan. As Japan change the constitution (within this year) and create its own military force, the US should move troops out of Japan. Maybe to Australia. No reason to stay and get embroiled in the China-Japan war.
However, moving the troops to Korea has some advantage as well. When China and Japan butt their heads and China wins, China will become the power bigger and stronger than the US.
It is nice to keep the dagger.
The Domino theory still holds in Asia. When SK goes, Japan is the next target. And, when Japan goes, the continental USA.
Mmmmmm. Dominoes….pizza. Yup, first North Korea gets the south, then Japan, then the world! They’re only fooling us with this ‘million dead from starvation’ thing. What a cunning stunt!
Speaking of liberals not thinking ahead, you’ll get a kick out of this article.
Bulgasari,
I meant China. I firmly believe NK is China’s dog. It barks when the master tells it to. You seemed to have no idea about the Chinese ambition. They are lions just waking up. They WILL challenge the US (continental US) when they get strong enough. Maybe in twenty years.
Yeah, I miss Clinton,too. He knew how to balance the budget and cut welfare. Much better president that Bush in national affairs, even though I like Bush’s proactive stance in Iraq. Maybe Bush showed a intensional slow response to save money; he spent way too much in Iraq. Big chunk of money going to his Texas buddies, Dick including.
Well Baduk, maybe you’ll get your chance to have Clinton back in 2009 (as an advisor to his wife).
This would almost be worth it to me, just for the opportunity to read your posts then. (With one condition: that the Marmot is still online so I can refer back to his archives, to compare and contrast what you will then be saying to what you are saying now).
What’s the phrase — about how “consistency is a preoccupation of small minds”, something like that? Considering how much Clinton deferred to the PRC and to North Korea while he was in office, I’m astonished that you’re a fan.
Maybe it’s the Korean in you; you must have liked the way Clinton flew over Japan that one time without stopping in order to make a visit to and from the PRC. Can’t remember the year now.
I’m utterly amazed that you seem to think the US can sustain a presence in the ROK while withdrawing totally from Japan, in order to get out from under the upcoming Sino-Japanese war. It’ll be rather hard for the US to support a future troop presence in the ROK from Australia, mate.
BTW, Baduk, Pacific News Service is a highly left-wing outfit here in California. Nothing wrong with that of course but I suggest you always make yourself aware of the “bent” of any supposedly “objective” sourcing.
Here’s a link to their own web site describing their origins:
http://news.pacificnews.org/ne.....page_id=47
PNS was founded in the university town of Berkeley CA (a place I knew well back in the 1970’s). In one paragraph from this link, PNS describes how they founded a Youth Magazine outlet in 1991:
“The founding of YO! marked a major turning point for PNS because it integrated young people ? mainly from high-risk backgrounds ? into our office on a daily basis. With a homeless punk from the suburbs and a rapper from the inner city sitting alongside a prize-winning journalist or respected scholar, we discovered that conversations in our office were as revealing and informative as the news stories we were sending out…”
Yo, Baduk, these chaps don’t quite sound like your cup of tea but of course we’ve never met; maybe deep down inside you’re really a Korean ethnic punk rapper type at heart. I can’t tell for sure as I tend to avoid the more “far-out” posts by the Marmot on current Korean pop culture (not my “cup of tea”).
Speaking of China, i found (in some other blog…i confess i can’t remember in which one) a very interesting article on China:
http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/5-9-8/32097.html
A taste:
“The GDP Myth
So, just what is it that makes the Chinese economy so irresistible to investors and Western businessmen that they would be willing to toss integrity out the window? Frank Xie, an assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University in Philadelphia and an expert on the Chinese economy, says that foreign investors are lured to the Chinese economy by the steady growth rate the country boasts every year of 7 to 8 percent GDP annually.
But Xie, like many other China scholars, warns that there may be more to China?s budding GDP than meets the eye, pointing out that ?there exist many puzzling contradictions, inconsistencies, and even deceptions in Chinese economic life.??
One of the more anomalous inconsistencies in the Chinese economy was revealed by Dr. Thomas Rawski, a professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Rawski studied the Chinese economy from 1996 to 1999. During that period of time, accumulated GDP of China grew by 25.6 percent. One would expect that the rate of energy consumption would increase correspondingly. However, despite the 25.6 percent GDP growth, energy consumption during the same three year period actually dropped by 12 percent.
Obviously, says Xie, these numbers don?t add up.”
China: A paper tiger?
err…just a question (completely out of topic though). Why does it show a Finnish flag next to my nickname? I’m in Portugal! Strange…
Paul H.,
I am an old timer, trying hard to sound hip. My English is poor. My word choice is still not up to par and I sound like a punk from the street. But, I believe my ideas are quite fresh and deserve some thoughts.
Berkeley Commies (hippies who will cringe at the first sight of a real Commie) have done serious damage in Korea as well. June once quoted a Berkeley professor who thinks the Jeju uprising is a justified People’s movement against the Yankee mayor.
I don’t know the details of his assertions but I don’t trust anything a Commie says. And, Berkeley Commies are not real Commies at all. Now, I may respect a true die-hard Commie for his conviction’s sake, but a pseudo-Commie is a piece of s*** to me.
Baduk, I believe the latest iteration of pseudo-commies call themselves “scientific Marxists”. (Scientific as in Scientology???) Sadly, they can be found well beyond Berkeley.
—