I think this editorial from the Chosun Daily has a lot of good insights into the current situation at Pyongtaek's base expansion.

This post is similar to the one I wrote yesterday on the same topic.

When I say, "Korean society likes winners" --- I also mean they like leaders. They like having a direction pointed out to follow along.

They are a group oriented society --- much more so than American society.

Ultimately, the vast majority of the popultion does not want USFK to leave - because they worry about the North and how much tax money would have to go into beefing up the South's military.

But, the vast majority has also long enjoyed beating up on the US in Korea to boost Korean pride and cover up the shame they feel for having to depend on the US (and for how poor they were after the Korean War).

With these two contradictory currents strong in the society as a whole --- concerning the Pyongtaek Expansion ---- significant leadership could take the society in a clear direction.

If the government were out showing it was going to make the base expansion happen as smoothly as possible ------ it would have the Korean press behind it ----- and it would pull the bulk of the society in that direction.

But, if the government continues to take half-assed measures and show weakness and show a weak committment to base expansion -----

Korean society will remember how the Korean government, media, intellectuals, and more don't really like the Land Partnership Plan - don't want USFK to leave the DMZ, are not sure they want it to leave Yongsan --- and more.....

And the windown of opportunity is left WIDE OPEN for the anti-US groups ------ to be the leadership pointing Korean society toward a direction.....

If the anti-US groups are thought to have strength --------

------more people will listen to them --- including average Koreans.

It is not a given.

It might not happen even if the government stays weak and the anti-US groups as seen as strong.

But, the chances of it happening -------- are going up considerably the more the national government refuses to show strength.

And by strength, I do not mean bashing heads like in Korea's past.

I mean sending tens of thousands of riot police to simply stand the line.

I mean arresting many protesters who use violence or obstruct workers -- and make them spend the night in jail --- and then have the courts enforce fines of several hundred to a couple thousand dollars on each one of them.

Do things a law and order society would do to assert the authority of the government.

Korean society will respect that in the end if the government leads them.

If it doesn't, there is a good chance the anti-US groups will become the leaders of the nation (on the Pyongtaek issue) by default........

I have to agree that the U S Military makes a good whipping boy for any problems they are near. In some cases they are responsible or have been and others use that to automatically blame them. Koreans will not blame their own if they have someone else available. I agree that the Korean govt of today seems a little on the week side to us but they have to keep the voters happy or appear to. That is just the nature of politics.

I am curious as to how much of the stuff that Korea blames on Japan and that occupation is true. There was a lot of history destroyed but I think so of it may be from the different provinces/kingdoms of Korea fighting back and forth, but I am not as knowledgeable of old Korean history as I would like to be.

I think the old adage "the winner writes the history" may apply, but I have been wrong before. It may be possible the Koreas used the Japanese as an excuse to cover their errors as some of the stories seem out of charactor for the Japanese. My wife strongly suggests that I am incorrect and it is not worth trying to discuss it with her if I want to sleep in the same house.

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Just my humble opinion!

There is plenty the Japanese did - especially after full annexation -- and especially later in the build up to WWII and during it --- that justifies the label of horrible colonizer.

But, there are other things that show that Korea did not suffer a "holocaust" as Koreans like to say about the colonization.

It is a really hard subject to dig into, and eventually you can't go into it looking at it as it is usually looked at.

For example, you should read the book by Cater Eckart: Offspring of Empire

Korean society is suffering from split personality over all of this -- split personality and post traumatic stress syndrome.

They want to believe the colonization was a holocaust and every Korean but a few traitors fought it tooth-n-nail.

The leftists, pro-Pyongyang, anti-US Hanchongryon types want that list of traitors to include President Park Chung Hee and many of the families that built up the top conglomerates that helped build South Korea into an economic powerhouse.

Average Koreans are torn between this view ----- and admiring Park Chung Hee and these industry leaders for what they did to develop South Korea.

There are several books in English that dig into the colonial period in an academic way that isn't (as) tainted by Korean nationalism of today.

Look at this excellent bibliography for all topics related to Korean history.

I'll try to give my brief understanding of the topic in general.

In the mid and late 1800s - Korean society found itself in a horrible position.

For centuries, it prided itself as being one of the most "advanced" nations in the world (East Asia) -- because of its relationship with China and Chinese civilization.

China was the Middle Kingdom and the diplomatic and social discourse of East Asia was dominated by Chinese thought and institutions.

Korea had long been the leading copier of the Chinese example and prided itself on its relationship with China ---- and in fact, because of Korea's rank in relation to China, Korea was able to put itself above kingdoms in Japan, Vietnam, and over the tribes of Manchuria and Mongolia for much of this period.

