2,069 words
David Straub[1]
Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea
Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2015
In 2002, a traffic accident involving combat engineers from the US Army’s 2nd Infantry Division in Korea killed two teenaged girls. The accident unleashed a great deal of anti-American passion in South Korea. Calling this “passion” is an understatement. South Koreans arranged themselves in phalanxes at the gates of military bases and carried out hate-soaked riots for months. This author was present during the time and can attest the lunacy extended from the average Korean on the street to Koreans with US citizenship and politically-correct officer’s commissions. This event should really be called the South Korean–American conflict of 2002. It was a sub-lethal war.
This outburst of hatred is documented by David Straub, a US State Department Foreign Service Officer. He was present in Korea at the time, and the focus of this book is on the events of 1999–2002.
According to Mr. Straub, the roots of the South Korean–American Conflict of 2002 stem from President Chun Doo-Hwan’s use of the South Korean Army to suppress “Left-wing” protests in Gwangju in late May of 1980. Hundreds (possibly) were killed during this conflict. Because the South Korean Army is under Operational Control (OPCON) of the United States in the event of war with North Korea, many of the protestors felt that the United States was ultimately responsible for the bloody crackdown.
The Gwangju Uprising marked the generation of South Koreans then coming of age. This generation, called the 386 Generation was moving into positions of power and responsibility in 2002. The 386 Generation was born after the Korean War, grew up (mostly) in times of prosperity, were educated, and were attracted to “progressive” political ideas.
According to Mr. Straub, in Korea the attitudes of the “progressives”[2] are anti-American in the “Noam Chomsky sense.”[3] After Kim Dae-Jung was elected President in 1998 he helped bring the anti-American attitudes to the forefront of South Korean Society. Kim didn’t directly put forward an anti-American narrative himself, instead he did nothing to put any problem with the Americans in general or US Forces in Korea (USFK) in particular into perspective with the South Korean public. He also funded “progressive” non-government organizations (NGOs) throughout South Korea. These NGOs engaged in anti-American metapolitical activity.
Additionally, South Korea’s media became free of any of censorship, and yet the South Korean press did not operate in the highest of journalistic standards. The result was the South Korean Press became increasingly and irrationally anti-American. For example, statements by American Officials in English were disingenuously translated into the Korean language in a way that implied the Americans were disrespectful or rude. The press also insisted American statements and explanations were “insincere” or “disrespectful.” They also highlighted alleged misdeeds, some of which were honest mistakes or exaggerated incidents. One thing to note, accusations about lack of “respect” or “insincerity” are unfalsifiable, and anything can be seen as a lack of “respect” or “insincere.”
Mr. Straub believes that anti-American attitudes took a dark turn in 1999, when a US Army Doctor, Major David S. Barry was stabbed to death in Seoul by a mentally ill homeless man in an unprovoked attack. This madman was clearly influenced by the anti-American atmosphere of the time. The South Korean press memory-holed the murder of Major Barry. That year also saw unprovoked group attacks by South Koreans on lone Americans, and another American soldier was kidnapped and forced to make anti-American statements.
As a political officer at the US Embassy, Mr. Straub was most bedeviled with five incidents:
- The Investigation into the Nogun-ri killings. This is an embellished story about troops in the 7th US Cavalry Regiment shooting refugees in the early days of the Korean War. President Clinton ordered an investigation into the situation and issued a sort of semi-apology to soothe relations. This incident, which was decades old in 1999 and took place in a highly unusual wartime context became a proverbial bloody shirt to anger and arouse the South Korean public.
- The Formaldehyde Affair. This is when a USFK mortician disposed of formaldehyde under outdated procedures by diluting it with water and dumping into a drain where it would be processed at the water treatment plant. The USFK was accused of “poisoning” the drinking supply. Like the Nogoun-ri incident above, this situation was embellished and used to inflame passions.
