Puzzling Remarks on America's Foreign Policy

Anastasia Karklina

(Image from One Young World)

I read some rather puzzling remarks yesterday in Souad Mekhennet's column for the New York Times, "In Search of Common Ground Over Muslim Dress Codes" (September 20, 2011). Ms. Mekhennet was reporting on a forum held recently in Zurich by One Young World, an organization founded by David Jones and Kate Robertson. This is a nongovernmental organization with the following mantra: "For the first time in history, the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders." I guess this means that the young get to censor it first. Anyway, this forum reportedly "brought together about 1,600 people, mostly under 25, from 190 nations" to discuss common ground among people of all kinds and creeds. Apparently, everyone was happily agreeing on how we can all get along, when the discussion shifted a bit:

[A more conflictual] discussion was initiated by a resident of Latvia who is now studying politics at Duke University in North Carolina. Anastasia Karklina, 19, has most likely passed through enough social upheaval and heard enough pretty words in her life. So this non-Muslim went straight to her point: It was understandable, she said, that participants only wanted to discuss tolerance, and not reality. "In many Western countries," she opined, "the hatred against Islam is being used for justifying the foreign policy, especially in the U.S."

It is no use, she added, to debate war in the name of religion or to urge tolerance, without discussing the double standards in politics.

"How do we want to create an interfaith dialogue if they ban the burqa, discuss the headscarves, don't allow Muslims to build mosques and then even have a preacher who wanted to burn the Koran?" Ms. Karklina asked.

There followed an argument between two Muslims over the niqab -- one in favor of the freedom to wear it, the other in favor of banning it, giving as reason that "It is nowhere mentioned in Islam and does make our religion look bad."

That remark alone is an interesting point that deserves closer attention in light of various other things that make Islam "look bad" and could likewise be banned, but I would prefer to focus on Ms. Karklina's remarks -- which have puzzled me -- and merely pose a few questions:

What examples might be presented as evidence that US foreign policy is being justified by hatred against Islam? The Bosnian intervention that saved Muslims? The Kosovo intervention that saved Muslims? The war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? The war against Saddam Hussein? The support for the Libyan rebels against Muammar Gaddafi?

What "double standard" in politics does she mean? Assisting the 'revolutionaries' in their overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt vs. maintaining distance from the protesters seeking to overthrow Assad in Syria? Should we have the same standard for both cases?

Who is this "they" who want to ban burqas, discuss headscarves, forbid mosques, and have a preacher burn the Koran? Europeans? Americans? The West? That's a rather broad brush with which to paint "they"!

But I don't know, really, whom to blame for my puzzlement, Ms. Karklina for offering a 'censored' history by not being specific enough or Ms. Mekhennet for not reporting more fully due to careless journalism, but perhaps the latter is culpable, for in relating what Ms. Karklina 'opined,' she first identified the nineteen-year-old woman as Lithuanian, before correcting to Latvian through re-editing.

Incidentally, I'm guessing that Ms. Karklina is Latvian Russian based on the name "Anastasia," her Russian language skills, and the fact of Latvia's large Russian minority of 27.4 percent. That could also explain Ms. Karklina's vaguely anti-American remarks since Latvians are otherwise generally pro-American. But I'm merely speculating on this point, and there is, in fact, evidence of rising though diffuse anti-Americanism in Latvia in recent years.

And the source of her anti-Americanism doesn't matter anyway, just the fact of whether she is right or wrong in her views . . .

