Aiden Foster-Carter has an op-ed in the New York Times on North Korea, director Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” and South Korean threat perception. Read it in its entirety. Here’s just a sample:
Harmless fiction? Not quite. The director, Bong Joon-ho, says hebased it on an incident in 2000 when a mortician with the United Statesmilitary was arrested over a discharge of formaldehyde. Though theincident was regrettable, the uproar it created was out of proportion.There was no lasting pollution, much less any monsters.
But thetheme rumbles on. The United States is returning 59 military bases toSouth Korea, which has complained that many have unacceptable soilpollution (Washington says it’s being held to an unfair standard). Theallies have been wrangling for two years about who will clean up.
Nowenvironmental groups and anti-American partisans are milking “Guimul”for political gain, and the minister of the environment, Lee Chi-beom,says he is worried that the sentiments spurred by the movie could makeit harder to reach any agreement on the bases.
There are echoeshere of a 2002 case in which a United States military truck killed twoschoolgirls on a narrow country road. The driver’s acquittal by acourt-martial led to weeks of protests and were a major factor in theelection of President Roh Moo-hyun, who let it be known that he wouldnot “kowtow” to Washington.
While the accident was a tragedy,one had to wonder why it could incite so many South Koreans to take tothe streets while the daily death toll of North Korean children fromfamine and conditions in Mr. Kim’s gulags sparked no such protests.
As they say, read the rest on your own.
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Rather than look up North to the suffering children, he could have mentioned SK’s ranking in the OECD on traffic accidents in school zones and pedestrians, or, he could have looked at the West Sea Battle that happened right around the time of the tank accident.
Anyway, I could be wrong on this, but I think SK can thank themselves and 2002 for this kind of coverage. Before, you hardly heard a word out of the media (or the State Department and think-tanks) about anti-US activity, and I think you certainly wouldn’t have seen people paying attention to things like The Host. And I am actually impressed the press has kept at it this long - 4 years. There has been a fair sized trickle of stories like this since the media got a clue in Dec. 2002.
Yet another presentation of the weirdness one segment of Korean society embraces (how large that segment is I’m not sure these days).
This reminded me of the bizarre “quiz show” that makes it look like kids from the South are competing with Northerners:
http://www2.gol.com/users/coyn.....ts_fri.htm
The lengths people go through here to put the happy face on KJI’s regime is amazing sometimes.
Yes, I remember reading a short article buried deep in one of the English language papers about how Korean companies had been dumping roughly 10 times the amount as the formaldehyde incident. And posters like Bluejives wonders why expats complain about Korea (especially regarding emotionalism, hyper-nationalism, anti-Americanism and socialist horseshit)?
Incidentally - it’s interesting that in the last “Host” thread a few Korean/kyopo posters were trying to downplay the anti-American element of the movie, when the Korean media all state unambiguously (and many of them approvingly, of course) that it is 반미.
Yes, I enjoyed this piece, too.
It was a good weekend all around in the newspapers for common sense. First there was the Dr. Lankov piece that you highlighted a couple of posts ago, and then this one by Mr. Foster-Carter in the IHT/NY TIMES. I’d like to point the way to a third one, by a Korean high school kid. It’s great to see so much common sense at such a young age:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....09013.html
He sees right through the pro-North smoke and mirrors routine that it so prevalent here.
It is so funny that the best example of US pollution in Korea is this ridiculous formadlehyde dumping which is now 6 years old. I remember the Korea Herald called it “a kind of attempted murder.”
Remember right after the Korean media started going nuts about this one a US doctor was stabbed to death in broad daylight in Itaewon. The Korean media invented a story that the doctor had insulted him and even went so far as to say that the Korean knew English well. Later in the margins we found out that the guy was a violent career mental patient. But Koreans still blamed the stabbing on the American victim.
Also, at the same time this was happening, it was discovered that numerous Korean businesses along the Han had their sewage lines routed to unload their human waste right into the Han. No uproar. A few fines. No talk of criminal prosecution.
“President Roh Moo-hyun, who let it be known that he wouldnot “kowtow” to Washington”
The loony lefties of Korea think it’s kowtowing to cooperate with America or Japan, but not with China or North Korea.
“dumping roughly 10 times”
It wasn’t 10X. In 2003, several lumber companies were finally charged with a criminal offense for dumping — 271 tons of fromalin into the Han and tributaries as runoff from their treatment of the wood.
The USFK civilian boss ordered the dumping of 20 gallons.
20 gallons vs 271 tons…….
Well if he asks, I can tell him it’s mostly due to the heavy sets of emotional and cultural baggage they carry with them. This in turn causes them to focus on the idiotic blatherings of a minority more than they should be.