- The Koon-ni Range Incident. A USAF A-10 pilot on a practice run jettisoned his bombs as per protocol on an uninhabited area after his aircraft had an in-flight mechanical emergency. The Korean activists exaggerated the damages to a (somewhat) nearby village, and the South Korean Press uncritically reported the exaggerations.
- The Apollo Ohno short track incident. During the controversy- and corruption-ridden 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah an Australian judge made a call that disqualified South Korean Kim Dong-Sung costing him the gold. The South Korean public exploded with rage. Among other things, they used cyber warfare against the Olympic Committee.
- The 2002 Highway 56 Tragedy. During maneuvers near the DMZ, a US Army bridge laying vehicle accidently ran over two South Korean school girls. The South Korean public demanded the soldiers be criminally tried on South Korean courts. This demand was part of a metapolitical effort that insisted the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and South Korean Governments was unfair. Protests were violent, sustained, and intense. This was the climatic event of the 2002 conflict.
After the South Korean Presidential elections of 2002, the rioting burned itself out. Mr. Straub dedicates his last chapter to examine if anti-American attitudes still exist and if they could arise again. The answer is that there are still anti-American attitudes in South Korea although they pale in comparison to anti-Japanese attitudes. Furthermore, anti-American attitudes could return with the same level of intensity, but it is uncertain how they will manifest or what will cause them. For example, allowing American beef imports into South Korea led to enormous protests in 2008.[4]
There is no work about international affairs packed with insight and hard-boiled experience like that from a Foreign Service Officer in the US State Department. These bureaucrats are the closest thing Americans have to a Roman Proconsul. However, this book aims to promote the status quo in South Korea, so in many ways it misses critical ideas and is a limited work.
Important Lessons
American “leadership” is often resented abroad, and that resentment can become quite costly to Americans. This idea makes the costly Cuban revolution of the 1950s easier to understand as well as the costly resentments across the Middle East. In South Korea there is plenty of resentment, and the considerable costs include, along with anti-Americanism, a blank check to South Korea for war as well as the theft of industrial capabilities from the Rust Belt to Northeast Asia.
Americans have an imperfect understanding of the potential of full-spectrum international conflict. Essentially, putative allies can have sharp conflicts with Americans which play out at a near sub-lethal level rather than at the stage of open warfare. Instead of hydrogen bombs, a madman stabs and off-duty soldier to death. University students chain themselves to flagpoles or threaten to set a building on fire. Angry citizens carry out cyber-attacks. Other situations, like refugee movements consisting of military age men, lobbying for H-1B visas, and Orientals dominating STEM departments and squeezing others out, are acts of war by other means.
Americans, even civically active and educated members of the US Military or US Government have responsibilities in so many nations that they don’t fully understand any one particular nation and can be easily caught off-guard. During the same timeframe that David Straub writes of, the soldiers in USFK were rotating through different war-zones with dizzying speed.[5] In 1999, the US military was dealing with peacekeeping in Bosnia, a campaign in Kosovo, and the defense of Kuwait among other operations. Additionally, al Qaeda became active with the East African Embassy bombings and the attack on the USS Cole. Just prior to the 2002 South Korean–American Conflict, America suffered 9/11 and deployed to Afghanistan and Kazakhstan. Just after the 2002 South Korean–American Conflict, in March 2003, Americans invaded Iraq. Suffice to say, none understood how a bloody, domestic protest in 1980, a controversial call at an ice skating event, and a tragic traffic accident could lead to such an explosion in 2002.
Racial issues and race realism (1). Mr. Straub does remark (negatively) that South Koreans view the world through a racial lens. He argues that they see themselves as racially pure and Americans as a “mongrelized” people. This attitude should give one pause regarding policies that allow Koreans to immigrate or naturalize as citizens.
However, with all racial issues the idea of “mongrelization” is probably a euphemism regarding black soldiers. South Koreans hold blacks in low regard and were brutalized by them in the 1992 LA Riots. They probably don’t appreciate Affirmative Action blacks with senior positions in the USFK or US State Department barking orders at them. In 2002, the commanding general of the 2nd Infantry Division was a black who made a very “ghetto” impression.