Saudi Sheikh Wajdi Al-Ghazawi Recalls 9/11 Celebrations

Wajdi Al-Ghazawi

(Image from MEMRI)

Courtesy of MEMRI's Special Dispatch No. 4116 (September 7, 2011), Saudi Sheikh Wajdi Al-Ghazawi, owner of Al-Fajr TV, recalls the popularity of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden after 9/11 and the radicalism of Saudis only a few years ago in a video posted to YouTube on August 4, 2011, the transcript of which can be read in English here:

"When Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were at the height of their might, they were extremely popular in Saudi Arabia. From mosque pulpits across Saudi Arabia, preachers would pray for their success. Moreover, from the pulpits of the most important mosques -- the Al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Nabawi Mosque in Al-Madina -- direct prayers for the success of Al-Qaeda were made, during the days of the bombing of Tora Bora: 'Oh Allah, help our brothers in Afghanistan.' These supplications were made during evening prayers, as well as Friday prayers. The preachers would pray for them, in violation of the ministry's instructions."

Al-Ghazawi implies that the Saudi government was embarrassed by the popular support for an enemy of Saudi Arabia's main ally, the United States. The destruction of the WTC occasioned heartfelt celebrations:

"When the twin towers in New York were attacked, they handed out sweets on the streets of Mecca. By Allah, they did. I witnessed this myself. The young people bowed in prayer and hugged one another out of joy. People were in heaven because of these young men, who 'destroyed America and bombed this idol.' Am I right or not? Was it like that or not?"

Speaking of idols:

"Back then, when the Taliban broke off a piece of the nose of the Buddha statue, which was hewn in the mountain, an entire sermon was dedicated to it in the mosque in Mecca, and the preacher was later reprimanded for this sermon. The entire Saudi people supported and loved Al-Qaeda."

Only a nose? The entire statue is gone. The Saudi government again looked embarrassed, but only when Al-Qaeda turned on the Saudi kingdom itself did the Saudi people begin to change their minds about Al-Qaeda:

"This went on until our brothers in Al-Qaeda -- and I don't know what was going through their minds -- began to carry out operations inside Saudi Arabia. That's when we all raised our hands, and said: 'You've gone too far. We won't support you in this.'"

Sheikh Al-Ghazawi can find out "what was going through their minds" if he reads up on salafi literature and the concept of takfir. That should clarify the relevant issues. But I think that the sheikh already knows "what was going through their minds" and is simply expressing irony at Al-Qaeda's stupid brutality. At any rate, he opposes Islamist radicalism. Saudi Arabia, by the way, wasn't the only Muslim society that revealed positive support for the 9/11 attackers. I recall Egyptians and Palestinians cheering at the news and also handing out sweets. These facts have often been denied, or explained as soccer celebrations, but they happened.

The days that followed 9/11 were a glorious time for anti-Americanism among even non-Muslims. I was a professor at Hanshin University then, and in a master's class that I was teaching to high school instructors, one student told of her leftist husband smiling as he watched the Twin Towers come crashing down. I find that so hard to imagine, smiling broadly while watching hundreds of innocent civilians crushed in the rubble -- and that smile coming even after watching scores of individuals leap from the flaming upper floors to escape being burned alive, only to hurtle hundreds of feet to certain death on the streets and sidewalks below. I'll never forget the report of one witness in the WTC who was on a level just below impact. He was thrown to the floor, but as he stood up and looked through the window to see what had happened, he glimpsed a woman fall past, her face expressing terrified bewilderment as she clutched at the empty air for anything to hold on to. That horrifying image has remained with me these past ten years.

After such knowledge, who can smile at the WTC Towers' collapse except to express a profoundly pathological, heartfelt hatred?

Scott Burgeson on Korea's Anti-Democratic Left

2008 Anti-FTA Protests

(Image from Wikipedia)

Long-time Korea resident Scott Burgeson has published an online article, "A Stranger in Chongno" (hat tip, Robert Koehler), analyzing the anti-democratic character of the Leftist street protests of 2008, which were aimed at reversing the Free Trade Agreement between South Korea and the United States and at bringing down the pro-American Lee Myung-bak administration. Burgeson's explication of the Korean Left's irrational anti-Americanism is particularly persuasive because he himself is on the Left and in fact started out covering the protests as a sympathizer, a position made clear in a letter to the International Herald Tribune (cf. NYT) on June 19, 2008:

As a long-term American resident of South Korea, I have often been perplexed by extreme manifestations of Korean nationalism on both sides of the demilitarized zone. However, I think Philip Bowring missed the mark in 'A potent, troubling nationalism' (Views, June, 16), by overstating the anti-American and nationalistic aspects of protests over resumption of U.S. beef imports in South Korea.

