CNN International is Awful

Posted on by
3

One of the great tragedies of living out of the US is the loss of quality TV news in English, as well as the TiVo system I used to cruise through it. If you want to see how yesterday’s luxuries become today’s needs, try TiVo withdrawal ! After a year in Korea, I still miss it terribly.

I always thought US TV journalism was pretty weak, but I realized when I moved to Korea how much I actually consumed at the end of the day when I relaxed. I miss PBS the most – particularly Lehrer, Frontline, and Charlie Rose. I also miss BBC News and C-Span’s Q & A and book/author shows. I miss less the Sunday talk shows. The greats (Russert and Brinkley) have passed. I always thought Stephanopolus was a free-rider on Clinton who made good afterwards in the worst ‘Washington system’ sorta way: handsome, connected, but somewhat empty and a lightweight, i.e., perfect for network news. I suppose your dork quotient skyrockets when you say that you miss C-Span. Hah!

Anyway, I have been thrown back on CNN International – which is another way of saying that I don’t watch the news much anymore. (I don’t understand Korean enough yet to consume local news.) CNN International has that vapid, shallow feel to it that is perfect for airport lounges when you are bored with your novel and your flight is delayed. But as a regular news source, its pretty awful.

I never consumed a lot of cable news before. CNN struck me as infotainment, Fox as propaganda, and MSNBC as empty. Hence, John’s Stewart’s jokes about cable news seemed right to me, but I never really knew. Now, after being stuck with only CNN for a year, I do know how right his lampoons are. Why is CNN awful?

1. CNNI is terribly repetitive. It not only repeats the same show frequently, but it basically repeats the same story line throughout various broadcasts all day long. 15 minutes with CNN is enough to tell your their basic 5 points for the day. So unless you actually want the fluff side shows like Larry King or the movie shows, its lots of recycling interspersed with non-news like the weather or sports.

2. It is quite trendy and silly. Michael Jackson’s passing became a 24-hour pseudo-news-athon of idiot interviews, overhyped conspiracy theories, and family exploitation for air time. WHO CARES ?! Not only was it all fairly pointless, it also helped save the Iranian regime by taking away the spotlight from that almost revolution. Trading Iran for Jackson was a massive failure of journalistic integrity. No wonder TV news is in delcine. Also noticeable is that awful journalistic habit of extrapolating a trend or wave from a just few cases of something. For about two weeks in May, it was all swine flu, all the time – complete with lots of hyperventilating and lurid counterfactuals, when there was not much actual news to report. So we’d learn about the day’s swine flu events in a few minutes, and then get a burst of bust of commercials with creepy music and shaky images telling me to ‘stay with CNN’ in case it becomes a ‘global epidemic’! I can’t wait for this summer when a few shark attacks off South Africa or California are turned into a global shark bite pandemic! Ahhh!

3. The side shows really are fluff. Larry King strikes me as a pretty talented guy, but he interviews quite a lot of dull, conventional-wisdom-recycling guests. Who picks these people for him? How many more movie stars, preachers, or participants in high-profile court cases do we need to hear? And when did celebrity blather, and paid-for advertising masquerading as journalism like ‘Inside Africa,’ become news?

4. There are a lot of commercials of national or corporate brand promotion, and for soft ‘investigative’ shows. Usually some reporter tells me that if I watch the ‘Middle East Revealed,’ I will learn who the ‘movers and shakers’ of the Gulf are. Really? A series of sanitized interviews with bankers or government media liaisons uncritically citing optimistic FDI and export statistics? Yawn. The commercials are even worse. It all blurs an into undifferentiated fluff of advertising for tourism and investment; apparently I will discover my true heart gambling in Dubai or kayaking in Cambodia.

5. Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour are egomaniacs whose faces are all over the network. Have the PR people at CCN found that viewers care more about seeing them than the actual news they speak of?

6. What is with relentless self-promotion? Most of CNN’s commercials are for the network itself. Its marketing is embarrassingly fluffy multiculturalism, stressing silliness like the ‘continuing human story,’ with trite juxtapositions of suffering children and joyous celebrants somewhere set to mawkish music. Insulting and stupid.

7. Who taught these journalists to speak in such dramatic language? It is never ‘a billion dollars,’ but always ‘a Billion Dollars,’ which great stress on the labial ‘B.’ Jobs are never ‘cut’ on CCNI; they are ‘slashed.’ Economies don’t ‘decline,’ they ‘collapse.’ I think this is the result of Fox News remaking of the news into a Michael Bay action movie.