Racial issues and race realism (2). Although he pulls his punches, Mr. Straub flatly states that throughout 1999 to 2002 the South Koreans were behaving quite irrationally. All of the five flashpoints described above were small events that didn’t reflect a policy of deliberate hostility on the part of Americans towards Koreans. Of the situation, one could uncharitably say the South Koreans couldn’t collectively connect cause and effect or accurately weigh costs and benefits. To be even more uncharitable, left to their own devices, Koreans create a society like North Korea. While South Koreans rioted, they also flocked to the United States for university training and applied for visas.
Kim Dae-Jung’s actions while president throughout the time deserve scrutiny. As mentioned above, President Kim was anti-American in the Noam Chomsky sense. His attitudes flew in the teeth of the fact that the US Government saved him from death when he was kidnapped and about to be murdered on the orders of South Korean President Park Chung-Hee. Additionally, Kim was given refuge in the United States after South Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan sentenced him to death in 1980. Kim also got as many honorary degrees from American Universities as any politically correct Reverend Crying Negro.
President Kim was also engaged in the “Sunshine Policy” with North Korea. This policy got Kim a Nobel Prize, the world’s biggest award for little if any achievement, given out by a committee of hopelessly naïve Norwegians.[6] It was discovered later that Kim’s appearance of progress was as fraudulent as many Asian achievements. Kim had simply bribed the North Koreans to attend the summits.[7] In the years following the Kim Administration we now know the Sunshine Policy was a failure.
If ice skating and traffic accidents cause a sub-lethal mini-war, what will happen if there is a highly lethal war with North Korea and there is a real setback? Could be bad . . .
American defense of South Korea is an example of what terminally ill Senator John McCain of Arizona recently called a “tired dogma of the past.”[8] The defense of South Korea is a relic of the Cold War which ended in 1991. Today, Americans are intervening in the Korean Civil War which is no longer an American problem. South Korea can easily defend itself from North Korea, and a neo-imperialist venture on the peninsula by Japan is simply unbelievable.
The reason why there is a New Right in the United States is, in part, a rational frustration which many Americans feel regarding American military deployments abroad. South Korea is one such military deployment that deserves a second look. Americans should consider exiting the Korean Civil War before a 140 character tweet leads to bombs.
Notes
[1] http://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/korea/people/david_straub
[2] In South Korea being Left-wing is only something reserved for Communists or those with North Korean sympathies. The liberals in South Korea refer to themselves as “progressive.” The political parties change names or are replaced consistently, but the ideological commitments remain the same.
[3] Page 42
[4] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-korea-protest/anti-u-s-beef-protest-draws-100000-s-koreans-idUSSEO21734120080531
[5] Mr. Straub argues that South Koreans are more cosmopolitan and educated than Americans. This is highly dubious, a Spec4 in the USFK from the hills of Tennessee will have a high school degree and can easily have been to Germany, Kosovo, and Kuwait before being assigned to Korea. All of those assignments would have imparted a lifelong broadening of horizons for any participant. A Korean protestor in 2002, might have been to University, but had probably never been 50 miles from Seoul.
[6] https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/prize_awarder/
[7] http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/31/world/fg-koreas31
[8] https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/10/17/read-john-mccain-liberty-medal-ceremony-speech/Y2xZ6LODeqri5COohnc9ZO/amp.html
22 Comments
Korean men despise Americans because they see us as unwelcome competition for females. The ROK Army red light districts are dingy, the women ugly, and the VD is rampant. Known as the “turkey farm” , it was off limits to GIs.
“Down range in the ‘Ville” adjacent to 2ndID Headquarters Camp Casey many of the girls in the GI clubs were half American or Afro. Koreans treat all orphans of GI and Korean parents as 3rd class citizens.