Fears of beef tainted with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE -- while legitimate to a certain extent -- were merely the spark that set off a much wider firestorm across the Korean Peninsula.

In effect, U.S. beef was used as a kind of stealth weapon by opponents of the newly installed president of South Korea, Lee Myung Bak, in order to put a check on his neo-liberal policies, which include the privatization of numerous state companies and services.

Speaking as someone who has attended the protests daily, they are largely about internal Korean politics and social divisions, with nary a whiff of anti-U.S. sentiment to them.

As a regular reader of the IHT and also a long-time resident of Korea paying close attention to the anti-beef protests, my reaction at the time was one of incredulity, and I wondered how Mr. Burgeson could be so blind. Well, eventually, so did he. His article serves the double purpose of explicating not only the Korean Left's unreasonable blindness but also how his own eyes were opened.

Burgeson's article is fascinating but a hard read. Most difficult for many readers will be the liberal sprinkling of Korean expressions throughout the text -- in Korea's own Hangul alphabet! Granted, these are mostly translated in footnotes, but few readers will be able to wade through them without losing patience and giving up. Second in difficulty is the heavily theory-laden character of Burgeson's writing, even somewhat distractingly overtheorized. If you're not up to snuff on critical theory, you'll find his analysis nearly impenetrable. This doesn't mean that his writing is abstract or stilted. Indeed, he has a tough, vigorous style that kept my attention. Personally, I enjoyed much of the theoretical aspect (a quirk of mine) and thought that some of the material on myth worked fairly well -- though I wonder if Benedict Anderson might not have been more relevant than Roland Barthes. Nevertheless, I learned something about Barthes on myth, and that appeals to the historian of ideas in me.

Where Burgeson really stumbles, I think, is in the analogy that he makes between the anti-US beef protests in Korea and the pro-war sentiment in America leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Burgeson finds in both a profound complex of deception and irrationality. I agree that the anti-beef protests were deeply deceptive and irrational, but the pro-war sentiment seems to me to have been fundamentally sincere and rational, which isn't to say that I was pro-war. Let me explain. Even though the chant "Bush Lied, People Died" has become a meme of the Left, I don't think that the Bush Administration did lie about its intelligence on Saddam. Rather, the intelligence was faulty and incomplete, as intelligence often is. The mistaken conclusion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was understandable, for the man acted like he had something to hide. He did in fact have something to hide, to wit, the fact that he had nothing, as Burgeson acknowledges:

Saddam Hussein could not have simply come straight out and admitted in public to having no active WMDs program, since such a naked admission would have left his country dangerously vulnerable to his enemies in the region, Iran most of all.

Absolutely correct . . . in hindsight. That explains why the weapons inspectors could find no hard evidence but simultaneously felt compelled to keep searching. Saddam had nothing, but acted like he had something. Prior to the invasion, the belief that Saddam had WMDs was reasonable and widely held, not just among conservatives, and remained to be disproven. I thought that he had them, though I was also in favor of continuing the weapons inspections and not in favor of invasion to rid Saddam of WMDs unless there were no other choice.

The anti-beef protests, however, were based upon 'evidence' that was demonstrably false at the very moment that the 'evidence' was cited. Belief that US beef posed a high risk of Mad Cow Disease in human beings who ate it was clearly, empirically unreasonable.

