As I've been saying, I have found plenty of examples where the Korean media refuse to name Korea's big business as major pollutors of the air, soil, and water. Bored and unable to sleep, I googled around for other views on anti-US thought in Korean society, and I found this report for the US Congress from 2003.

It does not focus on the environment tool to promote anti-USFK/US thought, but it did tell me something about the South Korean media:

South Korea has nearly two dozen major newspaper and broadcast companies. Korea’s three leading mainstream newspapers, the Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, and the JoongAng Ilbo, control about 70% of the market. All claim circulation figures of between 1.8 and 2.1 million and have right-of-center political leanings. The leading left-of-center daily, Hankyoreh, has an estimated readership of 400,000.6 In recent years, many younger South Koreans have turned to internet news sources such as OhMyNews.

Most Korean newspapers are affiliates of and/or highly dependent on the
advertising revenues from the country’s chaebol conglomerates,

On a side note, the following quote is dead wrong:

3) individuals who support the alliance but oppose U.S. policy on specific issues, such as alleged crimes committed by U.S. servicemen. This latter group appears to be in the majority among current anti-American activists.11

That is what they tell you. That is what they want you to believe. They don't want outsiders to know about the general trend. Just as they get red faced an angry as a nation when Jay Leno makes dog eating jokes, they don't want people dising Korea over anti-US activities.

Teaching Korea adults and living in the society for a few years, it became obvious early on that all these issues bleed into each other. They don't compartmentalize these things. And Korean society is much more receptive to the watching the news and using the internet and is a much more group oriented society. The above quote is just wrong.

And soon below it, the author also gets the wrong message from Korean society.

The Bush Administration’s initiatives to act upon longstanding, but never enacted, plans to reduce or redeploy U.S. forces, including an April 2003 pledge to move from the Yongsan base in Seoul, appear to have calmed the anti-base movement somewhat. The Roh government has asked the U.S. not to undertake these moves until the nuclear issue with North Korea is settled.

This characterization is probably even more off base, and the last line should begin to show it.

Nobody is happy with the Yongsan move. The minority of Koreans who truly saw the base as an affront to Korea's dignity are the same ones attacking Camp Humphrey's expansion down in Pyongtaek.

The rest of the society is too worried that packing up Yongsan might see it unloaded in Guam or the US, not Pyongtaek. That is why Roh asked to delay the move. Bush didn't "promise" to remove the base at Korean demands. Korea has long demanded it, but blocked it at the same time. Rumsfeld simply said it was going to happen and against SK opposition.

And then there is the unhappiness with trying to decide who gets what in the Yongsan cut as USFK leaves. And then there is the unhappiness over "pollution" there and on all US bases being handed over.

The Land Partnership Plan is not winning any friends in Korea. All the way around the board - even among the minority segments in the society who can be truly labelled "pro-US".

This quote shows a very weak understanding of Korean society today.

But, it did have a Bingo!! moment:

Underlying the wave of America bashing in South Korea is the declining sense of threat most South Koreans feel from North Korea.

DING DING DING!!! We have a winner!! DING DING DING!!!

The best example of this was how the NK-SK Summit caused the society to use 20 gallons of fromalin to unlesh half a year of rage. You can see this in the Korea Times editorial I present frequently:

"Are they here to defend us? Thanks but from whom?" The answer to the question is in a sense becoming more and more ambiguous and ambivalent in the post inter-Korean summit detente.

Frankly, some Koreans are also scared of the idea of a defense by those who commanded to dump the toxic substance; who murdered many Korean hostesses, the poor souls, who had to sell sex to earn their subsistence; and, who care little about those Koreans suffering from constant bombing exercises like the one in Maehyang-ri. Why are they reluctant to fully disclose the facts about Nogun-ri massacres? Is the SOFA really a fair arrangement?

That is the society as a whole's anti-US habit in a nutshell:

All the great offenses to Korea - the land and its people - are tolerated - or as Koreans would say "endured" - because they are not convinced North Korea will not invade again if the US leaves (and they don't want to pay the billions and billions of dollars it would take to build up the ROK military to where it can stand alone).

Since 2000, every time I've heard Washington people say US troops would be needed in Korea after unification, I wondered what kind of crack they were smoking. Even if USFK remains and fear of troop withdrawl now is overblown, once the majority of Koreans believe USFK has finished serving its deterent role - when they believe there is no chance NK will attack, South Korean society is going to make what the French did with US NATO troops in the 1960s look like the French were begging us to stay.....