Koreans looked upon the KATUSA soldiers, ROK army draftees who won assignments to American units as pampered draft dodgers.
I affirm your observations, that was the way it was when I was there.
One of the things I don’t like about having all of these U.S Military bases around the world, in particularly countries like S.Korea and Japan aside from how costly it is, the people that serve there many times end up coming back with a Korean or Japanese wife. They also without their situational awareness are in a way Americanizing the typical places they go to when they are on “liberty” behaving like degenerate American drunkards at some bar.
Why would they behave this way in a foreign country? well, simply put they think that these countries should operate the same way as the U.S. With its ridiculous notions of the proposition nation, land of immigrants, multiculturalism and so on. It is not good for those people when one of their own is married off to an American, in particularly a black one and it is not good for us as well. The Japanese beauty pageant winner, Ariana Miyamoto is her self half Japanese and half black from a black military serviceman. As it turned out, her black father ended up divorcing his Japanese wife. She now touts the garbage American ways of thinking in regards to race, here is one such quote from her “I want to start a revolution. I can’t change things overnight but in 100-200 years there will be very few pure Japanese left, so we have to start changing the way we think.”
This. Has. To. Stop.
American Blacks and Africans are also over represented in English teaching across China. They scream and cry racism while acting like they always do. Guangzhou is shit on so much because of the crime rates and the mixed babies. Most Chinese blame Americans for it and think that most of them come from America.
Also, most expats are of the liberal kind pushing the same multi-cultural narrative while they take advantage of a homogeneous society..the irony is completely lost on them.
Guangzhou is my hometown. I despise how it is slowly but surely turning into a multicultural Africanised mixed-race wasteland. What is happening in Guangzhou will spread fast.
I hope not. Every time a Chinese remarks how unsafe America is to me (I am from Chicago), they are convinced that it is because we have guns and are completely surprised when told the reality.
Are you not exaggerating a bit ? Ghangzhou has a population of 13,501,100 inhabitants. As of 2017 only 10,344 of them are of African descent. That is 0,0766%.
Those are mostly temporary residents. Permanent residents (staying more than 6 months) are only 4000. That is 0,0296%. See Wikipedia : Africans in Ghangzhou.
I’ve read about the Africans in Guangzhou numerous times in the past few years. Guangzhou is labeled “Chocolate City” because of the number of Africans there. 10,033 Africans may be an exact number, it could be more or less then that in reality. But because its black people then that number will rise very quickly. There are even Somalians in Guangzhou! Many more Africans want to migrate there as well.
To know how bad it really is in Guangzhou, read this triggering article. http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1521076/afro-chinese-marriages-boom-guangzhou-will-it-be-til-death
I also want to post for you this more recent article by the same journalist on how Gyangzhou looks like today with less Africans. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/26/asia/africans-leaving-guangzhou-china/
Then there is this 20 minute podcast with the Journalist regarding this topic http://www.chinafile.com/china-africa-project/china-was-once-hot-destination-african-migrants-not-any-more
The place looks so much better with less Africans now, if only we did the same here.
Korean people is perhaps the single most rancorous, spiteful, vengeful and ungrateful lot on the earth. They are extremely inflammable and respond to even the slightest provocation (as perceived in their subjective and skewed mindset) with hyperbole and hysteria, which is aptly called “火病” (a fiery temper disease) in East Asia. They are also exorbitantly egoistic and self-congratulating, which I believe emanates from their thinly veiled inner complex of inferiority in comparison to China and Japan which they view as external rival with an excessive and indelible sense of historical grievance and self-pity.
