Category Archives: Korea (South)

“Forging Autonomy in a Tough Neighborhood: Korea’s Foreign Policy Struggle” (3)

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This is the conclusion of my last two posts. It is the oral synopsis of a conference paper on Korea’s strategies to escape its harsh geopolitical neighborhood.

“Finally, what is the likely future course of Korean foreign policy? For the South, the answer is easy. Barring unification, the Southern Republic will almost certainly retain the US alliance as the ultimate guarantor of its autonomy. Going your own way is hugely risky, as NK will find out if the 5 other parties of the 6 party talks can ever coordinate a common front against it. Striking out independently from the US risks Chinese subordination. President Roh’s brief flirtation with China (2004-2007) was more to flatter South Korean ego that the country was a ‘player’ or ‘mediator’ between the US and China. The Chinese blithely rebuffed this, and their Dongbei Manchurian history project and treatment of NK refugees quickly drove the South back to the US under the current conservative President Lee.

The North is clearly much more exposed. Going it alone is extraordinarily difficult for small states, and NK’s economic contraction makes this even harder. Clearly the nuclear program is an extreme measure to preserve autonomy from Chinese encroachment particularly. Unlike the SK’s US alliance, if the NK bandwagons openly and clearly with China, it will be absorbed or dominated. The Chinese have neither the geographic distance nor the democratic scruples to preserve NK autonomy.

A unified Korea would change these calculations. I see two possibilities. One, a unified ROK could aspire to stand on its own, particularly if Russia and Japan continue their relative decline. Massive demobilization would follow unification – the NK People’s Army alone has one million soldiers. That newly freed manpower could fuel a production and baby boom that could put a unified ROK within striking distance of still struggling Russia and Japan.

But that still leaves China, rising China. So possibility two is the increasing likelihood that the Chinese price for unification will be the finlandization of united Korea – strict neutralism. Given the US’ relative decline vis-à-vis China, it is unlikely the US will be able to counterbalance this pressure. When Germany unified, West Germany was stronger than South Korea, and East Germany was not as bad off as North Korea. The US was stronger then than now, and the USSR was much weaker than China is now. So the balance of forces today favors a more sinified outcome, and the likely Chinese price for unification is the termination of the US alliance and the withdrawal of the USFK.”

This conference got some press coverage, as have the others I participated in here. That is quite a change from the US, where no really seems to care much about academic conferences.

My argument that the Chinese will likely force Korea to choose between unity and the US alliance went down badly. People didn’t seem to like that, but the Chinese are certainly taking a a tougher line on Korea. I have been to four of these sorts of conferences with Chinese colleagues this year, and the vibe is increasingly: ‘the Olympics went well; the US is a mess; we’re on the up and up; you will need to start to account for us.’ In fact, one of the Chinese scholars at this conference bluntly said in the discussion, “We are big and rich now. Why should we listen to the US?” By extension, that would include Japan and Korea.

NORTH-EAST ASIAN NATIONAL POWER STATISTICS 

Country Population(Millions) Birth Rate Land Mass(km2) Gross Domestic Product (GDP in billions of US Dollars) GDP(Purchasing Power Parity in billions of USD) Economic Growth Rate Budget(in billions of USD) Military Spending (% of GDP & absolute value in billions of USD) Military Manpower(millions) Army Manpower(millions)
China 1,350 +0.7% 9,569,901 $4,300 $8,000 9% $900 4-4.5%      $200 3 2.2
Japan 127 -0.2% 364,485 $4,900 $4,400 0% $1800 1%              $50 0.250 0.148
Russia 140 -0.5% 16,377,742 $1,800 $2,300 6% $275 4%              $80 1 0.4
ROK 48.6 +0.3 96,920 $900 $1300 2.5% $222 2.7%          $24 0.65 0.5
DPRK 22.6 +0.4 120,408 $26 $40 -2.3% $3 N/A 1.2 1

“Forging Autonomy in a Tough Neighborhood: Korea’s Foreign Policy Struggle” (2)

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This is the continuation of my last post. It is the oral synopsis of a conference paper on Korea’s strategies to escape is harsh geopolitical neighborhood.

“If this seems gloomy, it is instructive to note how many other states have wrestled with this dilemma and fared far worse than Korea. As Kenneth Waltz tells us, states are ‘self-regarding units.’ They want domestic and foreign policy autonomy – for whatever purpose: cultural promotion, economic growth, individual liberty, ideological reconstruction, etc. But it is easy to get bullied. A few examples are helpful here. In the late 18th C Poland was partitioned three times – in 1772, 1793, and 1795 – by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. After the 1795 partition, it ceased to exist until 1918. But it was partitioned yet again in 1939 between the Nazis and the Soviets.

