Mad Sheep Disease
Update, 12/08: Here’s how history will record this whole ridiculous episode.
It is an inviolable rule of today’s South Korea that all social movements will eventually become violent and anti-American. So inevitably, a movement that was, at first, ostensibly about food safety has descended into a violent anti-American riot, with protestors ransacking the offices of newspapers that don’t echo the street’s bleat. I’d love to know a little more about who the shepherds are:
Junior Naver, the children’s site of the country’s largest web portal, is a prime example. When typing in the search term “mad cow disease,” users connected to the Juniver Knowledge Section, which is full of preposterous questions and answers posted by young children and students. Claims include that Americans import safe beef from grass-fed Australian cattle while exporting beef “even beggars don’t eat.” The situation is similar at Yahoo Kids, where one post says all American cattle older than 20 months have BSE. Children are actively spreading the information they obtain from web portals via text messages, Internet postings, web community sites, e-mail or online chatrooms. [Chosun Ilbo]
So apparently, Mad Sheep Disease differs from Mad Cow in that it starts manifesting symptoms at about 14 years. Unlike Mad Cow, Mad Sheep quickly spreads through entire herds and has powerful degenerative effects on entire nations and economies:
Montana Senator Max Baucus said in a statement the additional meetings violate the April 18 bilateral trade agreement for Korea to import all cuts of U.S. beef. Senator Baucus says there’s no scientific proof for Korea’s claim that beef from older cattle pose a health risk, citing the world organization for animal health has said it is safe to eat. He says both sides should abide by the agreement reached earlier and that the outcome of the free trade agreement signed between Korea and the U.S. is in Seoul’s hands. Other senators echoed his words with some adding that the latest moves could bring difficulties to passing the bilateral free trade deal. [Arirang News, via Chosun Ilbo]
Here is a list of nations in strategic locations with growing economies, with which we don’t have an FTA and a large military presence, but with which we have friendly relations: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. I think you see my point.
It’s comforting to see that this lunacy is getting the attention of our nation’s lawmakers. I find it offensive that Korea has been able to keep this anti-American culture hidden from the American public all these years while they’ve spent years extracting money and resources from the U.S. They honestly seem to think they are entitled to our military protection and our money. I hope this will ‘revelation’ will cause them to dig a little deeper and make some long term decisions to reduce our military presence and our interactions with Korea. Korea is not the 51st state, and they’re entitled to nothing from America, especially in the absence of even false gratitude.
This was never about beef or Lee or really about true anti-Americanism.
It’s about exercising Korean nationalism.
A fair amount of time on the K-blogs is being spent discussing whether the cause was American beef or President Lee’s managment style.
Neither of those things are the strongest root cause.
Now I wish I had not completely deleted the posts at my old blog. I could have provided links to show this. I could spent hours looking around the comment sections here and at the other K-blogs I frequent to show what I had been saying long before Lee was even the main candidate – but I’ll just count on some frequent readers remembering it…
….that I had been predicting a return to the usual protests since a couple of years earlier —- when it became pretty clear the GNP would replace President Roh’s party in the Blue House…
You didn’t need to know which GNPer would get the party’s nomination. You didn’t need to know he would cut a beef deal or push for the FTA or do any other policy item —-
—- to give a good educated guess that — soon after replacing Roh — anti-US related activity would pick up.
During the period of authoritarian rule, Korean society got used to the idea that having people power meant fighting against their own government which they viewed as the same as the US in Korea.
And after democratic reform came, they have hung onto the habits developed during those decades.
In short — the patterns in anti-US activity are fairly clear when you compare the wide variety of protests that have come over the years.
You see that anti-Americanism is just a way to stoke a sense of national strength —- not some set ideology that the people really believe in.
That is why I could predict, even in the crazy days of 2002, that the society would back off once they understood how much damage they were doing to the US-SK relationship.
That’s why it was predictable that the society as a whole would turn on President Roh any time they saw him potentially doing damage to the relationship.
And that is why it was easy to predict once the “safe” GNP got the presidency back, the anti-US fun would start up again as it ran for decades before Roh.
I don’t know, I don’t remember seeing Korean society getting upset time after time when Roh damaged the alliance after the major demonstrations subsided.
I think this is pure and simple, deep seeded anti-American sentiment that has become a part of their culture and national identity.
You can call in nationalism if you want, but it’s frequently aimed at the U.S., often completely irrational, and many times grounded in ridiculous lies. When you couple that with the myriad of recent surveys that have shown how Korea’s youth and younger generations feel about the U.S. (we started the Korean war, we are the biggest threat to Korean national security, we export mad cow beef to other countries and import ‘safe’ beef from Australia for ourselves, etc), it’s hard to argue that they don’t hate us. You just have to wonder where this crazy information is coming from (NK???), and why the Korean government isn’t doing more to stop it. No one would act that way toward a friend, especially one that has helped Korea so much to develop from an impoverished agrarian society to a developed country with a diverse economy. I mean, if we want to play these childish games, I think reciprocal tariffs would be a good place to start FTA talks from. Made a Hyundai costs as much as a BMW and see if they come to the table with a more reasonable demeanor…
At any rate, it is possible to be nationalistic and still be a good ally and mature participant in global politics/economics.
On my main website, I have frequently said they hate the US in Korea when I’ve reviewed different issues.
When I said “true anti-Americanism” in the last comment, I had in mind — really true believers — People who want US troops out now. People who really believe Korea would be better off without the US in Korea (meaning economic pressure as well as USFK).
I guess you could say people who really do hate the US in Korea.
Most Koreans only like to play at that. They like getting hot and bothered and/or they like to feel like the US is terribly for Korea….
….but if push ever comes to shove……like when Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to remove 1/3rd of the troops and possibly more…..average Koreans will change their tune.
They will admit the benefits of having the alliance – then and now – and they say it with sincerity.
But they would much rather not have to admit what they see as a “dependence” on the US. They would much rather feel better about being Korean-about Korea as a nation/people — by exaggerating the negatives in the relationship — often grossly exaggerating them.
They didn’t support the anti-US groups when numerous items that had been used before for protest came up over the past 5 years.
But, more than that, they voted Roh’s party out of office each time they got a chance.
I see your point, anti-Americanism seems like a sport to be practiced in the warm months between the winter and monsoon season.
However, there are groups actively working to poison the minds of Korea’s youth and younger generations with misinformation about the U.S., and the Korean government is doing little to stop it. I see it continuing to get worse, to the point that the majority of Koreans actually believe the bullshit their protesting.
I agree with Cody: Indoctrination unfortunately works. But combating it isn’t so easy in the Korean context either. An effective counter-campaign would likely involve shutting down some of these NGOs and imposing possibly a Singapore-style libel regime. That obviously will elicit cries of abuse of free speech, the suppression of civil society, as well as charges of recidivist return to the era of the military dictatorship.
I tend to think that the beginning of the solution is a frank recognition of the fact that an American-style liberalism won’t work–at least in the short-term–in a culture like that of Korea and instead create anarchy (which even Joshua seems to imply in his recent concession that he is no longer sure whether South Korea is governable [perhaps without a strong hand?]). But perhaps that is too much of a paradigm shift for all involved.