My Response to Won Joon Choe

First, I’d like to start by saying that the penultimate paragraph is so dead-on right that it redeems any flaws that I subjectively see in the rest of the piece:

All that can be countered by engaging the Roh government in a struggle for the hearts of the South Korean people. The Bush administration can seek to speak directly to ordinary South Koreans about the horrors of Kim Jong Il’s gulag state, explain why the world cannot allow it to possess nuclear arms, and also remind South Koreans of how their alliance with the U.S. has protected them for more than half a century.

Whether it would work, I’m not certain. But the right message might sway public opinion. Now, I want to get into the empirical evidence regarding your major premise, which is that South Koreans aren’t really as anti-American as the media suggest:

[Pessimism about the future of the alliance]is fueled by the myth of a “generational shift” in South Korean politics, a myth which finds an unthinking acceptance among many foreign observers. According to this myth, the elections of Mr. Roh and his predecessor Mr. Kim represent the emergence of a new, permanent political majority in South Korea. Often referred to as the “386” generation, this new majority is said to be young, leftist, anti-American, and pro-Chinese.

The reality is there is no such new majority. Rather than an ideological realignment, Messrs. Roh and Kim owe their victories to the failure of the conservatives to coalesce around a single candidate who could defeat them.

I wish I believed that. But an assertion is just an assertion unless you cite some objective factual support. I’m as dubious as you probably are about polling data in South Korea, but there have been a number of polls that describe how various segments of the population see America:

• November 2004, Frontier Times / National Policy Research Center. In the event of war between the U.S. and North Korea, 20% of South Koreans say their country should take the North’s side; another 30% were undecided. Significant differences by both age and region (in Kwangju, as many people would side with the North as with the U.S.).

• June 2003–Pew Global Attitudes Project / Gallup Korea. 719 adults, face-to-face. Margin of error, 3.7%. The survey’s questions and responses show a vast chasm between American and Korean political values.

• 58% of South Koreans were disappointedthat the Iraqi Army did not fight harder outside Baghdad, more than twice the number (26%) who said they were “happy” with the quick Iraqi collapse. This result was within the “moderate” range of opinion in the Muslim world, but far outside results in Europe or North America. In France, for example, the results were very near the opposite.
• The “favorable” view of the United States dropped from 58% in 1999-2000, to 53% in summer 2002, to 46% in summer 2003. Of those with unfavorable views of the United States, more than 80% thought the “problem” was not just Bush, but was at least partly the result of the American people themselves. This latter figure was an outlier among nations surveyed.
• Only 43% considered honest and competitive elections a “must,” also in line with views in the Muslim world.
• Only 48% considered it “very important” to live in a country with a free press; fair judicary, 59%; religious freedom, 58%; free speech, 57%. Those were among the lowest survey results in Asia.
• Given two options, which should South Korea rely on? Democratic government, 61%; strong leader, 36%.
• “Our way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence.” 82% agree; 16% disagree. Again, the number was more consistent with African and Middle Eastern views than those in Asia, North America, or Europe. On the other hand, just 7% of South Koreans want to “restrict the entry of people into our country,” the lowest result of any country.
• 75% of Koreans, the second-highest number (over Turkey at 76%) believed that the nation’s success “is determined by forces outside our control.”
• 22% had started boycotting U.S. goods. 29% had considered it. This was the highest number outside the Muslim world.
• Just 24% supported the U.S.-led War on Terror, also a result that fit within the number in the Muslim world.
• However, during the same period, South Korean views of Americans actually increased from 61% to 74%.

• April 2005–Joongang Ilbo, Research & Research survey of 800 Koreans
  • Greatest threat: 37.1%, Japan; 28.6%, North Korea; 18.5%, United States, 11.9%, China.
  • For contrast, the company’s poll in January 2004 found that 39 percent of the respondents said the United States was the most threatening country to Korea and 33% named North Korea. At the time, only 7.6 percent of those surveyed counted Japan as most threatening. Among respondents in their 20s, 58% said the U.S. was the greatest threat; only 20% said North Korea was (for further contrast, a 1993 Gallup Korea survey found the numbers to be North Korea, 44%; Japan, 15%; China, 4%; and the United States, 1%.
  • Back to the April 2005 survey. “Of the respondents who said the United States is threatening, 29.2 percent were in their 20s and 26.4 percent were in their 30s. Only 13. 7 percent in their 40s and 8.1 percent in their 50s said the country threatens Korea. ”
  • [S]lightly more than half . . . said inter-Korean economic cooperation and South Korean aid to North Korea should continue, regardless of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons.
  • Those in favor of this were predominantly governing Uri Party supporters in their 30s and 40s; those against were largely opposition Grand National supporters, aged 50 or over.