Paraguay and Mongolia suffered similar, if less well known, fates. From 1864 to 1870, Paraguay fought its much larger neighbors Brazil and Argentina, as well as Uruguay, in the War of the Triple Alliance. Inevitably the Paraguayans lost and were stripped of 25% of their landmass. After centuries of being kicked back and forth between czarist Russia and imperial China, Mongolia finally threw in its lot with the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It was a less an ally than a protectorate and became a forward staging base for the Red Army during the Sino-Soviet split. Like East Germany, Mongolia might easily have been the center of superpower war with little actual control over its fate and that of its citizens. This did not happen to Korea.

This prompts the question why, or rather why not? Why hasn’t either Korea been absorbed or otherwise bullied into submission since WWII? It happened frequently in Korea’s history before 1945. It has not happened since, and today with rising China on its doorstep, it does not appear to be happening again.

I propose two hypotheses to answer this question. One for each Korea. NK has learned to successfully play its opponents off of each other. NK is the weaker of the two Koreas, and it is the most likely to be subverted – by the USSR in the past, and by China since the early 90s. But it has hung on tenaciously. SK by contrast has recruited an external patron – the United States. The Republic of Korea has leveraged US power to push back on local encroachments quite successfully.

In some ways, the North’s ability to prevent domination is more remarkable than the South’s because the North is so much weaker. Its GDP per capita is low $1700 per annum. Yet NK has never been a proper satellite of either the Soviet Union or China. During the Cold War, Kim Il Sung regularly played the two communist behemoths off against each other for gains. Most spectacularly of course, Kim maneuvered both Stalin and Mao into support for his unification war. Material from the Cold War International History Project shows how wary both Stalin and Mao were. Both feared a major American response, including the use of nuclear weapons. Stalin worried about a distraction when the heart of the conflict was in Europe, and Mao feared that his long-sought, newborn revolution would unravel. So unprepared was the People’s Republic that its some of its ‘volunteers’ were sent into Korea without rifles. They were commanded to pick them up from fallen comrades.

Since the Soviet implosion, Northeast Asian geopolitics would suggest that China overlord NK. It is the last serious ‘friend’ of the regime. Without Chinese trade and aid, NK poverty would be so much worse. If the PRC wanted, the People’s Liberation Army could easily eliminate the Kim Jong Il regime. But this has not happened. And China’s much-touted ‘leverage’ over NK has not prevented its various missile and nuclear weapons tests, nor resulted in meaningful sanctions on food, fuel, and luxury items.

The moral of the story is that the Kims have done a masterful job keeping the other five members of the 6 party talks divided and unsure. The Kims have constantly juggled and separated their opponents, and NK has lived in the geopolitical ‘spaces’ created by all this confusion.

The Southern strategy differs. Rather than zig-zag on its own, the South chose to bandwagon with an external party. SK has acquiesced to an asymmetric patron-client relationship with the United States. But the benefits to the South have clearly outweighed the benefits to the Americans. Indeed, the US is an ideal ally for the South, because it is strong enough to project power to NE Asia and so resist local encroachment on Southern sovereignty. But the US is also too far away to really control Southern internal affairs. To which must be add a deep cultural gap which raises the costs of any US domination of Korea, and US liberal-democratic values, skeptical of imperialist expansionism. In short, the US is big enough to help SK, but geographically and culturally distant enough, and democratic enough, not to dominate it.

So Republic of Korea (ROK) received extensive assistance throughout the 50s, although US officials were unable to dissuade President Rhee from either his import-substitution industrialization plans or his constitutional shenanigans. Under General Park, the US had no role in emerging Korean miracle – the US would hardly have supported the oligopolistic cartelization of the Korean economy that created the chaebol. Nor was the US able to redirect Park’s constitutional misbehavior. In the 1980s, the US leaned on President Chun, but again, it hardly structured the emerging democratic politics of the Republic. It is highly unlikely, for example, that the US would have ‘approved’ the semi-presidential system Korea choose. Even the Kwangju suppression – frequently touted as proof of US domination by scholars like Bruce Cumings – occurred mostly by Korean special forces under local control. And certainly since the 1990s, no one would meaningfully suggest that the US Forces in Korea (USFK) dominate or secretly control the South Korean state. Finally, never in the alliance history did the US pursue anything remotely similar to the cultural genocide committed by Soviets in the Baltics, China in Tibet, or Japan in Korea. If Korea is Americanized, that process is driven by Korean consumer demand and interest in things like rock-and-roll or Hollywood films, not by enforced US cultural imperialism.

These two hypotheses from the Korean case suggest explanations for how a middle power with tough geopolitics can retain its autonomy. Other examples such as Benelux, Switzerland, or Canada would be usefully investigated as comparative cases.”

“Forging Autonomy in a Tough Neighborhood: Korea’s Foreign Policy Struggle” (1)

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Part two is here; part three is here.