In short, CCN International seems to pander to those who would like to see themselves as international or cosmopolitan, but not in a particular challenging way. CCNI is like the TV version of the International Herald Tribune – call it IR for undergrads. It makes you feel sorta international and jet-setty to be reading/watching it and be seen reading/watching it. Aren’t you cool when you look up when CCNI tells you the weather in Hong Kong or Bahrain? Preferably this occurs in the airport lounge with your Blackberry on the table so the cute business traveler babe next to you will see how cosmpolitan you are. But you’re probably not going to Hong Kong or Bahrain, because you’re not really a ‘player.’ You’re just in the airport because you are going on a vacation somewhere…

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

What Kim Jong Il can learn from Idi Amin

Posted on by
2

If Idi Amin ever did anything useful for Africa or the world, I don’t know of it. But he did provide one good negative lesson – how to get a brutal tyrant out of the way, one who would like to abdicate but is terrified of meeting a Ceausescu-style end (running away in terror from a vengeful firing squad looking for blood). Those cell phone vids of Saddam’s execuction-turned-lynching are exactly why the world’s nasties like Mugabe or Castro won’t leave power even when their ‘revolutions’ are spent or corrupted and the whole world has turned on them.

Kim Jong Il has to be thinking the same. He knows his regime is falling apart, and that its already slim chance for a stable future is even more reduced by its extreme isolation. He is afraid of collapse and an ignominious end like Mussolini’s – hung from a lamppost by angry resistors. And indeed, this is likely, or a trial in postunification courts that will almost certainly convict him as a criminal against humanity and possibly a genocidaire. South Korea has the death penalty, and Kim would almost certainly face execution. This must not only deeply unnerve Kim, but also anger him. He is a sitting head of state with a Mandate from Heaven and nuclear weapons. Yet most of the world thinks he should be hanged by the SK government.

SK rarely uses the death penalty, and I suspect it is kept on the book primarily for the postunification trials. The NK elite is complicit in the worst man-made famine since the Great Leap Forward, and runs the most awful gulag system the world has ever known.

So here is where the man who said human flesh tastes too salty can ‘help.’ Amin basically gave up making trouble for Uganda when he received asylum in Saudi Arabia. He wasn’t executed, never repented, and lived reasonably well. Kim probably wants all these things too. And China could give them to him. This is far better end than the possible factional conflict brewing after his death. He must know that the regime will be terribly shaky without him; analysts still regularly argue that Kim must shore up his own power in the regime, some 15 years after his father’s death. If that is so, how long will Kim Jong-Un last before he is pushed aside or turned into a figurehead? At least from a comfortable exile Jong-Il can blame the Americans and condemn SK’s destruction of the utopia. He can enjoy the girls, movies and booze he loves; maybe China will give him a home theater and he can just slide away like Amin did. On the hand, if he hangs on to the bitter end, I predict factionalism.

Did Wolfowitz really just say that?!

Posted on by
Reply

In a WSJ op-ed, Paul Wolfowitz wrote, that when Obama speaks in Cairo, “the president should make clear that the U.S. does not believe that democracy can be imposed by force.”

I find this stunning. Wolfowitz is the primary intellectual architect of George Bush’s endorsement of “regime change” through “pre-emption.” He has argued since a famous leaked memo in 1992 that the US should actively try to maintain unipolar dominance as a foreign policy goal.

This is a remarkable turnabout, and once again Wolfowitz reminds us of SecDef McNamara. After the Vietnam War, McNamara sought penance through the presidency of the World Bank, and lately now by advocating the total abolition of nuclear weapons. And Wolfowitz seems to sliding along the same way. He too was prez of the Bank, and now seems to also be be turning against the use of state power. Post-Iraq, he seems chastened – abandoning tough-minded neo-conservatism to say we should not impose democracy by force after all.

Is this a real conversion? Has he really drawn the lesson, presumably from Iraq, that democracy cannot be imposed by force? He would not be the first neoconservative or hawkish liberal internationalist (basically the same thing) to turn away from the war. Fukuyama’s apologia is the most eloquent of these so far.

Beyond astonishment at Wolfowitz’ volte face, I must say I am little disappointed. Wolfowitz was the best thinker, within the government, behind the neoconservative critique of the Middle East that, despite Iraq, I continue to find persuasive. The intellectual architecture behind the Iraq war was not an oil grab, US imperialism, or the workings of the military-industrial complex. Instead, the neo-con idea was that politics in the Middle East was frozen in time (1967), locked into a toxic, self-reinforcing cycle of easy, corrupting oil money, islamist and arabist ideology, predatory elites, corporatist economic stagnation, and dictatorship. This is essentially correct. Hence the Iraq war was necessary to break this immobilism. Only an external lightning or hammer strike could crack this terrorism- and jihadism-spawning stasis.

