Stories from the Web War

In the spirit of South Korea’s spirited netizens, I decided to spend a few minutes tossing grenades over at OhMyNews tonight. One woman, embittered by the election result, wants to boycott products from red states. Helpfully, I suggested food. Another suggests that those who voted differently than he did were closed-minded, a unifying and winning message for the red states if I ever saw one. I commented on Kim Dae-Jung’s concern for the gap between rich and poor everywhere except North Korea. By now, some of you think to yourselves, “hey, that won’t improve relations between the two countries.” OK, I admit it. I’m a bad person. Happy now?

Yet somehow, I think that ship has already sailed:

OMN’s heights of popularity–matched only by its heights of illogic–go far to prove that. I tend not to believe that you can persuade people who take this shit seriously, although I’m pretty sure you can milk them for all of the entertainment value they provide, and when it comes to a world with too little to laugh about, I’m a fastidious hedonist. That goes double for the self-loathing Americans who contribute to what would be considered a fringe site in saner times.

Which leads us to the bad start for Cafe USA, the U.S. Embassy Seoul chat room, an idea that probably sounded great to everyone who never actually thought it through. The problem with this one is that it failed to take into account the extent to which the Web is politically polarized–and here, I’m probably guiltier than most (though not at Cafe USA; predicting just such a disaster, I dared not to look upon it).

To save the well-intended Web site from unwelcome junk messages, the U.S.’ top envoy to Seoul urged South Koreans to make use of the online community in a more decent way in a statement posted on Monday. “Thank you for your support of Cafe USA, I welcome all posts,” U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill said. “Among them, I have noticed some anti-Korean government postings. A Web manager of Cafe USA also said that in the last few days, inappropriate posts increased on the Web board together with obscene photos slandering the South Korean government.

Photos? Oh, I need to see those. And the top representative of a nation that supposedly stands for free speech now accepts the role of official censor of . . .

irreconcilable views. Let us return, for a moment, to the case of OMN, which managed to construct a “U.S. Nuclear Trap” out of the fact that both Koreas violated their obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty with malice aforethought and without apparent U.S. knowledge. The U.S. stands accused of outing the violations. One minute, the Korean left burns our flag, spits on our soldiers, and demands more “independence.” The next, it threatens a crisis in Korean-American relations if we don’t forfeit our credibility to save their asses in the U.N. Security Council.

A substantial percentage of Koreans–perhaps most–eat that kind of “news” for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, meaning it will take a whole lot more than conversation and reasoning to improve relations. It will take a shocking dose of reality, something sufficient to cause each nation to focus long enough to realize the extent to which it needs the other.