Last Friday I spoke at the Korean Association for International Studies’ conference on “Sino-US Relations and the Korean Peninsula.” I spoke on a panel entitled “The Future of Sino-US Relations and Korea’s Security Strategy.” I was requested to write about Korean foreign policy and the Sino-US relationship. This was a challenging mission, as I am not a Korean. It required a mental displacement, and one of my arguments – that a united Korea will probably ‘finlandize’ – created a stir. My paper’s title is the name of this post. Below is the first part of my short oral presentation. Here is part 2 and part 3; if you want the whole thing, email me at rekelly@pusan.ac.kr.)

“As I sat to write a paper about Korea’s foreign policy toward with the United States and China, it struck me that the central trouble Korea faces in dealing with these two very large states is the asymmetry of national power. And indeed, this asymmetry applies to Korea’s whole neighborhood. Korea, as I argue in the paper, has possibly the worst political geography on the planet. It is surrounded by three much larger powers – three great powers no less – with little chance to catch-up to those powers, economically or militarily. As such, much of Korean foreign policy must focus on retaining freedom of movement against the encroachment of larger, nearby powers, or as I entitled my paper, Korea must carve autonomy out of a very tough neighborhood.

This will be a struggle, and it is a struggle Korea frequently lost in the past. Today, the greatest threat to Korean autonomy is China, and its greatest guarantor is the United States. With Japan and Russia both stagnating at the moment, China and the US will dominate Korean foreign policy choices for the foreseeable future.

So I want to begin my paper with 2 basic IR theory insights. First the Republic of Korea is a middle power. Second, small and middle powers are frequently pulled into the orbit of larger powers.

First, Korea as a middle power. I provide some basic statistics in the paper on Korea’s neighborhood that bear repeating. These numbers are all drawn from the CIA World Factbook, which is updated every 2 weeks. SK’s population is 49.6 M. By contrast, Japan’s population is 127 M, Russia’s is 140M, and China’s is a staggering 1.3 B. That means Japan is 2.5 times Korea’s size; Russia almost 3, and China 26 times Korea’s population. If we include the 23 M N Koreans, Japan and Russia are still twice Korea’s size, and China is still 18 times bigger. Economically, Korea’s GDP (not PPP-adjusted) is $900B; Russia’s is $1.8T, China’s is $4.3T,and Japan’s is $4.9T. So Russia is twice Korea’s size; China is almost 5 times, and Japan almost 6. NK’s GDP is a crushing $26B, so its addition would not change these proportions much.

This is not to denigrate the miracle on the Han. Korea’s GDP per capita exceeds both China’s and Russia’s, and the rapidity with which Korea raced from African levels of poverty in the 40s to the OECD in the 90s is remarkable. Nevertheless, my point is that Korea is comparatively small, and downright tiny compared to China. As Kim Il Sung said, Korea is a shrimp among whales, and this is the central challenge to Korean foreign policy.

My second IR insight – that small powers often gravitate toward bigger ones – is aggravated in the Korean case, because that gravitation is even more likely to happen if, 1. those larger powers are great powers, and 2. if those larger powers are direct neighbors. Both of these conditions apply to Korea, and perhaps uniquely, Korea abuts 3 great powers. Not even Mongolia or Poland faces such harsh geography. Imperial Germany used to refer to the ‘ring of steel’ around it before WWI. Korea is in similar but worse position. Germany, a great power itself, could contemplate a breakout, and one may read WWI and WWII as German attempts to crack its encirclement. Korea has no such opportunities. It is simply too weak to pursue military resistance.

The great threat then to Korea is its domination by its much larger neighbors. Frequently large states intimidate, encroach, or otherwise bully smaller neighbors. Indeed, they may even absorb them outright. Korea’s own history gives us many examples of this dynamic. In the Choson dynasty period, Korea was a reliable vassal in the Sinocentric order. In the late 19th C, as Chinese power receded, Korea fell increasingly under the sway of Russia and especially Japan. In 1910, it was absorbed completely, and the Japanese pursued thoroughgoing japanification, including the elimination of the intelligentsia, restrictions on language and culture, and even encouraged the taking of Japanese names. Although Japanese power was smashed by 1945, it was locally replaced by the expansion of Soviet, Cold War power. And unfortunately for Korea, Japan rebounded quickly too. By the 80s of course, China’s rise had begun, so even as the USSR imploded, Korea’s entrapment continued. Throughout its history, its 3 larger neighbors have risen and fallen, but never fallen simultaneously. Korea seems doomed to a rotating list of hegemonic local threats. Today, although Japan and Russia are struggling, Korea faces the looming threat of China.”

Iraqi Lessons We Should Have Learned in Vietnam? Nope… Korea!!