The disastrous course of the Iraq war does not invalidate this logic. Yes, the Bushies clearly underestimated how much work regime change would require. But that is a process argument. We badly prosecuted the necessary external strike. But process failure does not undermine the logic of the neo-con argument. To this day, I still find it persuasive, hence my deep ambivalence about the Iraq war, even as it was flying off the rails. That Wolfowitz would surrender this persuasive argument is disappointing; I would like to see a coherent, contrasting ‘liberal realist’ analysis of the Middle East’s problems. We are all chastened by Iraq, but the toxic, interlocking pathologies that brought the ME to this point were well analyzed by the neo-cons. We have to give them that.

Lessons from Iran

Posted on by
Reply

Prediction in social science is d— difficult, but it is awfully easy to retrodict. Charles Kurzman makes the important point that when the outcome is clear in Iran in a few weeks or months, lots of ‘experts’ will say it was ‘inevitable.’ Excellent point against social science hubris. So, I will hazard my guess now, in advance:

1. These color revolutions, and their model, the Velvet Revolution, always seem to take us by surprise. Suddenly, previously apathetic populations explode and and waves of protestors hit the street. No one seems to be able to explain why quiescence so quickly collapses. This is terribly humiliating to the social sciences, because we strive to build theories that explain social action. Yet we seem to get it wrong time and again – particularly in identifying the social breakpoints which push populations from apathy into activism. The CIA has been criticized for years for wildly overestimating Soviet power in the 80s and having not even an inkling of the coming collapse. Even Paul Kennedy, one of the finest historians working today, assumed the USSR would survive into the 21st C. (And good prediction is why Nouriel Roubini is such a rock-star today.) We just don’t know nearly enough about the intersection of politics, psychology, and social mobilization. Nonetheless, the lesson I draw is that political apathy is ticking time-bomb. If you endlessly repress (and bore) your population, there will be a backlash. China and even, or perhaps especially, NK beware.

2. Stagnation and low growth seem to be a driver of these revolutions as much as freedom. Freedom is great, but so are mundane things like being able to travel or getting a cool, future-oriented job. Eastern Europeans didn’t just want liberalism, they wanted globalization – the fun hip, exciting lifestyle they saw filtering in on bootleg VHS or western TV shows. Who wants to work for some bland, grey, state-owned enterprise making soviet-model toasters? People would rather work for Yahoo or Intel and be connected the world and the future. That the China seems to be able to deliver this, where the Islamic Republic could not, is my guess why China seems more stable.

3. Autocracies are frequently terrible economic managers. East Asian states seem to be an exception to this, but even they have high levels of corruption and can become unexpectedly brittle (Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis). Ideologues who demand national, religious, or other principled ‘purity’ frequently must do so at the expense of cool, fun, modern global lifestyles. Who wants to be cut-off from the fun world of globalization, video games, HDTV, Starbucks, etc? Maybe the Amish or Haredim, but the vast majority of people hardly want to be constricted this way, or at the very least, they want to choose to be or not be so restricted. To the Amish’ credit, they at least allow their children a choice to stay or go. In these color revolutions, economic stagnation is usually combined with closed politics.

4. Foreign influence can energize these revolts, but not seriously participate. I think there was a W effect and an Obama effect that helped spur these movements. Both presidents spoke meaningfully about democracy (2005 & 2009), and both were followed by outburst of popular enthusiasm. That is a good correlation. Further outside attention can put the regime in the spotlight and so raise the costs a Tiananmen-style repression. But this hardly means it won’t happen. The best we can do is continue to talk about it in the press and keep attention on it. This will give the regime pause. But openly intervening is hard (these places are far way; what exactly would we do?). So part of the blame for the recent Iranian crackdown is the ADD-level attention span of cable news. Michael Jackson saved the mullahs. That’s globalization for ya’.

5. Islamic governance is not inevitable in the Middle East. The ME will always be the home of Islam. But Islamic politics is not the only way. Muslims clearly like more open politics, even if they do then vote for Islamists. Yes, Hamas got elected, and Turkey’s Islamists are reasonably successful. But then these parties must govern. Inevitably, they make mistakes, and in so far as they close politics to criticism, those mistakes will remain unaddressed, pile up, and exacerbate. When they screw up, there will be pressure from below for change. That Muslims vote for Islamist parties does not mean they want to never vote again, or live in an Islamist tyranny. The Iranian clerics confused the two. They saw the mundane rejection of the Shah as an apocalyptic endorsement for Islamic theocracy. So did Hamas. So to will the Islamist in Egypt if they ever tip Mubrarak. The trick is retain democracy while allowing Islamists to run. This is challenging. The US allows anti-systemic parties like nazis and communists to run. Germany, given it history of voting in the Nazis who then prohibited voting ever again, does not. Whether or not to allow parties who want to destroy democracies to run in deomcratic elections is tough question.

Grotesque Misuse of a Korean Victim in the War on Terror

Posted on by
2

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.”

Off to Miguk-Land for a Vacation!

