I’m sure the Chosun Ilbo will translate some of these one-liners from a 726-page report released by the Korean Alliance Against the KorUS FTA. I’ll be sure to link to them when they do.
Then in the Hankyoreh 21, we have this touching story (translated into English) of the 17-horned FTA monster by children’s story writer Park Ki-beom.
UPDATE: The Chosun Ilbo’s English edition did translate its editorial on the report, where you can read some of the finest in Korean academic discourse circa 1980:
The Korean Alliance Against KORUS FTA is selling what it bills as a “national report,” a collection of articles opposing the proposed free trade agreement with the U.S. They are written by 27 left-wing scholars and activists affiliated with the alliance. The question that comes to mind unbidden upon reading the tome is what time and country South Korea’s left-wingers think they live in. “A Korea-U.S. free trade agreement is effectively an accord to surrender our sovereignty to the U.S. Empire,” one writer says. Nay, says another, it is “a full-fledged attack mounted on behalf of American supranational capital and Korean monopoly capital to exploit laborers, farmers and the masses.”
The terminology and reasoning are those of the campus activists of the 1980s: an outdated ideology that sees capitalism merely from the angle of exploitation and class struggle, and dividing the world into exploiter countries at the center and exploited countries on the periphery. They show our left-wingers stuck in the temporal and spatial misapprehensions of an agrarian Korea under Japanese colonial rule or at best in the 1950s.
“Opposition to the proposed FTA constitutes a united front that shares the aims of the Pyeongtaek struggle” against the new U.S. military base there, the report asserts. “The Korean Peninsula would face a military threat from the FTA since there would be repercussions from China and North Korea.” There is very little difference between such talk and the anti-American and anti-imperialist propaganda North Korean radio blasts into the South.
Crikey.
7 Comments
I recognize that I am “supposed to” disagree with this article, and I do in fact, disagree with parts of it.
Still, the disappearance of agriculture in the southern part of Korea saddens me. And I am certain that it didn’t have to be this way. Agriculture could and should have been saved even as development occurred.
Similar anti-environment forces are at work here in California’s Central Valley, where we continue to pave over prime farmland as fast as we can get away with it. Indeed, I live in a house in a cookie-cutter subdivision that now occupies what used to be beautiful, oak tree studded rolling hills.
And those white cranes in the Northern California rice fields, the cranes that still existed here after the rice fields in Korea disappeared? Going, going, and soon to be gone.
I won’t blame any particular trade agreement or any particular system of government. I will only blame myself and my fellow humans for destroying that which sustains us. In this sense, I agree with Park Ki-Beom that the loss of agriculture is tragic. I’m not sure it would take too much effort to convince him that this is not just a problem for Korea as a nation, but also for all the countries on this one planet we call home.
Robert: off topic sort but the basic issue is about sovereignty, right? … perhaps this article should have a post of its own (despite administration and USFK denials today) Halloran is reasonably well sourced; i would say this is a bush admin plant to say: fuck off with all your crap, pres. Roh. (just a guess….)
read away: http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....south.html
Do you mean yielding this sovereignity?: “The United States is traditionally the largest provider of Korea’s inward FDI; in 2004 US firms invested $4.7 billion in Korea.”
http://www.iie.com/publications/pb/pb06-4.pdf
U.S. farm subsidies mainly go to agribusiness, and need to be cut, but Korea’s obviously need revision too.
At least the Hankie breaks it down on a level suitable for its readership–they seem to love myths and fantasies over there:
“The South American agreement is different from the FTA monster in that it is not a pact to expand the freedom of foreign capital, but to coordinate and cooperate each other to create harmonious livelihoods among people.” Tell that to the Roh government as it helps the chaebol go to S.A. and Africa to “secure resources” as S. Korea competes with China for oil and minerals–both countries are engaging in the “exploitation” Park decries. Guess harmony depends on who’s playing the fiddle.
As I read that bizarre 17-headed monster tale, I couldn’t help but notice the promo ad for Gaeseong Industrial Complex on the right. Leave it to the Hankyoreh to simultaneously attack an increase in economic freedom while trumpeting the economic slavery that is masquerading as a great step forward in inter-Korean relations that is Gaeseong.
No one is screwing South Korea more than the North is(and I certainly don’t believe a US-ROK FTA would screw SK, just the opposite). These civic groups want the South to continue to bend over for a true enemy, the Norks, while deep sixing a complex, though ultimately beneficial agreement with a true ally, an ally that has done so much for the country.
That monster allegory got too long for me. Anyone have the Cliff’s Notes? All I can say is the opportunity cost of no FTA is going to be a lot higher for Korea than the U.S. Knock yourselves out, Hanky.
have at it, commies. you make your bed, your children can sleep in it.