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The conventional wisdom on our 2004-2007 failures in Iraq is that we did not learn the lessons of Vietnam about counterinsurgency (COIN). The Army, under officers like Colin Powell, reconstructed itself after the humiliation of Vietnam to fight big wars (i.e., against the USSR), not small wars (messy third world ‘brushfires’). The Army would simply not be structured to fight COIN – precisely to create a bureaucratic-structural block on the use of the Army in such situations. By willfully not developing COIN, the military could prevent the POTUS from seriously considering it. Instead such duties would be given to local allies – hence the US support for the Contras and UNITA in the 1980s, and the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident of the 90s. The logic was captured in the famous ‘Powell Doctrine’: 1. a clearly defined objective for any war, 2. use of overwhelming force, and 3. a clear exit strategy.

The obvious problem is that this binds (blackmails?) the White House to fight only the kinds of wars that ‘fit’ the Army’s posture. But of course, that inverts reality. The Army does not tell the world, ‘give us the wars we are prepared and prefer to fight.’ Instead, the messy, complicated world throws all kinds of crises at the US, and its military should at least try to plan and prepare for various foreseeable scenarios. The Army can’t command that wars the country fights only be in a certain shape it prefers. What happens if there is a war we need to fight that doesn’t fight the Powell Doctrine? We can’t just ignore that national security imperative can we? Well, we did, and this is why SecDef Rumsfeld was bureaucratically cornered to admit that ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.’ The military was purposefully not structured to fight the COINs that emerged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so things were a mess in Iraq until Petraeus forced COIN through the ‘Powell-ized’ Pentagon bureaucracy. Here is the unlearned lesson of Vietnam. Instead of learning from Vietnam how to do COIN better, we decided to learn not to do it all. That was a huge and costly error.

But then as I was a writing a paper on Korean foreign policy, I stumbled onto this gem, by a US general who served in the Korea War, about the hasty, unplanned, overzealous US involvement in Korea. It is truly disturbing to read just how many errors we made then that the Bush people made again 50 years later. So if you thought Vietnam was the lesson we didn’t learn for the GWoT, add Korea to your list. Just be sure to read the article. Substitute ‘Iraq’ for ‘Korea,’ and its list of problems is astonishingly, depressingly familiar.

Money quotes (practically the whole article is a money quote for the GWoT):

“[The Korean War] begun with an air of excessive expectation based upon estimates which were inspired by wishful optimism.”

“From first to last the failure to budget the expenses of the Korean War, as if keeping them from sight would make the experience less painful, has been symptomatic of a national ailment.”

“In the first summer, we plunged on a sure thing, though the axiom has it that in war nothing is sure. We said we did it because there was no alternative to precipitate action; the future of collective security was at stake, and aggression left unchecked would soon ring the world with fire.”

“But no move toward even partial mobilization accompanied it. The reserves were not called. An ammunition build-up was not programmed, though in some types the stocks were nil. For three months thereafter the Defense Secretary continued to hack at our fighting resources. Relations between State and the Pentagon remained as cold as if they represented opposite sides in a war.”

“The original planners mistakenly calculated that they were dealing with a gook army and an essentially craven people who would collapse as soon as mobile men and modern weapons blew a hot breath their way. But the play didn’t follow the lines as written.”

“Strategy was then at its wishful best; it was wishing out of existence a Red Chinese Army which was already over the border.”

“The war could be properly described as a tactical stalemate. We had the power and they had the push and the people. For two years the situation remained in equipoise mainly because we were motorized and had a tremendous advantage in air and artillery.”

“United States, which was the major power holding the command seat, accepted a drawn war as inevitable simply out of unwillingness to raise a sufficient infantry. An additional four solid divisions—meaning approximately 60,000 men—might have made all the difference.”

“The deliberate political design by which two Administrations treated the Korean War as if it were an insoluble military problem served to achieve one major object. It confused the American public and, confusing it, dulled its memory.”

“The initial [US] forces had been kept too long and pushed too hard; not to have afforded them relief would have been inexcusable. But rotation, as it came in full flower under the seeming promise of a quick truce, was a glorified game of musical chairs… Rotation is also a killer of men rather than a saver. There are never enough experienced men to fill the rugged assignments and let the new hands break in gradually.”

“The new hope which came to bloom…was that by building a still stronger ROK Army we would shortly find an easy exit from our Korean venture. The history of this effort, and in particular the tardiness of the decision, shows conclusively that it was inspired by dreams of liquidating our commitments.”

“Yet the Army of the United States did not so much as send one headquarters battery to Korea to initiate a training establishment for ROK artillerymen.”

“To attempt to make a backward nation catch up with the present, while assisting in the revitalizing of its economy, is quite a reversal of the normal processes of history.”

