Yes, that's right, anti-Americanism in Korea is all President Bush's fault because a Yale professor said so. The Joong Ang has an interview with Korean-American Harold Hongju Koh, the Dean of the Yale Law School. Most of the article is pretty much what you would expect from someone who served in the Clinton Administration and is now at Yale. Lot's of Bush sucks, neo-cans are bad, and Christians are even worse which he is entitled to his opinion on, however at the very end of the interview he said something caught my eye because it has no basis in fact:

How do you see the current state of U.S.-Korea relations? From our vantage point, from a journalist's vantage point, the U.S.-Korea alliance is very shaky and Korea-U.S. relations are very tense.

I have many objections to how U.S. foreign policy has been conducted, and I can understand why allies have objections. I also am very struck by the amount of anti-Americanism here. Korea is a country that has always been affectionate toward America. They were partners in the Korean War and many Koreans emigrated to the United States, like myself. I think that most Koreans have real affection toward Americans. It's American policies that bother them and draw attention. Policies change from administration to administration.

Why a say this has no basis in fact is because the key issues of anti-Americanism in Korea have nothing to do with US governmental policy.* What does the protesting of an US Air Force bombing range have to do with US governmental policy? What does the 2000 water dumping incident have to do with governmental policy? What does the 2002 armored vehicle accident have to do with US government policy? Or my favorite the "polluted" USFK base issue. The list goes on and on. The fact is that these people are not protesting and spreading anti-Americanism due to current US policies because you don't see masses of people protesting over the US stance on North Korea compared to a traffic accident or the water dumping incident. The reason for anti-Americanism in Korea are much more complex than that and aided by Korean politicians looking for short term political gain. So just to simplify anti-Americanism in Korea as solely Bush's fault is intellectually dishonest at best, but I guess it is to be expected from someone looking to blame their own failed North Korea policies with the former Clinton Administration on someone else.


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I couldn't get past the first part of that article, because it is too depressing to me. It reminds me of how naive and stupid I used to be about thinking the more education a person had, the smarter they generally were.

But, I've got a problem with the vast majority of thinking by Korea area specialists when it comes to the history of anti-US attitudes. They always say it wasn't a factor until after the Kwangju Massacre in the 1980s.

I don't see how they can say that - since everybody knows pro-communist/socialist and pro-pyongyang forces were at work and successful in recruiting a significant number of followers - with varying degrees of sympathy - from before 1945 even. And opposition to South Korea's authoritarian government was also often anti-US due to the idea the US support of that government was key to its being in the first place.

I recently wrote up my ideas on this here.

Polls and my own experience does confirm that the generations over 60 or 65 years of age are the ones that have generally pro-US feeling, but there was still a significant trend even in the decades before the 1980s that looked on the US as a problem for Korea - whether that was a minority view or not, it was still sizable and influencial.