While having remained in a long history a vassal state of China in the past and hating that fact with constant denial and vehemency, Korea nevertheless tends to consider itself “little China” and look down upon Japan as less civilized and culturally backward (in spite of the obviously differing reality). In fact, before the Japanese occupation and factual rule of the Korean peninsula (1895-1945), Koreans had no decent infrastructure, no public sanitation, no sewage system, no modern education and technologies, not any trace of modern civilization in a word, and the average Koreans were deeply mired in extreme poverty, backwardness and incredible barbarity with Korean men wallowing in dirt and overflowing sewer water and their own defecation, scavenging scraps and stupefied Korean women in rags that exposed their breasts in broad daylight in the rotten and dilapidated street of Seoul, all real facts on historical record, which were only eliminated under the Japanese rule.
South Korea’s economy took off in the Post-War era also thanks to the enormous Japanese compensations and capital and technological aids since 1960s. Now the ugly and dishonorable Koreans requite kindness with enmity, not only to Japan but to America as well. In light of this, it is my frank opinion that it is a moral responsibility of all conscious White nationalists with a sense of justice and honor to rightly discern and firmly oppose South Korea’s extortionist and smear campaign against Japan in Western societies by lobbying to set up statues of the so-called “comfort women” and working hard to legislate for “comfort women remembrance Day” in cohort with western liberal intellectuals and leftist activists, a highly vicious, detestable and nasty act that is on a par with the spurious and obnoxious Chinese “Nanking Massacre” PR campaign and Jewish “Holocaust” narrative in sheer vileness, turpitude and shamelessness.
I think you are overdoing it a little here. The Koreans may have not been industrialized, and were in an agrarian society using old farming methods, but they were not generally in a state of agonizing poverty. People across Asia lived this way perfectly fine for centuries. Chinese peasant farmers are doing fine today living similarly, they are generally happy and doing fine. This “debt” owed by Koreans to their Japanese conquerors and exploiters is dubious. No sane people would want to be ruled with the old style Japanese boot on their necks.
As for this article, the Koreans are not faithful friends and allies of mongrel America. They are powerfully self-interested, and do what is best for themselves in this relationship. They have a strong racial awareness and it chafes harshly to have a foreign military establishment controlling bases and taking a commanding position in their country. The Korean’s ethnic and national pride is admirable and healthy. In an ideal world they would remain in Korea, be forbidden from emigrating to the West, and figure out their own political and economic affairs without Western resources or interference.
I was not overdoing on this topic, not a bit. What I laid out about the historical facts or national traits of Koreans are all truthful and non-exaggerated, based on historical textual or photographic records. And with due respect, you are the one whose statements seemed to be built upon ignorance or half-truths, which rendered you only see trees and failed to see the forest. As a matter of fact, most westerners with some smattering knowledge on East Asian nations tend to consider Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, the three principal peoples of the East Asia, as more or less the same, which cannot be further from truth. The real fact is that, despite all belonging to the Northeastern branch of the same Mongolian Yellow race, the national characters of the three peoples above are as different as comparing the English, the Greek, and the Russian when discussing subracial differences of the same European White race.
You said the Koreans were in an agrarian society using traditional farming means and were not generally in agonizing poverty. I agree, provided we are talking about the long history of the Korean feudal society on the whole. But you obviously neglected the specific historical context when I made my previous remarks about the dirt-poor and degrading Korean life. I never said Korea was poor throughout its national history. I focused on the very historical time frame of late 19th century to comment objectively on the dire realities of the Korean society. Korea as a vassal of the imperial China albeit an ostensibly unified state had been ruled by Lee’s Chosun Dynasty for centuries. The earlier times were indeed largely peaceful, agrarian and self-sufficient as you noted. But after the mid of 19th century especially when it approached its last lingering years of feudal dynasty, Korea had been severely plagued and afflicted by famines, corruptions and internal turmoil including the factional political power struggle and incessant peasant revolts, and the elite ruling class Ryanban has all but collapsed and was completely clueless at handling the acute domestic problems, which continued to pile up, intensify and escalate, spiraling out of the control of the utterly backward, benighted and inept government of the Lee Dynasty. When I stated that the Koreans were wallowing in mud and overflowing human waste and wooden-faced apathetic women in rags sitting on the street with their breasts exposed prior to the Japanese rule, I didn’t make them up. I do have proofs of both historical documents and photographic records from western travelers who took pictures of the Seoul streets around 1870s, which I had viewed on the Internet before.