I mean really, if you applied the same scrutiny to the goings on back home, then Americans reward gross incompetence with four more years as president, and Canadians are overly enamoured with their cultural utopia myth.
Oh wait, bad examples…
While the accident was a tragedy,one had to wonder why it could incite so many South Koreans to take to the streets while the daily death toll of North Korean children from famine and conditions in Mr. Kim’s gulags sparked no such protests.
Because that requires the courage to stand up to your adversary even when they are flashing their guns. The US is an easy target because South Koreans know, as a member of western civilization, the US will not go to war over trivial matters. On the contrary, South Koreans, I think, are scared to hell of North Korea. Real monsters are scarier than movie ones.
Kyochan,
I agree with you completely. The same dynamic applies to South Korea’s relentless provocations toward Japan as well.
To put it bluntly, South relentlessly provokes the U.S. and Japan because neither the U.S. nor Japan will actually undertake actions to threaten or harm South Korea. In contrast, North Korea and China are genuine threats. Hence, South Korea’s obsequious and prone posture toward the latter two.
This is why I half-facetiously (but only “half” facetiously) tell my Japanese friends that if Japan wanted to improve relations with South Korea, it should re-arm itself and employ a more militant rhetoric.
While you are touristing in Korea go to any park, any beach, any public place and you will find trash everywhere. Littering is an accepted practice in Korea. If the Korean people trash their own streets why do you think that the managers of manufacturers would be any different. The corporate managers are the parents that allow their kids to litter. Does it not make sense that these same managers would dump any chemical refuge wherever is convenient. When it comes down to the bare truth the US bases are probably cleaner than their Korean counterparts. If the Koreans don’t like what they get from the bases then have them pay back the money that was spent by the US government protecting this country for the last 50 years and then we will leave.
William G, I doubt you really know what’s in everyone’s psychic luggage here. The anti-American, anti-Japan, pro-Pyongyang crowd might indeed be “the idiotic blatherings of a minority” as you seem to be saying, and yet they are an influential minority, and their blatherings have reached the ears of Rep. Henry Hyde in the U.S. and Foster-Carter in England. They helped the current government get elected and are largely responsible for its appeasement policy toward N.K. This worries a lot of people here who are concerned about the Korean people.
“Bbarrick” another view that could be taken from this article and Dr. Lankov’s recent article (listed earlier) is that there is a consistent orchestrated anti-U.S. propaganda campaign being waged in South Korea that is apparently well-planned. It would seem that some of these 78,000 infiltrators mentioned by a high-placed North Korean defector are linked to the film industry (not to mention the field of education) — an industry that known to be of interest to KJI as well.
These activities are more an ongoing act of war than an issue of mere “littering”.
Rec’ that comment!
As Foster-Carter points out, Koreans always explain their indifference to the North’s human rights abuses by saying that their right-wing dictatorships fed them with anti-communism for so long. Confucius says that right thinking comes from right behavior. And the right-wing dictatorships were bad. Ergo what they said was bad and wrong. This seems to be the “logic”.
But those dictatorships also fed Koreans with anti-Japanese propaganda for decades. The same kids who were taught that the Norks had horns were also taught to cheer and applaud when the teacher announced natural disasters and accidents that had happened in Japan.
And those same dictatorships also used anti-Western propaganda to contain interest in democracy, keep Korean women away from Americans, and preserve the domestic market for the chaebols. TV spots under Chun equated the purchase of foreign products with treason.
So why is it that this history did nothing to discredit anti-Japanism and anti-Americanism?
kyochan’s theory of the Koreans only standing up to those who can’t or won’t harm them has merit. R. Elgin’s observation that a lot of the anti-American propaganda and activities is warfare being conducted by North Korean agents is also true, i believe.
But it’s a lot more complex than that, goes a lot culturally deeper — the Koreans have looked up to America as their new older brother, replacing the former China that played that role for so long, but have found that America doesn’t act towards them like an older brother should, according to the ancient Confucian mind-set — so they react emotionally with negativity. Most of the Americans involved in decision-making and such don’t even have a clue as to how a Confucian Older Brother should act, and that’s perfectly understandable. They don’t even understand the Korean’s natural reaction; how could they, without studying and experiencing the very different cultural background, which they have neither the time nor the inclination to do? This cultural clash is inevitable, probably going to lead to a tragic divorce, mirroring so many actual Korean-American marriages…
I think that most Koreans are well-aware that their own companies and military pollute worse than the American Army does, and would freely admit it in situations where national-face has not been placed on the line — many have admitted it to me, anyway. What’s happening here is that they expect the Americans to live up to their OWN ideals, to be as “good” as they always say they are, as they constantly lecture the rest of the world that it should be.
