Shortly after North Koreas first nuke test, there were reports on CNN and elsewhere about South Korean protests against NoKo. The most replayed TV clip included the burning of a North Korean flag.
These protests looked as genuine as the tearing down of Saddams statue in Baghdad. Was the main stream media telling a straight story here or was the reporting biased?
Monolycus, who lives and teaches in South Korea, gives us his impression.
by Monolycus
My position then (as it is now) is that there is no peninsula-wide hysteria as you see reported on CNN.
I did not think it would be any problem to write up an authoritative article to that effect, complete with sources and pictures. But I discovered very quickly that what I am trying to do here is to prove a negative. Few people write about things that haven’t happened to them.
I’ve tried to interview many, many people about this non-issue. They are aware of how they are being portrayed on CNN and elsewhere, they just don’t think it’s important enough to make a fuss about.
A standard South Korean response to a Westerner who tries to make them see something as important is
"Don’t worry about that", and that was the bulk of the responses I received when I asked about North Korea, Kim Jong-il, nuclear weapons or the United Nations.
It’s just not something they feel is worth worrying over for a few reasons.
To begin with, as I mentioned once in a comment shortly after the Monday of NoKo’s test, I was told "If we die, they die". If North Korea possessed tactical nuclear weapons with a low blast radius and had a delivery system with the means to send them anywhere with the slightest degree of accuracy (there is no indication that either of these conditions are close to being fulfilled), the winds on the peninsula blow roughly northwards for six months out of the year.
This would send any fallout or contamination almost directly back onto Pyongyang. If South Korea is going to be truly worried about an attack from NoKo (and there is no indication that they are), it would not be until the winter-spring months when the prevailing winds blow more north to south.
I don’t suspect that even this is a tremendous consideration given that Israel recently used depleted uranium munitions on its own doorstep (Lebanon), but Koreans are not Israelis, and the quality of the food they eat and the air they breathe is something that is generally on their minds.
More importantly, though, it is not in South Korea’s interest to become too belligerent with North Korea, because they simply do not have the inclination to escalate a conflict.
The United States has been decreasing its troop strength in South Korea and NOBODY here wants to see a larger US presence.
During one of my interviews, I was told in no uncertain terms that "Yes, we hate North Korea. But we hate Mi-guk (the USA) even more. And we hate Il-bon
(Japan) even more than that."
The Korean hatred of Japan is entirely
understandable given the events between 1910 and 1945 in which Korean women were forced into sex-slavery, medical experiments were performed upon captured Koreans, an attempt was made to stamp out the Korean language, and even to this day,
Japan has tried to expand its territories to include traditionally Korean geography. South Koreans are hearing the rhetoric from Japan and they are extremely suspicious about what this might entail.
I would sooner expect to see an Israeli-Palestinian alliance than the South Koreans lending their support to a Japanese military venture.
So why do the South Koreans, who were ostensibly liberated from the Japanese by US forces, also hold on to such profound anti-US sentiment? It is primarily because the US established "permanent bases" within South Korea (sound familar?) and the behaviour of US servicemen to host populations, while never stellar, has become decreasingly tolerable over the years.
USGI’s are often drunken and combative with the locals (in stark contrast to Asian sensibilities), and fewer and fewer South Koreans are alive to remember any pre-1953 US nobility. These days, all they see are newspaper reports about once
per week involving a drunken members of the US Army assaulting cab drivers. USGI’s are still tolerated by most, but only just.
Now, when I heard about South Korean demonstrators burning North Korean flags in the MSM, I was immediately suspicious. To begin with, I have seen a total of zero anti-North Korean demonstrations and after making a few inquiries, would not know where one could obtain a North Korean flag in the first place
(the unofficial consensus is that it is illegal to sell one here). Flag burning is not a typical Korean form of protest, anyway… it is illegal to do so, and that is an official consensus.
In addition, the kinds of groups who stage protests, do so against US interests and in support of reunification with North Korea (groups such as the unpopular "Hanjungnyon", for example). Incidentally, there is some question as to how "independently" violent protesters like these are operating. They are certainly a minority and nobody takes them very seriously.
A genuine South Korean protest generally involves a speaker with a bullhorn, some traditional drum music, oversized posters, and occasional go-go dancers (It’s just something they do here, don’t ask me to explain it).
The only thing I have seen reflecting a genuine South Korean sentiment in the media is a small side-comment by Michael Levi speaking on behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations:
"Opinion will be mixed there. This is one place where the United States really needs to engage a whole variety of forces. We’re going to see in the news photos of South Koreans burning North Korean flags, etc. But we shouldn’t conclude that reflects the preponderance of public opinion. There is a widespread belief in South Korea that this is as much America’s fault as North
Korea’s. Seeing how public opinion plays out in South Korea will be very interesting."
South Korea does not need to take Michael Hirsch’s advice to "calm down" about things they never really got worked up in the first place.
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