Burgeson's analogy thus appears flawed to me. A comparison to the current "Tea Party" has been suggested instead by other readers, citing the widespread "Birther" views among those attracted to its protests (or the belief that Obama is a "Secret Muslim). I suppose that Burgeson's Iraq analogy, however, could serve to establish his street cred among the Korean Left and leave them more open to considering his critique of their irrationality . . . though that same irrationality might preserve them against any rational critique even from others on the Left.

Burgeson's article, as I've noted, is a hard slog, but it's worth the intellectual hike and serves as a manifestation of his basic honesty and willingness to follow pretty much where the facts lead him. He might be rather overstating his case in arguing that the hard Left leading the protests was aiming an an coup d'état (why not a revolution instead?), but he is surely on the mark in noting this Left's undemocratic attempt to bring down the then recently elected Lee Myung-bak government.

Dances with Viperwolves

Avatar

(Image from Wikipedia)

I took my 13-year-old daughter out yesterday afternoon to see the 3-D version of Avatar, also known as Dances with Viperwolves.

The story is already well known (so no need to summarize it here), and the characters are stereotypes (albeit interesting stereotypes with enough complexity to keep one's attention), so the real attraction is the 3-D visuality of a primeval world filled with wild nature of the sort that Kaczynski would surely love and of a motion-capture technique so highly developed that it has even succeeded in capturing and depicting lifelike eyes.

The visual effects were so good that I could almost ignore the attempts at topicality. Almost. I couldn't quite ignore Colonel Miles Quaritch's remark about using "shock and awe" to cow the native tribes of the planet Pandora into submission so that the 'sky people' (i.e., the earthlings) can obtain the mineral 'unobtainium' (as if that were possible!). I mean, in 2154 AD, some hundred and fifty years after the Iraq War, the US military is still using that failed Rumsfeldian expression? As if the military never learns anything about how to deal with counterinsurgency?

Despite the crudity of the anti-American, even anti-Western stereotypes -- especially of ruthless capitalist corporations and brutal military techniques -- I (and my daughter) enjoyed the film and just couldn't help siding with the Na'vi, the local Pandoran tribe that the main character Jake Sully in his avatar form joins.

But I suppose that I and my daughter (Sa-Rah Ahyoga Hwang) aren't entirely Western.

Terroirism Against American Wine

Ineffable Quality?

(NYT Image by Michael Bierut)

Living outside the States over the years inures one to the constant anti-American refrain, and I've become adept at dismissing criticism by simply not reacting. After all, whose mind is going to change?

Well, sometimes mine.

A couple of New York Times articles have pushed me toward admitting that there might be a problem with a lot of American wines -- and not just American ones, by the way, but Australian and other non-European wines as well.

Jim Holt, reviewing Jonathan Nossiter's Liqued Memory: Why Wine Matters, tells us in "The Terroirist" (October 15, 2009) a little about Nossiter's strong views on wine:

Here is what he likes: wines that are low in alcohol and high in "wild, exhilarating acidity"; wines that are light and aromatic; "skanky" wines that are "unpredictable" and "ornery" wines that "provoke an emotion"; wines "fully expressive of a place and its history."

Here is what he hates: rich, fat, sweet, super-concentrated, overripe, jam-dense, high-alcohol, oaky, inky-colored, vanilla-y wines with no sense of place or identity.

And here is why he's angry: since the late 1970s, the wine world has been trending away from the former and toward the latter, in a process of global homogenization that, he claims, is erasing local identity and historical memory.

One of the main culprits, in Nossiter's eyes, is the enormously influential American critic Robert Parker, the so-called "emperor of wine." Parker grades wines from all over the world on a numerical scale of 50 to 100, like in elementary school. Consistently among his highest-scoring wines (which consequently fetch astronomical prices on the international market) are the big, sweet, high-alcohol fruit bombs. Nossiter blames Parker, along with the winemakers and consultants who hew to his judgments, for infantilizing taste by directing it toward "sweet and easy things." Even in France, wines are being made to please an American palate attuned to soft drinks and hard liquor. Nossiter's vendetta against Parker is hair-raisingly comprehensive, taking in everything from the mega-critic's "nonsensical, frequently ungrammatical" tasting notes to his "blandly kitschy suburban home" adorned with autographed pictures of Ronald Reagan, no less.