“Since South Korea is, for the time being, invalided and dependent on us largely for military supply and what is needed to keep life in a now surplus population, we more or less vaguely see that for some years ahead we shall have to fill the vacuum, serving as backer, banker, and supplier. Either that or South Korea, left a hopeless derelict, will be salvaged by Communist neighbors.”

“Korea is a strategically profitless area for the United States, of no use as a defensive base, a springboard to nowhere, a sinkhole for our military power. We don’t belong there.”

Some of these insights I disagree with; some are accurate. But what must strike any reader is how easily they can be transferred to the GwoT. Last week argued that we should give McChrystal a chance in Afghanistan, because presumably US planners can learn from Vietnam, the USSR in Afghanistan, and Iraq how to fight a better COIN. Then I read this article, and it really drew me up short. We seem to make the same mistakes again and again – Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. Maybe Stephen Walt and Christopher Layne are right, and we should stay out of these sorts of wars, because we muck them up so bad. This article really shook my confidence.

Korean Political Science Association 2009 Biannual Meeting: “American Dual Containment in Asia”

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The KPSA had its biannual meeting from August 20 to 22. Unlike the APSA, the KPSA meets only every two years, because of its size. It was a pretty good conference, but the papers generally feel short of APSA standards. This is the first one I attended. A few thoughts:

1. Just about all the attendees – Korean and foreign – got their PhD in the US. The elite universities in Korea are filled with people who got their PhDs in the US. I rarely meet people who attended those schools, only people who work at them. This speaks volumes about the very high quality of US education vis-a-vis the rest of the world. It also suggests graduate education is a major export sector of the US economy, but no one ever seems to conceptualize it that way.

2. Most of the papers were heavily focused on policy analysis and the day-to-day of Korean and regional politics. In this way, it didn’t feel like political science often to me, but like public policy. I guess this is ok, but it allows a lot of room for sheer opinionating and bloviating. But then again, many have complained that US political science is so theoretical and methodological that regular people can’t access it, it has become irrelevant to politics, and it is just another academic world unto itself. That’s true too. My feelings on this are mixed.

3. IR was vastly overrepresented among the political science subfields (theory, comparative, domestic [Korean], IR). At APSA, US politics’ seminars outweigh all the other sections combined. Not here. I think IR was a majority of the panels. I bet this reflects, 1. the general stasis of Korean domestic politics (interrupted by outbursts of violence on the streets or in the National Assembly), and 2. the immense international pressures on a small country like Korea, especially one surrounded by such large powers. It is a luxury of US politics that our internal politics feels so autonomous. As a superpower with good geography, we don’t have to pay attention to foreign opinion much. (Obama’s use of external anti-Americanism as a campaign tool was quite extraordinary.) Korea does not have that luxury, and the PS reflects that.

4. The geographic focus was solely on NE Asia. I didn’t see a single paper about another area. I find this a growing and disturbing trend here, especially when the state slogans are Global Korea, Dynamic Korea, Korea Rising, etc. I almost never meet anyone who knows anything about the ME, Africa, Latin America, or South Asia. In the context of topics like terrorism, religion, or development, one would need some exposure to these areas. But then again, I almost never see work by Korean academics on topics that are not immediately germane to NE Asia. I suppose this East Asiacentrism is forgivable given how small Korea is, but it speaks poorly of Korea and Korean political science that it seems so disinterested in the rest of the world (US excepted). I have met Korean IR political scientists who didn’t know the capital of Canada or that Iran is Shiite. Yikes!

5. About 40% of the participants were foreign – mostly Chinese and Americans, plus a few Japanese and Europeans. This tells me two things. One, there just aren’t that many political scientists in Korea. Two, they believe in recruiting foreign participation, even if the work proffered is pretty poor, because it serves the larger goal of Korea promotion.

6. The Biannual Meeting was used as another venue to, well, propagandize the Korean miracle. Speaker after speaker, both in the panels and in the general sessions like the dinner speakers, told us again and again how Korea grew from nothing to become the world’s 13th largest economy and a global ‘player.’ (I am so sick of hearing that last word.) There were a few government officials invited to speak as well, and they too went through this. It almost feels like a requirement from any serious personage in Korea, particularly when they speak to foreigners. The English language press here is filled with this story too. This incessant Koreaphoria suggests two things to me. a) They are nervous that their gains are tenuous, because they were so rapid. So perhaps telling the tale again and again, and telling foreigners too, and then expecting the foreigners to echo back the same story (and we are expected to repeat this party line), psychologically reinforces the solidity of the miracle on the Han. b) Koreans are extreme nationalists. Such constant self-celebration eventual begins to suggest arrogance and egomania. I try to be tolerant and simply smile as I hear the story told a million different ways. I try to understand why the story is so often repeated (because it feels so unreal, especially after the first 3/4 of the 20th C was so hard on Korea). But at some point, you just have to give in and say it is an example of the intense nationalism so many scholars have noted to exist outside the West. I am unaccustomed to this. My own feelings about the US hardly mirror the intensity of Korean feelings for Korea. It makes me uncomfortable.