• April 2005–Another one, via Frontier Times and 21st Century research, a telephone poll of over 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1%:

• Greatest threat: first, the United States (29.5%); second, Japan (29.2%); third, North Korea (18.4%).
• 44.4% of South Koreans believe North Korea’s nukes are good for Korea.
• 45.7% of people in 20s and 50.1% of students believe the U.S. is the number one threat to Korea.

All of this sentiment has been expressed in plenty of random violence. Here are just some of the incidents that were reported.

Nor is violence the only ugly way some Koreans express their anti-Americanism. When I saw this picture, I sat down at my computer and pasted it into a letter, which I then sent to every last member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee. I don’t take all the credit for the fact that U.S. congressional regard for South Korea has taken a mighty plunge, but that does seem to be the case [update: the sentiment in Congress, not my insignificant part in it; I wrote a very misreadable sentence there.].

I don’t necessarily ascribe this action to all South Koreans, of course. What incenses me is that the South Korean government hasn’t passed legislation prohibiting this, and as you yourself concede, it encourages the sentiment behind it for its own political advantage. It’s the same tactic we recently saw with Operation Tokdo Freedom ©, which may not have won Roh the votes he’d hoped for, but gave Korea’s demagogues a head start on poisoning the next generation with hate. We agree, I see, that Roh deliberately fans this sort of thing:

[Roh] won the presidency by exploiting an ugly wave of anti-Americanism following the accidental death of two teenagers in a collision with a U.S. military vehicle.

But then, do you see any tenion in your argument? On one hand, you’re stating that the South Korean people are really conservative, and that it was just the conservative political disunity that threw the election to Roh by default (something the data don’t support). But now you’re conceding that there was real sentiment behind Roh’s victory, something that the data clearly do support, no matter how ugly and manipulative Roh was in fanning that sentiment.

Nor is anti-Americanism or pro-Chinese sentiment so deep-seated among the young. Attitudes toward America and China are far more complex, and often vacillate wildly depending on the political news of the day.

As far as the vascillation factor, the data support you and I also agree. I’ve used the word “mercurial” in the past. But I don’t necessarily agree that anti-Americanism isn’t deep-seated. The data don’t support this assertion.

In fact, the recent incarnation of anti-Americanism in South Korea is a product of government propaganda. The Roh government and its allies have done their best to fan suspicions of the U.S., while striving to keep the true character of the North’s monstrous regime hidden from view.

Agreed.

Mr. Roh’s effort to re-educate the South Korean public sometimes eerily mimics the methods used used by Pyongyang.

Well, I think that wildly overstates it, although I’ve been sounding the alarm about the suppression of free speech and a free press in South Korea, too. I cited some of the same examples you cite, including the suppression of Radio Free NK. The comparison I’ve made is to what Vladimir Putin has done to the press in Russia, which may also be an overstatement of results, if not intent.

The bottom line, as I read the data? South Koreans generally want U.S. troops to stay, but a clear majority dislike “America.” An alarming small and shrinking number don’t share our political values, national interests, or policy goals. The most glaring example is widespread South Korean apathy about mass starvation, suffocating repression, and massive gulags in North Korea. It’s also probable that a majority dislike the soldiers who defend Korea, and who never asked to go there in the first place. Need I add that the great majority of soldiers do their duty, obey the law, contribute to the Korean economy, and tolerate tough field conditions and long separation from their families with little complaint? Would the presumption of respect and appreciation toward them be too much to ask of a nation that reaps so many benefits from their presence?

Commenters are thanked in advance for contributing to the discussion. Links with facts supporting your views add particular value.