Nossiter is no stranger to controversy over wine. His 2004 film Mondovino covered some of the same territory as this book, and though I've not seen the film (nor read this book), I think that he has a point, based on what I've heard.

The quality known as "terroir" is real, but it's losing out to "wines with no sense of place or identity" -- as Holt summarizes Nossiter's critique.

I'm taking this criticism more seriously not merely because it comes from Nossiter, an American, but also because it's implicit in another recent wine article, this one by a wine connoisseur, likewise American, whom I regularly read, Eric Asimov.

In "Eat Local; Drink European" (October 19, 2009), Asimov 'wonders' about the ideological consistency of many San Francisco restaurants:

Nobody goes out to dinner in the San Francisco Bay Area to eat food flown in from Europe. Right here is the spiritual center of the Eat Local movement, which has persuasively argued the political, environmental, ethical and culinary benefits of cooking with local ingredients and supporting local agriculture.

San Francisco is also in the heart of the California wine country, with Napa and Sonoma to the north, and the Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey wine regions to the south. Restaurants here that so prominently credit their local food purveyors on their menus no doubt feature local wines loudly and proudly, right?

Not quite. A surprising number of Bay Area restaurants, including many dedicated to cooking with local ingredients, offer wine lists dominated by European bottles.

What gives? Is this hypocrisy pure and simple?

Apparently not . . . or not usually. The reason becomes clear as Asimov asks around and learns why. European wines pair better with the food served in many San Francisco restaurants, especially the ethnic restaurants of the city.

Part of the issue is indeed matching food and wine. Italian restaurants have regional Italian flavors that pair better with Italian wines. California wines bear little resemblance to the Italian originals and thus simply do not fit:

California wines tend to be heavier and more powerful than many European wines. In the judgment of many Bay Area sommeliers, they make for less-than-ideal partners on the table.

Although Asimov and his interlocutors don't use the term, they are talking about the previously noted terroir, that untranslatable French expression defined by Holt as: "the ineffable way that soil, light, topography and microclimate conspire, over generations of human stewardship, to endow a wine with its unique soul . . . . [and offer] a sense of place you can taste."

I'm no wine expert, hardly even an amateur, but I do understand the point and can finally accept that the German girl with whom I shared a wine many years ago simply didn't like 'American' wines, and that her dislike wasn't grounded in anti-American sentiment but in terroir . . . though I suppose that she was, nevertheless, anti-American -- and therefore still an anti-American terroirist.

How 'Iranic': Koreans Protest at Iranian Embassy

South Koreans Protesting Against 'Iran'

Photo by Lee Jae-Won, Reuters

(Image from Yahoo)

I must admit to an error in judgement. On Tuesday the 23rd, I had lunch with my friend Dan Ernst, who teaches philosophy and international relations at Ewha Womans University, and we discussed the demonstrations that were even then going on in Iran. Dan asked me if South Koreans were protesting against the violent and even murderous repression being used by the Iranian government. I laughed and replied:

"Are you kidding? Koreans aren't interested in protesting against Iran. Protests against anything that America does, yes -- for that, Koreans would protest. But this? No, because it has nothing to do with America."

Well, I eat my words. Only two days later, on June 25, South Koreans protested, as the photo above and the passage below make clear:

Activists chant slogans at a rally denouncing what they say is the Iranian government's repression on the people in front of the Iranian embassy in Seoul June 25, 2009. Iranian police and militia have largely succeeded in regaining control of the streets after the biggest anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, touched off by the disputed June 12 presidential election. Some 20 people are reported to have been killed in the demonstrations.