7. The panels were far too short and too crowded. I am not sure how to interpret this. A very cynical friend said the answer is the image-consciousness of Korea. It is more important to list the panel and be able to mention it on your CV or in an TV interview, than to actually have it be a substantive process. So you cram as many people into as many panels as possible. Inevitably the panels are too short (75 minutes) and too crowded (1 panel leader, 4 presenters, 2 discussants). This is certainly what happened to my panel. A 20 minute presentation was chopped in half, and I got no meaningful feedback or discussion.

8. My presentation, what there was of it, argued that the US will ally with India in the near future. India is the only country that is also facing China and Islamism, and is democratic too. Here is my abstract, and the relevant graph on US alliance picks:

US grand strategy after 9/11 has turned from post-containment drift to preemption. But the costs are high – suspicion of American power, hedging by traditional allies, expensive, go-it-alone ventures like Iraq. Tried-and-true containment better reflects American values. While forward in the world, containment is also defensive. It reassures skittish partners and reflects liberal, anti-imperial US preferences. In Asia, containment could hold the line against radical Islam and Chinese nationalism without encouraging a global backlash. Democratic India shares these same two challengers with the US; it is the likely pivot in a US-backed neo-containment architecture in Asia.

Foreigners Should Not Intervene in Korea’s Multiculturalism Debate

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This an unpublished letter to the editor at the Korea Times.

The poor treatment of Bonojit Hussain (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/08/117_49537.html) is a sad commentary on race relations in Korea but is no crime and certainly not a ‘human rights’ violation. Mr. Hussain should do all us foreigners here a favor and drop his complaint:

1. Racism is not a crime, and neither is stupidity. Open societies like Korea do not criminalize thought, even repugnant foolishness. Mr. Hussain was not physically assaulted, and his Korean harasser is entitled to his beliefs and prejudices. It makes a mockery of the notion of ‘human rights’ to charge a drunk ajeossi on a bus for 60 seconds of vulgarity. Racism is overcome in the marketplace of ideas not by an orwellian ‘opinion police.’ The US went down this road into the political correctness wars of the 1990s, and Mr. Hussain’s home country, India, is balkanized by exactly such racialized law-making. We should hardly encourage that among our hosts.

2. We foreigners are guests in someone else’s house. The Korean harasser’s behavior was improper, but we foreigners do not have the moral standing to take legal action on our hosts’ opinion of our presence. As voluntary guests, there are limits to our claims against our hosts, and exaggerating racist vulgarity as a human rights violation certainly crosses them. Barring physical intimidation, we have no claim to an ‘appropriate’ Korean opinion. We have chosen to come to Korea. We are not a conquered or coerced population (like Canadian francophones or Native Americans) with a moral claim to special rules, much less a ‘human rights’ committee. It is part of our duty as willing guests to absorb Korean ambivalence, and occasional resentment, about our presence with aplomb and restraint.

3. Korea is scarcely a ‘multicultural’ society, and we have no right to demand or describe it as such. For all the talk of ‘globalizing’ Korea, Korea is still quite ethnically homogenous. Over 97% of the ROK population is Korean. Over 90% of the foreigners here are other East Asians who blend in more easily. Most others, such as the hagwon teachers or US military, are transients. Hence, Koreans expect us to either assimilate or leave at some point. There is no permanent, unassimilated minority here that demands a multicultural restructuring of Korean society (as there is, for example, in India or Switzerland). More importantly, it is not at all clear that Koreans want their country to be a multi-culture. And this we must respect. This is their country, and we must honor and abide by their choices. It is terrible bad faith for us to come voluntarily and then promptly demand multiculturalism as our due. It is not; the burden of obligation lies the other way. It is our responsibility to integrate, learn Korean (god help us), eat our kimchi, and otherwise behave well, including respect for our hosts’ ambivalence on the foreigner question.

As Koreans accustom themselves to non-Korean faces, attitudes will change. But we may not demand that change, nor try to shame our hosts into it. Polyethnicity is a change for them to make at their own pace and in their own way. As a democracy, any shift toward multiculturalism in Korea must have public opinion support. It cannot be the product of lawsuits by guests. Koreans may get there, but then again, they may not, and they may not want to. However the debate ends, it is not our place to intervene.

Koreanism of the Month – Food (2): Kimchi!

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Koreans have a special reverence for the premier national food item – kimchi. There is space kimchi and even a Kimchi Research Institute in Pusan.