You think that the rest of the world doesn’t notice that the USA kidnaps and tortures both its own citizens and foreigners, overthrow elected governments & etc according to official policy, with no legal sanctions for it except for the occasional lowest-level peon served up as a scapegoat (the world was not much impressed by Miss England’s ‘trial’), while it’s State Department keeps on issuing Human Rights Reports that criticize other governments that they’re not living up to American standards… but it does. OK, that’s getting off on a tangent, but…
Koreans really DO expect the United States and its representatives to act “better” than Koreans act, to Walk their Talk — and so pointing out on pollution & such that “Koreans do worse, so why should they complain?” misses the point entirely. I’ve heard it so many times from them, ” we know we’re not so good about that, but we expected better from you”.
We Americans know all too well that our country doesn’t live up to the ideals our teachers told us it had, that they were mostly just rhetoric all along, and the current administration has been making it rather shockingly public that those old ideals are “no longer operational” at all — but many of the Koreans really did believe that Americans acted better than them, could serve as a model of how they would like to become, a model to reach towards over generations of development. They get angry and sarcastic when we don’t live up to our own rap, like teenagers looking at their parents… There’s a lot more sadness and disappointment in their reaction then there is Communist Anti-American plotting.
Nothing much that we expats can really do about this, i guess, but at least least we can try to understand what’s going on, not just get all ironic with “how dare they criticize us???”
Sanshin,
My reaction is not, “how dare they criticize us.”
It is, “Is it possible for a human brain to be as gob-smackingly hypocritical as a Korean’s.”
Basically, your point is that Koreans are allowed to be completely irrational in their hatred of Americans because we are not perfect.
The issue is not America. The issue is Korean vanity. They have it drilled into their heads that they are the most virtuous race to ever walk the earth. So they need to see North Koreans as harmless and Americans as monsters. Otherwise, things would fall apart.
There was an incident around 2000 in Germany. Three kids of US soldiers threw a brick at a car from an overpass and killed a motorist. The Germans did not respond with riots. They expressed shock at today’s youth. On other words, they treated the incident exactly the same as if the little monsters had been German. Just goes to show you that many (most?) countries are far more sensible than Korea.
And Korea was this way long before W ever took office. It has nothing to do with America. It has everything to do with Korean pefidity, vanity, their Soraksan-sized inferiority complex, the way they use their spouses, the way they abuse their kids.
Again, on its darkest day America is more compassionate, more engaged, more charitable, more useful, more just, more diverse, more open-minded, and more tolerant than Korea is on its very best day. That is not American arrogance. It is a simple fact.
I was working around Kwangwhamun the summer of 2002 when the wax from the nightly candlelight vigils coated the pavement three inches thick. Every night those anti-American groups had huge bins to collect money. “Please spare some change to help restore Korean pride,” they would shout. And the clueless Korean teenagers would pour out their purses.
Anti-Americanism in Korea is in my humble opinion primarily pathetic two-bit franchise for a bunch of makoli-stained demigods.
Quite true.
Just as children will provoke their parents to see what they can get away with (because they know their parents will protect and not harm them), they cower in abject fear in front of the schoolyard bully.
Sanshinseon, with all due respect, at a state level Confucianism is out the window–certainly the dictators didn’t heed their “older brother” who advised them not to crown themselves president for life.
Also, I doubt Koreans have looked so highly on Americans since the “386″ generation–the current gov’t is predicated on anti-Americanism, and very selectively applies “ideals,” i.e., one set for the U.S., while N.K. and their own peers get a free pass, literally in the case of Roh’s pardons of corrupt Uri Party members.
Kyochan’s observation I share, and I hope the next Korean gov’t is from the older and far more mature generation, whatever their flaws, since Roh and his cronies have proven just as corrupt, while being inept to boot.
Koreans like to invoke Confucianism to get them off the hook for things, because they know most foreigners haven’t a clue what Confucianism means. Korean shopowners’ surly treatment of black customers in the US was blamed on alleged Confucian strictures against smiling, for example. I just don’t swallow this older brother, younger brother business, or this “we expect more from you” crap, which is simply a way for Koreans to put the most positive possible spin on their anti-American demonstrations. “Fucking USA”? That’s how they talk to older brother? Come on.
Considering that Koreans have institutionalized the hatred of Japan on account of their occupation, it’s hardly surprising that many of the ones in power today demonize the United States for supporting the authoritarian despots that the former pro-democracy advocates were fighting against.