I was touched at this display of Korean solidarity with oppressed Iranians yearning for democracy, and I nearly shed a tear . . . until I looked more closely at a protest sign in English:

The US and Western Governments, the Butchers of Iraqis and Afghans, You Don't Have a Right to Talk About Iran's Democracy

My daughter and wife then looked at a sign in Korean:

이라크 아프간의 학살자: 미국과 서방정부는 이란 민주주의 말할 자격 없다!

With their help, that translates as:

Butchers of Iraqis and Afghans: America and Western Governments Don't Have the Right to Talk About Iran's Democracy!

The writing is far more clear in this JoongAng Daily copy of the photo if you click on it to enlarge:


This clearer copy of the photo (in an even more distinct black and white) appeared in the JoongAng's June 26th issue; otherwise, I might have missed the actual significance of this image showing Koreans demonstrating against the Iranian government, namely, that even this protest is really against the United States . . . well, and against 'Western Governments', too, but since "Western" includes the US, then why does America get such top billing as to be especially singled out? Oh, right, because anything wrong in the world must somehow be America's fault.

Perhaps I need not eat my words just yet . . .

Anti-American 'Beef' Protests Continue

Anti-American Beef Protest

Typical Photo from June Protests

Still Applicable Today

(Image from Brisbane Times)

The Korean 'left' still has a beef with American beef . . . or seems to.

Robert Koehler -- aka "The Marmot" at that online center of expat scuttlebutt The Marmot's 'Watering' Hole -- informs us that Scott Burgeson attended Saturday night's anti-beef protest, which has morphed into a "peaceful defense of South Korean democracy against the Lee Myung-bak dictatorship" (to borrow Robert's ironic manner of expression).

The Reaganite libertarian Robert Koehler and the postmodern leftist Scott Burgeson have rarely agreed on Korean issues but seem to find themselves in surprised agreement on the beef protests. Robert directs us to this post by Scott (aka known as Wang Baeksu [= "King White Hands," or King of the Slackers]), which reveals this about the protest in downtown Seoul:

At around 8pm, about 1,000 protesters had occupied the main intersection at Chonggak so that no cars could go through. After a while, the police opened the street (Chongno) by marching in a forward straight line, but with restraint and without hitting anyone that I could see. For some reason, after about 30 minutes the police decided to retreat, and one large line of police started retreating towards Ch'onggyech'on. Thus, they had left the entire intersection of Chonggak open again to the protesters, without arresting anyone or anything.

As the police were retreating, many protesters started charging at them and actually hitting them with their fists. There was the usual media frenzy, of course, flashes everywhere and whatnot. The most hilarious part was that the protesters were actually shrieking "Violent police!" as they were hitting the police! I thought this was just absurdly ironic and nothing else until I saw that one slight young policeman had been knocked unconscious by the protesters and had to be carried to the sidewalk and laid down. He was out for a while and eventually regained consciousness (volunteer protest medics and other police were attending to him), but couldn't stand up, so after waiting about 15 minutes an ambulance finally came and took him away.

Of course, none of the usual suspects were there to document all this, like Hankyoreh, MBC or KBS. I asked several protesters why they were complaining about the violent police when they were hitting police first, and they all whined, "The police started it!" like third graders. Remember: THE POLICE WERE RETREATING when this poor young guy was KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS!

I couldn't figure out an easy way to leave a message at Scott's website, so I posted a comment at Robert's site:

At Berkeley during protests in the early 80s against apartheid, the hardcore left used to stand at the back of protesting crowds and hurl rocks over the heads of the other protesters to hit the police.

Why?

Why, to foment revolution, of course.

My Berkeley friend Scott Corey, who wrote his thesis on political violence, had watched this sort of behavior on the part of the radical, hardcore left in Berkeley.

Similarly, when we doctoral students were protesting UC Berkeley's decision to rename Teaching Assistants as Graduate Student Employees -- for we were the TAs who would lose bargaining power through that name change -- I listened to one of our organizers complain about the hardcore left trying to infiltrate our ranks and incite violence.