Kimchi seems to have a acquired a curative power akin to the snake oil tonics of the Old West. Kimchi is good for just about every ailment – the common cold, depression, fatigue, whatever. But note that these are fairly generalized conditions for which some exercise or fresh air might help too.

More over-the-top are the assertions that kimchi will protect against specific diseases – including bird flu or SARS. At this point, it becomes increasingly silly. A good friend recently told me that kimchi will protect me against swine flu! The obvious methodological problem of assertion without the slightest shred of evidence is less interesting (we do that all the time in conversation) than the knee-jerk reaction of Koreans to defend/promote kimchi regardless of circumstance. That clearly betrays a deep national affinity or cultural reflex. (This made me think of the GOP’s tax-cut reflex: no matter the state of the economy or budgets, tax cuts are always good for you.)

Does that reflex mean anything serious beyond cute stories of kimchi refrigerators? Honestly, probably not. I find it vaguely uncomfortable when Koreans tell me kimchi defines them. I always respond that actually your long battle for democracy and prosperity since 1953 does, or at least should. Kimchi is simply a food. Perhaps that is the response of a citizen from a polyglot immigrant culture like the US. There is no ‘national food’ in the US with the clout of kimchi here. I geuss if you are from a more traditionalist, ancient communitarianism, all sorts of everyday things like food, clothes, or even hairstyles have a national symbol status.

I am also a bit surprised. Kimchi, basically fermented cabbage or radish, is a curious choice for a national food. It is hardly the most tasty food in Korean cuisine. I can think of lots of other dishes I would promote first (Korean BBQ is excellent). And certainly, it is a very acquired taste that takes time to get used to. I have never seen kimchi in the West; my sense is that it would not travel well outside East Asia. Westerners in Korea generally greet kimchi with a shrug. Its ok, but not that different that any other vegetable side or salad. This generally miffs Koreans, who seem bewildered by Western indifference.

Grotesque Misuse of a Korean Victim in the War on Terror

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The following is a letter to the editor of the Korea Times on the killing of a South Korean in Yemen by a jihadist group. Published on June 26, 2009, it is available here.

“The tragic execution of Eom Young-sun reflects the barbarism of binladenist jihadism in the Middle East. But it is both empirically inaccurate and morally grotesque to suggest that her slaying a “reflects South Korea’s rising international status.”

Ms. Eom was murdered with eight others foreigners of various nationalities, suggesting she was a target of opportunity, and not chosen because she was Korean. It is correct that Korea is a US ally, but it is only nominally involved in the war on terror. And Islamic fundamentalism is most worried about theistic competition with other abrahamic monotheisms (Judaism and Christianity)  and Hindu polytheism. Korea (despite its growing Christian population) is culturally and geographically quite distant from these concerns. Islamic fundamentalists have shown little interest in religious competition with Buddhism or Confucianism since the destruction of the Bamyan Buddhas.

Morally perverse however is spinning a savage execution into a grotesque complement to Korea’s national stature. Small countries like Korea usually lament their low international recognition. This is understandable, as world attention focuses on great powers. This breeds status-craving and weak global self-esteem in wannabes like Spain, Italy, or Turkey, and Jon Huer has aptly made this point about Korea. But reading this homicide as a perverse ‘complement’ suggests not that Korea has “rising status,” but that Koreans crave it so much, they will look for even the flimsiest, most grotesque evidence. This is disappointing.

Korea is a fine place to live – wealthy, liberal, democratic, plural. It is patiently and steadfastly resisting the world’s last and worst stalinist tyranny without sliding into authoritarianism (as Pakistan and East Germany did in their local competitions). This is a huge achievement. That is the root of its prestige; that is what Koreans should take pride in.”

Koreanism of the Month – Don’t Clip your Nails at Night

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Here’s another genuine curveball. A good friend told me to never clip one’s nails at night. He openly said this is a Korean myth, but said you should do it anyway.

The logic is that at night, the spirits of your ancestors are active and take care of you. Hence damaging yourself offends them, or conversely grooming yourself is unnecessary.

The obvious problem then is what else should you not do at night? Can I take a shower? Brush my hair? Wash my hands?

Tragicomedy of US Soft Power: Exporting Banality to Korea (2)

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For part 1, click here. SK is a great case for the study of the soft power,and also a sad example of the cultural banality that is frequently the outcome of Americanization. Conservatives never seem to acknowledge this, but spreading McDonalds, boy bands, action movies, Madonna, etc. not only breeds cultural blowback, it also breeds an embarrassing banality and cultural shallowness in its targets. It is, quite honestly, rather shameful as an American living in Korea to see the arrival of American habits like consumerism and obesity, or insipid American products like soap operas or music-machine pop-music. So from a US foreign policy perspective this is good (Koreans are more like us), but from a high, or even middle-brow, culture perspective, its pretty disturbing to see (how come they seem to pick up the worst of what we have to offer?). When Koreans tell me their country is too Americanized, it is hard not to agree.