Of course, that was all in the past, but for some reasons, grudges don’t seem to go away very quickly in that part of the world.
i as a korean-american downplayed the 반미 in earlier posts about the movie because i didn’t get any sense that many of the koreans i talked to felt the movie was anit-american, even if the korean media acknowledges it. but then i don’t read comments in naver so i don’t really know what the general sentiment is.
as for this article, i think more like this article should be written to show koreans their double standards/hypocrisy. but unfortunately, many koreans will take it as “everyone is against us” mentality.
Quote/Ben Eller:
There was an incident around 2000 in Germany. Three kids of US soldiers threw a brick at a car from an overpass and killed a motorist. The Germans did not respond with riots. They expressed shock at today’s youth. On other words, they treated the incident exactly the same as if the little monsters had been German. Just goes to show you that many (most?) countries are far more sensible than Korea.
——————————————————————-
I find Anti-American crap coming from Koreans rather predictable and annoying as much as anybody else here, but to somehow suggest European Anti-Americanism is as any saner, is also a bunch-of-load of-crap.
This whole Anti-American Crap was invented by the French long, long time ago and has spread throughout much of Western Europe and other Non European Nations, like Japan, as well. If you think there is no such thing as Anti-Americanism in Japan, just look at any number of their news websites, and their revisionist history reguarding WWII and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb. It’s not as sanitized as one would have you believe.
Also, If you have any inkling of a recollection of the massive Anti-American demonstrations throughout much of Europe where 10’s of millions of Europeans marched right after the invasion of Iraq, it would make any silly little demonstrations by the Koreans look tame by comparison.
Fact of the matter is, people World over right now resent the fact that America has become an Empire. This happens to be a fact, whether you want to admit it or not. Of course, This hatred of American Hegemony is pretty predictable crap and it comes from the fact that America is the most powerful Nation on Earth. I serious doubt things were any different when Rome ruled much of Europe. It’s sort of thing that comes with the territory; predictable pettiness that’s part of human nature. I seriously doubt Koreans have cornered the market on this.
Not all that difficult to understand and the Left often excuses.
Fact of the matter is,
If the recent Korean Elections won by their Conservative Party is any indication, it’s clear most Koreans do not share the sentiments of this very vocal minority.
Unfortunate part of living in a democratic society is the fact that people have a right to make an idiot out of themselves as the Looney-Left are often prone to do. However, this type of idiocy is also a boon to Conservatives, showing the Looney-Left for what they are, Looney and Left.
Actually, when Rome ruled much of Europe, they had the nasty habit of either crucifying their political dissidents, or feeding them to the lions. Of course, that sort of thing is much less acceptible now, so Americans just have to limit themselves to silly things like renaming food items and bitching on blogs.
Well,
It seems like the movie is doing pretty well over there. I was going to ask, did you guys see the film over there?
I’m looking forward to at least grabbing hold of a bootleg copy when it becomes available over the net.
This idea that the US doesn’t live up to its own ideals as being the reason everybody is angry at or hates the place, is bs. Give the worst dictators the world has ever seen a pass and yet so many focus on the failures of America? It has alot more to do with envy and jealousy. America is far from perfect, but it has certainly done alot of good in the world (and some bad). Sounds more like a massive inferiority complex on the part of those who hate America.
Want some more?
It’s quite striking how the Left-Wing Socialist these days seems to have cornered the market on Nationalism; but, then again, Hitler was a National Socialist. Anti-American politics may have a short term gain, but they tend to lose out in the long run, i.e., Germany’s Anti-American Socialist Party losing to their Conservative Party, Canada’s Liberal Party losing to their Conservative counterpart, even Korea’s Uri Party getting pummeled by the GNP, and yes, even the hated French may finally come around and elect a more reasonable pro-American President in their upcoming elections.
People world over may resent the fact that American is the “top dog ,” but they are not stupid. Most Countries that have fallen under the spear of influnece of America has done well, being part of an Empire has it’s advantages, i.e., peace and prosperity. As they say, membership has it’s privilages. There is certainly nothing wrong with giving up a small bit of Nationalistic pride when there is so much to gain. I do believe most people for the most part understands this. They’re not stupid.
It’s always the vocal minority that always wind up crying like a hysterical princess trapped in a closet, and yes, Left-Wing politics are predictable that’s why noone wants to be associated with people of this sort anymore.
Listen, there will always be an Empire. If it isn’t America, then it will be somebody else, and I’m sure someday we’ll all be speaking Madarin Chinese someday, but I just want to prolong this agony abit further ’til then.
Well, given that socialism is more or less predicated on putting the needs of your country above personal ones, nationalism is a stronger fit with socialism than many would think. Of course, I dunno that I would say that left-wing socialists have done anything like corner the market on nationalism. After all, it’s not the left wing in America that’s taken to heart the motto ‘love it or leave it’.