The China-Korea relationship also frequently - but not always - helped both nations handle pressure from those tribes and internal problems at home and with troublesome neighbors like the Japanese pirates and so on.

In the 1800s, this all fell apart when the Western Colonial Powers moved into Asia ---

----and it became painfully obvious the great Chinese civilization which had been the center of the universe for centuries -------

-----was horribly weak compared to the Western powers.

Japan took this revelation and managed to go through a MAJOR reformation that sought to copy the Western industrialization and colonialism.

Korea did not manage the same.

In Confucian dominated Korea, reform was resisted, even more so than in China, and business and the military was also thought of as a lesser form of civilization.

Above all, the landed aristrocracy resisted change.

And for a variety of reasons, both internal and external, Korean society was torn and pulled in many directions.

The fiction of the time shows this clearly. It really gives a picture of Korea bashing itself for its past, crying about how weak and pitiful it was in the face of the outside (and internal) forces pulling in so many directions, and also with heated debate about who to turn to for a solution.

The non-fiction writing of the time, particularly newspapers and phamplets, highlight the "who to turn to" argument.

Koreans today like to believe the bulk of the people were fighting to resist any outside involvement in Korea.

I don't think that is true.

There were some people I'd consider true traitors, but there were many more people who were patriotic Koreans who wanted the best for their people and thought they were advocating the best way to strengthen Korea to fight off the outsiders in the future when they clearly could not then.

Whether they were right or wrong ---- they were pro-Korean.

You can see this in the late 1800s on through the colonial period.

The further you get into the 1900s, you also get more of the Yellow Man vs the White Man factor.

Why did many Koreans support the Japanese war effort?

Koreans like to say the only people who were in the Japanese Empirial Military were people forced into it and a few traitors.

That isn't true.

After China basically fell apart under pressure by white colonial powers
and Japan rose to a level where it could defeat one of those white colonial powers (Russia)

a good number of Koreans decided that independance was their most cherished dream, but....at that moment.......with the white devils threatening war.....and Korea not strong enough to stop the Japanese from coming in or kick them out after they took over Korea....

the best thing Koreans could do for Korea was side with Japan in its struggle against the Western powers.

A lot of Koreans were not "forced" to go into Manchuria and settle there and work in or manage factories there for the Japanese war effort in China.

And inside Korea, there was no Jewish-like "holocaust" going on.

It was a colony, and as Japan feared the Western powers, it did tighten up its grip on the Korean people, but Korean society as a whole was not "ground under the boot" of the Japanese in Korea in each period of the colonial era.

Life was not always misery under the Japanese.

Someone in the Korean press wrote an editorial recently saying, 'Isn't it odd that today Korean society is more anti-Japanese than it was during the colonial era?"

I don't know enough to know if that is true or not, but it is not the first time I've heard that either from within Korea or from a non-Korean, non-Japanese more neutral educated source.

The Japanese coloniation was wrong.

It was bad.

Parts of it were worse than others.

But, Korean society has shown it is clearly not ready to deal with that past in an academic sense.

They are holding "truth" commissions right now ----

but they are as messed up with internal political factionalism as they have always been.

It will take one or two or more generations before a real look into the past is possible....

Thanks for the link. The occupation was not a good thing but there are some things that make people wonder. There is information on this but it not public. My father in law went to college during the occupation but after the Japanese left he was not allowed to continue as an artist but ended up as a laborer building houses. Much more to it thaan that but it is the short version. Again thanks for the links.

Here is a link that encourges the anti American sedament. I do not think it is entirely accurate and I take it with a grain of salt as some of that is different from what some of my Korean friendss in the states have said. I think that the Korean leaders of the day intended to do what they considered the best but power many times breeds corruption and I do not think the blame is entirely on the US.

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Just my humble opinion!

The thing I always want to ask the Korean media and then the groups that set up the Truth Commissions or are in very strong favor of them ---

did "pro-Japanese" mean "anti-Korean"?

I believe there were some traitors, but overall, people have to live.

Workers have to work. And you can't expect people to set aside ambition - ambition to set up a business, set up a factory, more from being a low factory worker to a manager, and so on.

Or even given how much trouble was going on in China and Manchuria (and Korea) join the army. Russia fought a war over Manchuria and Korea.

How hard is it for me to imagine that if I were a Korean, and I could not stop the Japanese from taking over my country, and I knew the Russians were still out there, and I was told the Americans or British were going to take over all of Asia ---- how hard would it be for me to join the military in Korea -- which was controlled by the Japanese?

This does not excuse the Korean policemen or leaders of the police force who did human rights violations against the Korean people.

I just think the history is much more complex than what I heard my Korean students say over the years.

And Korea was not like some of the African or Carribean colonies --- like a Haiti --- in how brutal the colonizers were.