When you said “This “debt” owed by Koreans to their Japanese conquerors and exploiters is dubious. No sane people would want to be ruled with the old style Japanese boot on their necks.”, you were making an assumptive, arrogant and hugely flawed perception out of generalized and unfounded prejudices of ordinary westerners against Japan caused by a specious and distortion-infested historical knowledge of many of them. I would refrain from claiming that the Japanese conquest and occupation of Korea was completely free of any exploitation or suppression in a historical span of half a century, but concentrating on the negative side of the Japanese rule solely or overplaying it as you did is by no means historically accurate, objective and truthful, and your sensational “boot-on-necks” depiction of the Japanese rule was likewise over-simplistic, incorrect and unconvincing. Notwithstanding minor, sporadic and occasional discriminations which were largely and objectively inevitable in that foregone era of universal imperialism and jungle law, on the whole, the Japanese Empire actually had officially treated Koreans and Taiwanese (1895-1945) of a similar time span, and later the Manchurians (1932-1945) under its rule as common subjects of the Japanese Emperor just like the native Japanese with much kindness, generosity, benevolence and even some special privileges once the governance was established. If as you claimed that the Koreans had very good reason to hate the Japanese rule which was so cruel and unjustifiable in your mind, why a great majority of Taiwanese people today as well as some other peoples of the Southeast Asia such as Indonesia hold the past Japanese rule in high regard and generally maintain a pro-Japanese sentiment of varying degrees? Therefore, it seems it is the very troubled national mentalities of Korean and Chinese that are the main causes of the problem instead of Japan.
If you would allow me to inform you further with some lesser known historical facts of the Japanese rule in Korea, it is Japan who had brought a modern infrastructure, public sanitation system, industries, and a complete and modern educational system to the backward, primitive and barren land of Korea. Contrary to the wicked and dishonest Korean claim currently that Japan rode roughshod over and stamped on the Korean national culture and pride, it was actually Japan who compiled the first Korean language dictionary in 1920s for the largely illiterate Korean masses. Moreover, Japan didn’t suppress the Korean identity and force them to change their original names to the Japanese style names, the Koreans themselves voluntarily and actively changed their names to better integrate into the Japanese empire in spite of the initial reluctance of the Japanese authority. During the WWII, ethnic Koreans of the Japanese empire competed with each other to volunteer to enlist in the Japanese imperial army and fight in the theatres of China and the Pacific, with a Korean even promoted to a military rank as high as lieutenant general. Today there are still tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans soldiers enshrined in the sacred Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. After the war and since 1960s, the ensuing South Korean economic takeoff and its subsequent economic miracle, besides being fueled mainly by heavy subsidies of the Japanese capital and technological transfers provide in the bilateral agreement for an establishment of diplomatic relationship, should fundamentally be ascribed to the fact that A WHOLE GENERATION OF SOUTH KOREA’S ELITES, political, economic, industrial, civil and military, had been educated and trained in various Japanese educational institutions under the Japanese education system. All South Korean presidents and defense ministers from 1950s to mid 1990s had graduated from former imperial Japanese universities and military cadet schools without an exception. These Korean elites trained invariably by Japan from 1920s to 1945 survived the war and became the strongman type political and business leaders who propelled South Korean to its post-war status of stardom as a vibrant economic power, with the generous and unstinting Japanese guidance and assistance (which I personally regret and deplore).
