The Death of an Alliance, Part 40, or Yankee Come Home, Part 2

Question: What do all these people have in common?

Answer: The same government is paying them with your money.

Here’s how it works: first, you, the U.S. taxpayer, pay the cost of keeping 32,000 American military members in South Korea, thus providing Korea with billions in defense savings, downstream economic benefits, fat government contacts, and a secure investment climate that comes with having Uncle Sam as your human shield.

Second, South Korea, with billions of your dollars burning a hole in its pocket, and after giving Kim Jong Il his cut, gives selected “civic groups” $192 million a year. Among those civic groups is the one featured above, the “Pan South Korea Solution Committee Against U.S. Base Expansion,” whose constituent groups include the National Federation of Student Councils, or Hanchongryon, and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions. Both are violent anti-American groups that are either puppets of the North Koreans or desperately trying to convince the world that they are.

Third, those same groups launch violent attacks against the police, U.S. installations, symbols of America, and even use force to silence the U.S. Ambassador. They are also prime suspects in a slew of violent attacks against the very U.S. soldiers from whose hands they eat. Does South Korea have any plans to stop subsidizing groups whose members always seem to show up for their civic activities with bamboo poles, metal pipes, and rocks? Nope.

But the joint committee held back on its plan to stop providing financial aid, saying, “It is hard to tell whether demonstrators or groups were accidentally involved in illegal rallies or if they had violent intentions in advance.”

Uh huh.

Including Father Ham Sei-ung, the co-director of the committee, more than half of the committee members either belong to labor groups or civic groups or were recommended for their committee posts by such groups. Perhaps that explains why the decision to stop payments was put off.

Could this be a more blatant example of America shoving its feeding hand into the snapping jaws? Yes, it could.

Some wonder if the South’s governing Uri Party is actually encouraging the standoff [at Camp Humphreys] in which an assembly member from the party, Im Jung-in, is playing a leading role.

Im was up on the roof with the priests before they all came down on May 4 – and has appeared again at rallies in the village. He talks frequently on his mobile phone with party officials, and his presence in the village symbolizes support for the farmers and activists in the government.

I know: we must consider the strategic considerations…. We mustn’t abandon a loyal ally…. South Korea needs us to protect its frail economy and democracy….

The alliance is dead. It’s all over but the wake. It’s time for Yankee to come home.
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