The main point of this post is to simply point you to a video of a lecture hosted by the Korea Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

(more lectures hosted by this group are online here too)

It is a scholarly lecture. Most people will find it boring. Some speakers can jazz it up. This woman is more dry in the presentation...

But, if you like history or thinking about Korea-US related issues and so on -- give it a look.

The topic of this lecture is the "war" over defining Korea's history that is going on within Korean society itself.

She specifically wanted to talk about this issue in relation to anti-US thought in contemporary South Korean society.

She goes slowly through Korean history from the late-19th century through the foundation of the seperate South Korean state to the Korean War and later authoritarian SK government and so on...

If you want to skip to a part that might be of more interest to people - you can click ahead to about 35:00 minutes in - which deals with the growth of the pro-Communist, anti-authoritarian SK government, anti-US thought in Korean society in the late 1970s to early 1980s.

I had never heard someone explain what seems like an obvious point:

Before the 1990s, the anti-communist, authoritarian rule was so strong, it outlawed any access to knowledge about communism even explaining how the system worked and was flawed as American scholars wrote about.

What happened, ironically, was a validation of the underground pro-communist, pro-NK views that ---- as this lecturer said - she didn't take much account of because they were so shoddy in history and such utterly clear propaganda, she didn't believe they would have any influence - and she said that was a big mistake people like her made.

She also notes at 45:10 how the end of the Cold War created something odd in South Korean society - that the collapse of communism led most people in most nations to say communism was a failed system - but - in South Korea, if you criticize communism, you are simply dismissed as being against unification and having a "cold war mentality."

Around 49:00 in, she talks about something that is rather new in Korean society on the anti-US front.

She talks about the leaders of the new rightist (conservative) movement.

She says it has at its core people who were pro-democracy advocates in the 1970s and 80s (and 90s) who believed the North was better and propagandized for it, but later they gained more firsthand and secondhard knowledge of the reality in North Korea and flipflopped ---- now working to propagandize against the leftists who still parrot the North (including its anti-US line).

Around 58:00 she says she believes the anti-US trend probably peaked in 1995 with the effort to take down the MacArthur statue in Inchon's freedom park. She argues that that event finally hit the general public in a way that woke them up to how North Korea was using these radical elements in the South to further its goals and thwart those of the US in South Korea.

I think it is possible.

As I said elsewhere, I believe we will have to wait until the bulk of Korean society again feels confident USFK will not leave ----- wait until they start to take the US security blanket for granted ---- before we can test whether anti-US throught is more favored or less since 2002.

My bet is that it is just the same as it was in the late 1990s - and it was deep and common then.

Anyway...

I have always liked history and learning about stuff.

I would also like to believe I had a hand in the Korea Branch of the RAS putting this stuff up - though I doubt it....maybe just a slight tiny bit...

Over a year ago, I emailed them asking if they were going to get with the broadban internet revolution and put these lectures up on the net for all to see.

I have also emailed NK human rights NGOs begging them - literally - to put up even short videos to get their message out.

Anyway, the Korea Branch is now doing so, and I'm so happy, whether I actual played even a small part in it or not.