The Marmot’s Hole

Katrin Fraser, who is set to become the new director for Asian affairs at the U.S. National Security Council, apparently feels the Bush administration’s “lack of understanding of Korean culture” has fanned anti-American sentiment in Korea. According to Ye Olde Chosun, she particularly criticized Bush’s labeling of North Korea as “evil” as running counter to Korean cultural norms:

She says South Korea’s “swift and largely negative reaction” came from two factors. One was a gradual buildup of anti-U.S. sentiment due to Bush’s rejection of engagement with North Korea, and the other “cultural insensitivity on the part of the Bush administration.” By calling North Korea “evil,” Bush offended against Korean norms of relationship management and communication, which focus on face-saving and “kibun,” she said.

“If the president had demonstrated an awareness of the importance of maintaining kibun in relating to Koreans (North or South), perhaps the South Korean response to his statement would have been more muted,” she writes.

She’s partly right — at least in the sense that at the public level, the maintaining of gibun is, generally speaking, important to Koreans in both North and South when it involves utterances directed at them personally or at the group of which they are a part. Of course, judging from North Korea’s routine ideological, racial and even personal attacks on the United States, Japan, South Korea’s opposition Grand National Party or public figures it dislikes, Seoul’s rhetoric toward Japan, or for that matter some of the heated public discourse within South Korea itself, the gibun of other parties can be of considerably less consequence.

For most of the post-Korean War period, South Korea’s rhetoric towards North Korea hardly took into account the gibun of North Korea’s leadership. If Bush had called the North Korean regime “evil” ten or fifteen years ago, it might have been well received by many South Koreans. Heck, if he’d called Japan “evil,” it would have been met with spontaneous street celebrations, even today. The difference is that over the last 10 years, South Koreans have moved away from viewing North Koreans as “horned communist devils” and more towards viewing them as part of the tribe, so to speak. The issue then becomes one not of the Bush administration failing to understand the Korean cultural concept of gibun, but rather one of it failing to understand — or care about — the a) changing nature of Korean nationalism and national identity and b) the priority Seoul placed on improving relations with the North.