My conclusion was that the radical left's main goal was to exacerbate divisions in society in the interest of class warfare, a point implied in an earlier post of mine, "Lying for the truth," for I quote there from Stephen Koch's long essay, "Lying for the truth: Münzenberg & the Comintern" (The New Criterion, Volume 12, Number 3, November 1993), who says this about the Communist protests 'defending' the two Italian-born American workers and anarchists Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti:

The Communist goal was never to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. Acquittal would have dissolved the whole political point. Katherine Anne Porter, like hundreds of writers and artists of the time, participated in the Boston deathwatch. She reports an exchange with the Comintern agent who was her group leader, Rosa Baron, "a dry, fanatical little woman who wore thick-lensed spectacles over her accusing eyes, a born whiphand, who talked an almost impenetrable jargon of party dogma . . . . I remarked . . . that even then, at that late time, I still hoped the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti could be saved . . . . 'Saved' she said, ringing a change on her favorite answer to political illiteracy, 'who wants them saved? What earthly good would they do us alive?'"

In response to what I'd read, I commented:

Ms. Baron's remark is either the profound cynicism of the nihilist or the deep conviction of the true believer that every deception is permitted in pressing forward toward the utopian 'truth' . . . and maybe both at once.

This same attitude seems to characterize the hardcore Korean left as well.

My Beef about the Protests in Korea: A Rambling Rant

Mad Cow Protest

Neomercantilism in South Korea

(Image from Wikipedia)

I haven't written much about the ongoing Korean protests against American beef on the fear that it contains the prions that cause mad cow disease, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), in cattle and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans.

I didn't want to enter the fray because even though I consider the fears irrational, given the extreme unlikelihood of contracting the disease, I didn't have the energy to collect all the wild, baseless rumors about American beef and look into all of the scientific details that would refute them.

A couple of weeks ago, a student asked me what I thought about the beef protests. I replied that the protests weren't really about American beef but about the left trying to manipulate young people in order to damage Lee Myung-bak and his rightwing policies. I added that since so many middle- and high-school students were protesting, they were likely being urged to do so by their leftwing teachers.

I didn't have any proof of this, but I strongly suspected it, for I know from experience how nationalistic and anti-American the leftist high-school teachers are here in Korea. When I was teaching at Hanshin University, I began teaching an evening class in the fall of 2001 for high-school teachers who were seeking a higher degree in education to enhance their teaching careers, and though I knew nothing of their politics or of the teachers' union and its rigorously leftist views, I soon discovered that many of the high-school teachers in my class were strongly anti-American. I've seen this elsewhere in the world, so I ignored it the way that one learns to ignore static when the radio reception is poor.

However, in the class following the 9/11 attacks, the static became much of the broadcast as several of the high-school teachers in my class expressed open satisfaction at the death and destruction. One woman described with a smile how her own husband, also a teacher, had smiled joyously as he watched the Twin Towers fall.

I listened to all of this without betraying any emotion, for I wanted to see how far this would go. There was talk of the 'American Empire' falling, and several in my class seemed ready to support Bin Laden as the American military geared up for war in Afghanistan.

Some of the teachers disagreed, I should add, arguing that the Al Qaeda attack was unjustified.

Most, however, seemed either to hold viscerally anti-American views -- probably stemming from their experience as protesters during the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, when they blamed the United States for its support of Park -- or to care little that innocent Americans and other foreigners had suffered. Whatever their motives, those with anti-American views appeared hostile to other opinions, so I didn't bother to debate them, but I decided that I would offer a talk on 9/11 sometime in a more-official format, and that decision ultimately bore fruit as a presentation at Hanshin University on the religious roots of 9/11, which I reworked as a published paper: "Striving to Understand 9/11."