Psst… it’s ’sphere of influence’. ‘Spear’ makes it sound just a bit more militant than it really is.
Much evil has been done under the banner of “nationalism”. It is right up there with religion as a cause of mankinds’ evils.
The thoughtless posters I saw (illegally posted) this weekend had all of this “One Corea” branding all over them but there is never any mention made of just how difficult or bad an idea that really is, especially considering the well-known ruling cadre in North Korea. I guess this is an indication of just how intellectually poor the students are coming out of Seoul National University nowadays. Should I say what poor citizens they are as well?
i agree with origami.
btw, i was reading a book over the weekend and came across this quote by sen. henry cabot lodge giving a speech in 1919.
“look at the united states today. we have made mistakes in the past. we have had shortcomings. we shall make mistakes in the future and fall short of our own best hopes. but none the less is there any country today on the face of the earth which can compare with this in ordered liberty, in peace, and in the largest freedom?…contrast the united states with any country on the face of the earth today and ask yourself whether the situation of the united states is not the best to be found.”
there is no country better than the us, hence the hatred from many countries around the world.
See? Told you nationalism wasn’t limited to the left-wing.
based on the context of the quote, in terms of liberty, in peace, and in the largest freedom, there is no country better than the us. i don’t think i’m being nationalistic. oh well.
As usinkorea said,
Rather than look up North to the suffering children, he could have mentioned SK’s ranking in the OECD on traffic accidents in school zones and pedestrians
It might be interesting if Aiden Foster-Carter were to compare the 52 lives lost in the 2005 London Bombings with British traffic fatalities [from 2002] of 3,431 , or even the number of firearm fatalities [in 2002] of 169. Traffic and firearm fatalities there don’t help lead to regulations like water bottles and laptops being banned from air travel, even though they claim far more lives. But only South Korea suffers from misguided threat perception, right? Ok, of course not, but Foster-Carter’s article takes a rather condescending tone, without seemingly wanting to remember that pot and kettle saying.
Incidentally, he might want to consider Romanizing “Goemul” correctly, a quibble though it is. One other question lingers in my mind regarding him (in writing this article), and those here criticizing the film: Has he (or anyone else here) actually seen the movie? Or are you just trusting the Korean mudia?
If my memory is correct, I believe that the approximately 24 liters of embalming fluid poured down the drain at Yongsan went through a two-stage filtration/purification process before it actually entered the Han River. This not-so-trivial detail was pointedly ignored then (and still is today).
The cases of the Han River “pollution” and 2002 junior high student deaths were troubling to me, but not because they offered examples of skewed threat perception. Both of those cases raised — and sadly, answered — grave questions about the integrity of the Korean justice system and the trustworthiness of the Korean press. Both could happen again tomorrow, with the same outcome. In fact, I’d look for fresh examples as Korea moves closer to election season in ‘07-’08.
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[...] You may recall Eddie Murphy talking about Italian-Americans after they’ve just watched “Rocky.” Uri Party lawmaker Jung Chung-rae apparently had one of those moments after watching director Bong Joon-ho’s “The Host” (Korean title: “The Monster”). But rather than pick a fight with the nearest U.S. serviceman, Jung chose to exercise his heightened sense of national pride and historic grievence in a Sep. 8 column to OhMyNews entitled “We Must Look at the United States, the Real ‘Monster’ of This Land”. It’s definite one for the scrap book. In a way, he seems to have taken North Korea expert Aiden Foster-Carter ’s advice to concentrate on the real monsters on the Korean Peninsula. You want the money quote? In a piece like this, it’s hard to choose, but this one will probably do: The United States, in the name of the over-50-year-long Korea-U.S. alliance, has profiteered politically, militarily and economically. The bones spit out by the film’s monster after it had eaten the victims were horrifying. Imagine the bones excavated from Nogun-ri and other places during documentary television programs on modern Korean history. [...]
[...] I’m about to go all screedy about this, but I can be brief, because Robert Koehler has pretty much said everything I’d have said anyway. I generally write ”DOA” posts after an action by either government documents some new low in bilateral relations. The government isn’t responsible for the content of what Korea’s notoriously militant film industry makes, but it wasn’t responsible for the content of “Yoduk Story,” either. So on one hand, fictionalized movies about No Gun Ri or formaldehyde dumps get the protection of monopolistic screen quotas and government subsidies (and just in time for FTA talks, too!), but on the other, those who would make or finance a small-time musical about just one of North Korea’s concentration camps are threatened with prosecution under the National Security Law. [...]