Why SK is a good case for a study of soft power’s success/failure:

1. It has been heavily penetrated by the United States for over 60 years. It has been subject to the full weight of Americanization – deep political ties, reinforced by a constant military presence, nested in a large cultural influx.

2. Korea is (was?) very culturally distinct. (Canada or Britain, by contrast, would be weaker examples of cultural shift, because of pre-existing values congruence.) Its history is all but unknown to Americans. Its traditional food, dress, language, and music are quite distant. Its alphabet is not roman and includes sounds that translate poorly. Most importantly, its religious-philosophical traditions – Confucianism, Buddhism, plus some shamanism – are very different. Liberalism and democracy are ideological transplants. Monotheism, and fury it creates in the West and Middle East, are foreign here (although the charismatic evangelicals here are unfortunately bringing it with them.)

How Korea is Americanized:

1. The country is obsessed with learning English. I have been to lots of other countries where learning English was a priority for survival in the global economy, but Korea is exceptional. Koreans will drop out of school for a year to take private lessons just to learn English – not junior years abroad that count as credit. There is a huge public fight over which Koreans can attend US DoD schools here, and there are private ‘international’ schools with an English-only curriculum. (Ironically, they are filled with Koreans, because expats can’t afford their usual $20k/year price-tag.) They will send their grammar school children to after-school extra schooling (hagwons), that have downright brutal teaching regimens with 10 year old students staying until, I’m not lying, 11 pm every weeknight. The bookstores here are filled with books and gimmicks for learning English to pass the TOEFL. There is even an urban legend about surgery to get your tongue cut to supposedly make it easier to speak English. Good English speaking has huge social prestige and will help you land a serious job in Seoul, the center of the universe. 

2. Korean TV is filled with American TV shows and films, frequently the most silly or violent. And Koreans have also patterned their own television partially on the US models, frequently the most insipid. Soap operas here are quite similar to the US – ridiculous adultery plots with pretty women and prettier men wildly overacting, all with great hair and sportscars, living in large American-style homes with driveways and lawns that almost no one here actually can afford (Koreans live in apartment high-rises because of extreme population density). Korean action movies are similar, with exorbitant CGI and quick-cut editing. Forensic police shows are popular too. My students have learned more about America from CSI than from me.

3. Korean popular music too reflects repetitive, self-serving US pop. K-pop is filled with rap and boy/girl bands with all the accoutrements of such groups in the US: silly self-congratulatory videos, inane love lyrics, hairspray & fashion model outfits, bling and conspicuous consumption.

4. US junk food is ubiquitous: Burger King, McDo, KFC. Obesity is a growing problem among Korean youth.

5. Perhaps most disturbing is rapid influx of US versions of Christianity. Protestant evangelicalism is spreading quickly. It is easy conquest, as 50% of Koreans are agnostic or areligious. Blood (yes, as in the spiritual “Power in the Blood” you heard in There Will be Blood) red neon crosses fill the nightskylines of major Korean cities.

6. The US has a major diplomatic and military presence here, and just about every American here seems to know someone in it or otherwise be connected to it. (Me included.)

Of course, deep Korean cultural attributes – food, deference/bowing, Korean traditional music – survive and contest this Americanization. No society is monolithic, and the social contest ebbs, flows, and hybridizes. Last year America was a big problem because of (supposed) mad cow-infected beef; this year, the US isn’t so bad, because NK suddenly seems so dangerous.

My concern is the sheer banality of the cultural influx. Indeed, I think this whenever I travel. I remember seeing Star Trek on TV in Athens with Klingons speaking Greek! Why is it that the silliest, most unhealthy, most ridiculous elements of US social life are exported? Presumably in a market economy, there is local demand, so blame goes both ways. Koreans clearly like McDonalds and the Transporter (its on TV at least once a month here). But it is discomforting to see Koreans made fatter and sillier by US cultural import. And it is easy to imagine what Khomeini notoriously called ‘westoxification’ creating a cultural-nationalist backlash. In the ME of course, that extends to liberalism and democracy, so Khomeini was no defender of the culture – he was a vicious theocrat. But it is still easy to conceive a cultural, sliding into political, backlash against the influx of so much trashy American mediocrity (Project Runway translated into Korean). In fact, Asia is where Chalmers Johnson, the best theorist of political blowback to cultural Americanization, expected something like 9/11 to originate, not the Middle East. And it should embarrass Americans too. A soft power remaking of Korea may be good for us, but don’t we feel a little ashamed about what we export? Are we really pleased to remake others to be shallow, celebrity-obsessed, obese, or insipid (like the Americans foreigners see on TV)? How come Frontline or Mark Twain are not our exports?