South Korea wants Americans out and wants to reunite with N. Korea. Yep, another $3 billion taxpayer dollars per annum wasted.
South Korea Longs for Reunification With the North
By JAMES BROOKE
SEOUL, South Korea — In a private meeting at a hotel here, a college dean expounded in a river of English on how differing policies toward North Korea worked well together. President Bush's stick, he said, was the perfect complement for South Korea's carrot.
But after the meeting, he made one small request: "You can quote me on anything, but not my support for Bush."
American taxpayers paid $3 billion this year to keep their 37,000 troops in South Korea. But these days, South Koreans, engulfed by anti-American sentiment, don't seem very grateful.
Why has this 50-year-old alliance frayed? In large part, it is because of an increasingly sympathetic, and some would contend naïve, public assessment of the north, fed largely by a government that wants détente at any price.
In early December, hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the largest anti-American demonstrations in South Korea's history. The trigger for the protests was the acquittal of two United States Army sergeants, who were tried in a military tribunal on charges of negligent homicide after their armored personnel carrier ran over and killed two teenage girls.
"We have to overturn the arrogant `not guilty' verdict given the American soldiers," Yoo Kyung Tae, a youth organizer, said outside the embassy. Like other protesters he wore a black mourning ribbon and a button with pictures of the two dead girls.
But the protests were about more than the perceived arrogance of American military personnel. They were about the very future of the alliance between South Korea and the United States. Many South Koreans want unification between north and south; they believe that North Korea is not a threat and that Mr. Bush's "axis of evil" policy needlessly ratchets up tensions, and threatens any chance of reunification.
Thus, the anti-Americanism. "American troops stand in the way of a united Korea," read a sign outside the American embassy here.
At a demonstration in Seoul on a recent weekend, a protester used a papier-mâché hammer to beat a George Bush doll. The next weekend, knots of demonstrators tore apart a huge American flag. A Seoul restaurateur even posted a sign in English announcing that he does not serve Americans.
On Thursday, Roh Moo Hyun, a labor lawyer, adroitly surfed this wave of anti-Americanism to win a narrow victory in the presidential election against a conservative candidate, Lee Hoi Chang. Campaigning for a more independent Korea, Mr. Roh, who has never visited the United States, told voters during a televised debate in November: "I have no intention of kowtowing to the U.S."
Mr. Roh's support came largely from the young. South Koreans old enough to remember the Korean War were strong supporters of Mr. Lee, a former Supreme Court justice under a military president. But many young South Koreans seem convinced that North Koreans would never use weapons of mass destruction on fellow Koreans.
In a survey of world opinion taken by the Pew Research Center, from July to November, South Korea and Argentina were the only non-Muslim countries surveyed where majorities opposed the American campaign against terrorism. In a September Gallup poll, nearly 60 percent of South Koreans surveyed said they did not believe North Korea posed a security threat.
For five years, the government of President Kim Dae Jung did little to inform South Koreans of the harsh realities of life in the north. Earlier this year, the Defense Ministry, bowing to pressure, stopped listing North Korea as "the main enemy" of South Korea and its allies.
In addition, the government has discouraged defectors from the north from telling their stories to the South Korean news media, including a man in a group of defectors in August 2001 who had reportedly been taken prisoner in 1950 and forced to work in a coal mine.
Defenders of the military alliance are just as invisible. Korean government officials rarely spend political capital on explaining the reasons for the alliance. And American diplomats here follow a worldwide practice of ducking appearances on talk shows. Hence, on radio and television, there is usually a one-note chorus of complaints about American arrogance and interference in Korean affairs.
Of course, the election of Mr. Roh does not translate into a mandate for kicking out the Americans. In the 1980's, Mr. Roh said he wanted American troops out of South Korea. During the presidential campaign, he amended his statements, saying he welcomed troops, but implied that South Korea would be neutral, mediating if war broke out between the United States and North Korea. What does this mean for the United States? Lee Jung Hoon, an international relations professor at Yonsei University who supports a strong alliance, warned: "The U.S. is very clear that they are here at the request of the South Korean government and people. I don't think the U.S. government would think twice about pulling back, reinforcing in Guam, Japan or going back into the Philippines." |