But, it really does not make sense too much to try to compare whose colonization was worse, because in the end, a position like mine starts to sound like a justification for what the Japanese did, which I believe was criminal and wrong.

I read the first paragraph of the link you posted and stopped.

I used to have to read stuff by people like Bruce Cumings (which is what the guy you linked to is echoing), but I don't have to waste any more minutes of my life on stuff like that.

And it is a waste of time......

Korea in 1945 was in turmoil and was so past the Korean War.

Communist vs Democratic thought had flowed into Korean society even before the Japanese colonization but especially after. Korean society was caught up in the struggle between the two ideologies like colonies all over the world and every developed nation too.

Numbnuts like Bruce Cumings want to sell an idealic version of Korea in the few weeks before the bastard GIs arrived in order to justify their political bent.

It does not match the truth.

But, the though does bleed beyond Cumings.

It is probably out there, but I've never read a good report on the "people's committees".

The few I've heard of are like Cumings ----- they were real "grassroots democratic" movements.

What a f-ing MIRACLE!!!!

A neo-confucian dominated somewhat feudalistic society that had just been drug into the industrial age (part way) by about 40 years of colonial rule and even more years of tremendous outside authoritarian control or disruptive influence

somehow managed to have democracy flower overnight.....EURIKA!!!

I talked to a very level headed Korean prof in the US who lived during the colonial period and was a Lt. in the Korean War (for the South). We were discussing this topic and how it often seems to be portrayed.

He said Koreans in factories and villages did spontaneously assume management when the Japanese lost the war and knew they had to leave.

I said I can picture that easily. It would be natural for people in such a localized area having the knowledge and organization to assume control like that.

But, I thought it sounded highly suspect for me to believe ----- that on the larger city, county, provincial, and national level -----

people just "naturally" managed to organize everything. And with no underground movement preplanning or anything like that.

It is just impossible for me to believe in the few short weeks before the Americans arrived ------ a working democracy and functioning government even on a provincial level simply materialized after 40 years of Japanese colonization.

But, that is what article like the one you linked to want us to accept without a 2nd thought.

And if you consider how much turmoil Korea went through after the US arrived. How the communist and rightest movements in Korea clashed with each other and during the war and for years after it (even to this very day --- though on a non-bloody scale these days) -----

it is even more impossible for me to believe the same society spontaneously had an organized democratic government sprout from the grassroots level like a magic cheeapet.

Of course, the guy who wrote the article has an answer for it ----
all that infighting and bloodshed was directed and controlled by the US.

It wasn't Koreans killing Koreans. It was Koreans killing Koreans because the Americans told them to do so.

And any other Koreans who killed Koreans were freedom fighters ---- not communist trying to bring down the government in favor of Kim Il Sung's idea of grassroots democracy ---- which we got to see how well that worked for the North Koreans.

I'm sure the true history of different "people's committees" is not as white and black as either I or dicks like the one who wrote the article you linked to make it sound.

But again ----- we have not reached a point in history where it seems even non-Korean academics can dig into the past without letting our contemporary (especially pre-end of the Cold War) socio-political thought intrude way too much.

I think I was being kind when I said it was not entirely accurate. I never did see anything in the writing that demonstrated his point which usually causes me to doubt the article.

Did "pro-Japanese" mean "anti-Korean"? To many that did not find a way to make do with the Japanese occupation took exception to those who found a way to get by. The ability to survive and do it well by assimilating to work with in the situation is one of the Korean traits I admire most and respect my father-in-law very much for it.

“I just think the history is much more complex than what I heard my Korean students say over the years.” I agree and there are many who would like to get more details but are afraid that what they might find would upset the accepted norm.

And Korea was not like some of the African or Caribbean colonies --- like a Haiti --- in how brutal the colonizers were.

But, it really does not make sense too much to try to compare whose colonization was worse, because in the end, a position like mine starts to sound like a justification for what the Japanese did, which I believe was criminal and wrong.” There is no doubt that the Japanese did a lot wrong before and during WW2 but I am also sure that every bad thing that happened during that time was not always the fault of the Japanese as every bad thing that happens now in Korea is not always the fault of the US Military. Probably not a good analogy but you understand what I mean.

__________________
Just my humble opinion!

I realized you guys are 100% pure American. Always view the world from American's point of view, don't bother it is true or not, fact or false. only care IT IS GOOD FOR United States OR NOT.

As an American, I want the policies of the United States to be good for the nation and people.

I expect Koreans to demand their government make policy good for Korea.

Only idiots use their own nationalism to deny the concept of mutal interests.

Next, if you really want to contribute to this thread ---

why not show us where I or the other commenter have not told the truth (due to our wanting everything to be pro-American or being blind because we are American)......????.......