Yeah, well Koreans got pretty screwed the last time flag-waving Chinese marauders were in the country.

In the roots of burgeoning Korean national identity itself lies the ideological need to “distance” oneself from China, in terms of denying China’s dominance as former suzerain and the literal center of East Asia’s cultural map.

Stefan Tanaka talks about this process with Japan in “Japan’s Orient” and Andre Schmid applies this to the Korean case in “Korea Between Empires.”

In both cases, but even more so for a Korea looking more and more to the Japanese model of modernization, there was a huge need to decenter China, demoting it from the center of civilization to a backwards state in want of said civilization. Much is made of Chinese decline and the attributes that make Japan or Korea a desirable future modern state, and why China does not qualify as that.

Around this time is when you see the beginning of strong anti-Chinese sentiment in Japan, with Korea soon following Japan’s example to place its own new nation-state at the center of the cultural universe, with the origins of some of the then-contemporary negative Chinese stereotypes that were being created in the West, albeit for somewhat different ideological purposes: being indolent, lazy, inscrutable, and dumb. They lacked the potential for civility, they smelled, they were dirty, etc.

Point is, none of this is new, and recent anti-Chinese sentiment resurfaces these days, especially now that Korea finds itself threatened by its nascent rise to surpass Korea.

I could go on for quite a while about the many “dirty Chinese” jokes are floating around out there, how many nasty comments I hear at even the mention of a Chinese persoon from even the most seemingly reasonable Korean folks — all well before there were any Olympic-related incidents.

Point is, from the news constantly reporting on fake Chinese goods to the threat of tainted imported food items, to the Chinese guy who murdered his Korean ex and dumped her body in a trashcan, the whispers among the Korean populace has been “Chinese people are dirty” or “dangerous” or just plain undesirable.

That’s all well before this whole thing happened. And yeah, while it is more organized than in Korea, and yeah, because China has been on the defensive, there are a lot more chances for pro-China cheerers and jeerers to get out of hand.

But to suggest that the heavily-negative, racial slur-laden, “deport ‘em” mentality one hears around these days from the mouths of Koreans, and justifying that knee jerk reaction with “well, Koreans never do it OVERSEAS, so it’s different” — as if there haven’t been organized groups of Koreans, from former comfort women to crazy people trying to set themselves on fire outside of Japanese embassies and or domestic offices, or organized labor groups organizing protests in the US, or all kinds of similar stuff that I’ve also seen Koreans do — give me a break.

In the end, it’s sports nationalism that is getting out of hand, and there are a lot more Chinese to get excited around it and put together a rally or counter-rally. Whether they do it in the home country or not, whether they are Koreans or Chinese, it isn’t much different.

When the Seoul City Government sent in its hired thugs to beat the living crap out of squatters eking out an existence on abandoned land besides the Olympic highway because it might be embarrassing for “foreigners to see any negative aspect of Korea,” the motivation was out of Olympic excitement, the needs of the nation. (Again, Kim Dong Won’s “Sanggyedong Olympics” is a reference here).

Or the Korean people’s willingness to change the names of foods, the extreme defensiveness and nearly Red Guard-esque thickheadedness with which columnists such as Ian Buruma were met in his commentaries on the game, or Koreans taking stories done by NBC on any Korean social issues as an “insult to Korea” — the extreme thuggishness and over-defensiveness and intense desire to overlook legitimate criticism of the country, the fact that Korea was still not really yet a true democracy in anything other than name, or that people were being brutally mistreated in the name of the Olympics — none of this is too different from the Chinese case in terms of its emotional warp and woof. It’s just that there’s a lot more Chinese around the world, and the issue of Tibetan independence has drawn a clear and well-defined culture of protesters and a specific set of events around which to plan counter-protests for the sake of national pride.

The differences cited by those so willing to see the Chinese behavior as CATEGORICALLY different are circumstantial and minor, in my opinion. Of course there are differences between Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008, since they are different countries holding it at different times under a different set of specific circumstances.

But don’t go trying to convince me that 1) the backdrop of intense anti-Chinese sentiment has nothing to do with the response to the events last week, and 2) that Koreans were in any significant way different from the Chinese now in terms of an extreme defensiveness over nationalism. If there had been some series of specific anti-Korean protest going on around the world as the torch was passed, you can be sure that the move to plan a counter-protest would have been made. Except that there was no email nor web available to people at the time.

But that’s besides the point. If, for some reason, there was a “Down with South Korean dogeaters!” set of protests going on around the world, and Koreans knew they would be showing up to try and stop the Olympic torch from reaching Seoul, there’d be hell to pay, and everyone Korean with some pride would make it a point to not let that happen without a fight.

If you believe Koreans’ sports nationalism, intense pride over their former Olympic coming out party, or the propensity of some Korean protesters to get out of hand doesn’t exist and is something fundamentally different from the Chinese — we simply live in two different realities about this country.

And this comes out of no reason? The amount of trash that comes out China that gets dumped on Korea.. I’m sorry.. but it’s understandable.

In short, calling this the “new Red Guard” or acting like this is foreboding sign of doom and the cause of a new form of Red Scare is overreacting. Same criticisms I’ve always made about the dangers of nationalism apply, to Koreans or Chinese.

Koreans are just as nationalistic as the Chinese. However, Korea is not on the map, so to speak, like China is. There is far more international criticism of China than Korea; thus, there are far more opportunities for uncivilized clashes between Chinese people and foreign critics. It is evident from looking at the organized boycott of Carrefour, the organized torch defensive forces, and the confrontations at China-related forums at US universities that China is mobilizing its urban young college students and graduates to defend the 祖国 (조국; that word appears a lot in the media, in online forums, and on signs and banners)against fanhuafenzi, or China haters who criticize China on human rights or its role in the world economy. Some critics, like Lou Dobbs, are China haters, but the Chinese increasingly seem to view all critics as fanhuafenzi, enemies of China. Koreans aren’t any more receptive to foreign criticism, but Korea isn’t a world power like China.

Korea in 1988 and in 2008 is no real or future threat to anyone, and its nationalistic spasms were not an ominous portent of some current or future threat. The same cannot be said of China. We should thank those students for the wake-up call.

But what I’m saying that given the excitement that comes with a major Olympics match marking the coming out of a nation, mixed with national pride and sentiment comes a lot of problems such as these, and that the human rights issues being masked by nationalism are worthy of comparison. A look at the documentary “Sanggyedong Olympics” is a great example of this.

And the main point is that this isn’t quite a rational response from the Korean side, since the expressions of anger and urge to “deport ‘em all!” are as rooted in deep-seated anti-Chinese sentiment as they are a mere response to punk students who got out of hand, or even frustration of a pattern of that being the case because of the upcoming Olympics.

In short, calling this the “new Red Guard” or acting like this is foreboding sign of doom and the cause of a new form of Red Scare is overreacting. Same criticisms I’ve always made about the dangers of nationalism apply, to Koreans or Chinese.

And to whomever posted about me being assaulted by protesters and making an issue of it, I was assaaulted by Korean protesters and taken to the ground. I blogged about it. I moved on. Chips? The only ones I see are those who keep trying to dredge up obvious distaste for me or a blog post I wrote a year ago every time I show up here.

Read what I said and respond to it. If you wanna project what you think I’d do in a situation, or try to pull up other topics I wasn’t talking about, that’s more talking out of the side of your neck, adding to the chips YOU seem to have.

Simple point — anti-Chinese sentiment has been here and building for years, and is the flip side of the coin several of you seem to think isn’t a legitimate thing to talk about. I do, and think it needs to be pointed out. Disagree with me? Move on. I said what I needed to say, too.