Posted on by
Reply

I won’t be blogging too much. I am off to see my family and lie on the beach and drink cocktails for awhile. I will comment perhaps once a week until I return in the middle of August.

As always, thanks for reading.

REK

Theorizing Russian Decline (Reviewing an IR paper for a Journal)

Posted on by
Reply

A lot of what we do in IR is peer review of others work. This is a useful exercise and displaying an anonymous one on a blog is a good glimpse into what we do. This paper was written about Russian foreign policy toward Korea. For my collected thoughts on Russia, try here.

“1. The English is excellent. Most of the suggestions I made are stylistic not grammatical. Well done. I recommend however, that you follow my edits before you submit. They will make it easier for anglophone reviewers to read. Also, I think the paper is far too long for most journals. Finally, it is unclear to what kind of journal you want to submit this. It feels like you are aiming for a policy journal like the Far East Economic Review, but it is too long for that.

2. I think the paper lacks a concrete thesis to tie it together. It seemed more like a history of Russian SK foreign policy from Gorby to Putin. You introduced realism and IR theory early in the paper, but they never came back. I didn’t find much theoretical connective tissue between the sections, especially between the presidencies, nor any theoretical wrap-up at the end of the paper. I think you need to tell me a theoretical story that all this data about Russian-Korean interaction can explain. For example, the shift in Russian foreign policy toward SK from ideological opposition to pragmatic realism could illustrate the ‘normalization’ of Russian foreign policy. Most states pursue an interest-based foreign policy, but the USSR allowed ideology to dictate alliance picks. By the mid-80s that was no longer sustainable; the percent of global GDP of the Soviet alliance network was half that of the US network. The USSR was losing the Cold War. So a good IR theory story here is the corrosive effects of great power politics on foreign policy ideology. Or you could tell a story about post-imperial foreign policy. How do former empires or superpowers try to restore their influence , respect, or likeability, especially among wary neighbors? Yeltsin tried to be nice to the neighbors after 75 years of belligerence. Putin decided Yeltsin was a wimp, so he has bullied in Eastern Europe (gas-shut offs, Georgia) and spoiled in East Asia (trouble-making in the 6-party process through an informal tilt toward the North).

3. I think you are far too generous and political in your interpretation of Putin’s behavior. Putin has claimed the collapse of the USSR was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th C and that Russia needs to be a respected ‘player’ again, complete with a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and its ‘near abroad.’ This is why EE and former Soviet republics all want to join NATO. I recommend you look at the mainstream western foreign policy literature, like Foreign Affairs, the Economist, Foreign Policy, International Security, or Security Studies. I think you dramatically underrate the strategic value of Russia’s energy diplomacy, the importance of Kremlin control of Russian energy firms, the wariness of states to become Russian energy clients after Georgia, and NK’s extremely erratic behavior (and so the low likelihood of energy or rail projects involving the DPRK). Finally, you didn’t even mention the Georgian invasion. This was the first move the Russian army outside its established borders since the Afghan invasion in 1979. Then as now, the invasion has shifted western attitudes (which means SK and Japan will reconsider too). Putin looks a lot more like a revisionist with semi-hegemonic Russian nationalist aspirations in EE and Central Asia, than a pragmatist looking for investment. How much has the Russian stock market dropped since Georgia?

4. I think your evidence of Putin’s SK diplomacy is weak. Most of the projects in energy and rail you discuss are speculative, not actual, nor do you calculate the impact of the Georgian war on SK’s likelihood to proceed, nor do you account for NK’s behavior on any trans-Korean projects. Also, you don’t provide SK FDI data for the Far East region, which is purportedly the reason that Russia is reaching out to SK. Is there a huge boom of SK investment in Vladivostok or Sakhalin? I don’t believe so. SK-Russian air traffic does not reflect a huge investment boom. My understanding is that most of the investment in Russia’s maritime provinces has been under western oil company and World Bank auspices. The Russian-SK space cooperation is nice, but hardly crucial. Worse, Russian visits to NK have propped up the regime’s international profile, probably making it harder to push for a final status deal with the North. This is not mediating tension, but enabling bad behavior. Russia helped block further UN sanction after the recent missile launch. That is not mediating either, but spoiling. Informal tolerance of NK by Russia (and China) helps NK wriggle free from the punishment of UNSC sanctions, cheat on agreements like the Kaesong deal (now NK wants to change the land rents), etc. Unless the other 5 parties to the 6 party talks close ranks, NK will continue to play one off the other for a better deal. Putin is doing this for the obvious reason that he wants to make life hard for the US, which he sees as a hegemon intent on blocking Russian aspirations. So clouding the issue in Korea is useful way to needle the US and keep it off balance. I don’t believe Putin cares one bit about K unification. The DPRK is a wedge against the US, and SK is a hoped-for investor.”

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

Posted on by
Reply

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)

Posted on by
4

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?