As to your comment on this article, I largely agree with your take on the Korean resentment of and hostility to a “mongrel America” commanding and handing down orders to it, its intense racial awareness as well as your opinion that the Koreans should be forbidden from emigrating to the West. But I beg to differ from your claim that “The Korean’s ethnic and national pride is admirable and healthy”, which I found highly dubious and imprecise if not actually facetious and risible, as the Korean ethnic and national pride is basically a morbid, hypothetic and paradoxical one, which is a far cry from being healthy. Koreans like to boast their historical cultural superiority over Japan, while harboring a secret and ingrained complex of inferiority toward the latter; they claim you never see cars made in Japan in Korean streets, yet while a fleeting glance at the taxies might prove their word, rich Korean businessmen and other social elites still favor Lexus or Nissan over their native Hyundai or Kia in their private garages; they always brag about their primed nationalism and patriotism, but many of them actually are busy saving money, ready to flee their home country and immigrate to US by large numbers at the first possible chance etc.. The most notorious and disturbing trait of the Korean mentality, on a par with that of the Chinese, is their astounding duplicity and perfidious opportunism. They depend on you and obediently follow you when you are strong and dominant, while once you show any sign of weakness or your fortune starts to decline, they instantly turn on you, backstab you and cut you down, just like they have done to Japan in the post-1945 years and are increasingly doing to America today. This speaks volumes about their ungratefulness and unreliability the author of this article pointedly and discerningly observed.
I agree completely with your characterisation if the Korean people. I could not have said it better. Thank you for taking the time to write these informative comments.
Okay, I’ve downloaded a PDF. But I’d rather more information on South Korea.
Riki, what further readings could you recommend (secondary and primary sources) to understand Korean history from this perspective? I’m an American with some experience in South Korea and am eager to learn more about this history because I have long suspected much of the anti-Japanese (and some anti-American) Korean nationalist propaganda to be over-lachrymose, narcissistic, and a bit mean-spirited. I’ve wanted to get a more balanced perspective and have read some of Joshua Blakeney’s *Japan Bites Back* which offers some fascinating context. I hope you can direct me to more juicy stuff.
About North Korea, you can read “The Cleanest Race” by Brian R. Myers, which presents a more realistic view on North Korea. (I am sure you can find a PDF version of the book somewhere online if you google it.) After years of observations, and with my knowledge as a former Chinese Communist Party member, I can attest to things Brian R. Myers claims about North Korea with regards to their worldview.
Thanks a lot Mr. Haller, for your kind encouraging words and insightful observations.
“While South Koreans rioted, they also flocked to the United States for university training and applied for visas.”
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. This behaviour is the same as that of North Koreans who parasitically rely on China for aid. North Korea would collapse without China, and I believe China should let it collapse. South Korea would collapse without American aid. Racial parasitism and hypocrisy seem to be deeply ingrained in Korean culture.They have lived in the shadows of China for so long that they seem to have no ability to be self-reliant.
“Racial parasitism and hypocrisy seem to be deeply ingrained in Korean culture.”
A very incisive, trenchant and truthful remark you’ve made here.
Well said, Chinese Maiden!
“… left to their own devices, Koreans create a society like North Korea.”
Indeed. North Korea is what South Korea would be without USA involved. Especially their economy that takes advantage of our American markets.
In the 1970s, North Vietnam (almost a medieval culture/society) was what South Vietnam would have looked like without USA.
Orientals in general are a little better at scoring on standardized tests than Caucasians. But they do not have the inventive/imaginative/creative spark of Caucasians. USA is trapped into letting them corner the market in STEM curriculums because of this. The result will be not much if any further creativity/inventiveness in the future.
Speaking of ungrateful client, unreliable ally, Japan is also this way. I cannot for the life of me remember where I read this but I have heard that during the Vietnam conflict the Japanese would not share some of their camera technological improvements (from what they copied from us) in our military activities there in Vietnam. For some reason we shared our silent propeller technology with Japan in the 1980s and not long afterward the USSR had developed silent propeller tech..
If true, then the oriental is a treacherous/duplicitous entity to be dealing with. The USA needs to leave both Japan and Korea and let them deal with the Chinese behemoth in their own way.