Although my Masters class didn't attend, for a year had passed by the time that I gave my talk, which took place on September 11, 2002, the reaction of many in attendance seemed scripted from anti-American positions carved in stone, especially given that this was after a traffic accident in the summer of 2002 in which a US soldier on duty ran over two teenage girls in his tank during military maneuvers because he couldn't see them around the curve as he raced along. Students in middle schools, high schools, and universities, along with the greater Korean left, had protested and spread vicious rumors about the soldier and the US military, calling the soldier a "murderer" and insisting that the 'accident' had been intentional and had been carried out because the US didn't like the leftist policies of President Roh Moo-hyun. I know this personally because that's what one student -- with the agreement of others -- insisted when one of my undergraduate classes wanted to discuss the deaths of the two girls.

From experiences like these with Korean anti-Americanism, I had little taste for arguing over the quality of American beef. I did discuss the issue with my wife, however, and seem to have convinced her that since only three people have died in America from vCJD out of some 300 million Americans, then one has, roughly, only one chance in 100 million of contracting vCJD from American beef -- even assuming that the three who died had contracted the disease from American beef, which they probably did not. I argued that attending the protests against American beef was far, far riskier to one's health than eating American beef. I added that Koreans don't even know if their own, locally produced beef is safer than American beef because they don't test for the disease. But the clincher to my arguments was that American beef is only one-fifth the cost of Korean beef and that many Koreans have to go without beef because they cannot afford the price, but that if American beef were allowed in, these same Koreans could afford beef at a low cost and use their extra money for something else, which would be good for the Korean economy.

"Why are Korean farmers so special?" I asked. "Shouldn't someone be thinking of the Korean consumers, too?"

My wife, being a Korean consumer, suddenly, and fully, agreed with me. I was rather surprised, but it sometimes happens this way.

That's about all that I have to say on the topic, but if you want some logic on American beef, go to Andy Jackson's article, "Rumors, Fear and US Beef," in the Korea Times (6/16/2008), and if you want some information on Korea's anti-American nationalism, go to Philip Bowring's article, "A potent, troubling nationalism," in the International Herald Tribune (6/16/2008).

I just hope that the nationalist emotions don't get out of hand in this country, or we may see more xenophobic attacks of the life-threatening sort that Matt Lamers experienced.

Korean Student Criticizes Corrupt Western Culture

Western Culture

"Corrupting the Globe since 1492"

In the tradition of Oswald Spengler...

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've received a student's late essay -- about three weeks late -- and have just finished marking it with corrections, advice, and an "F" . . . for being so late if for no other reason, but there were other reasons. For instance, what might this title mean?

Elenchus of Using Electric Bracelets for Sex Offenders

Baffled to the bone, I asked for the meaning from the student, who couldn't explain at all, ever an unfavorable sign of disastrous implications.

The online Free Dictionary defines elenchus as "a syllogistic argument that refutes a proposition by proving the direct opposite of its conclusion," so assuming that elenchus hasn't been mistaken for "ankles," I conclude that the student intended to refute the view that such electric bracelets work to reduce the rate of sexual offenses. Perhaps the title should have read:

Refutation of Using Electric Bracelets for Sex Offenders

However, the student's arguments against using electric bracelets are rather broader than a refutation of their effectiveness, for the grammatically challenged thesis statement reads:

Even though a electronic bracelet give some mental stability to many parents of a person under age or women doing guard sex offender, that bracelet should not carry out because it has many problems (like matter of basis materials, over-punishment and double punishment, human right problem, legal propriety and so on) as much as it's benefits.

As I came to understand from the essay's first body paragraph, the expression "like matter of basis materials" refers somewhat obliquely to the ineffectiveness of electronic bracelets in reducing repeated sexual crimes because, claims the student, repeat offenders are rare for this sort of crime. Whether this claim is accurate or not, I have no idea, but it doesn't really address the issue of effectiveness in cutting recidivism.

The other points listed in the thesis statement -- "over-punishment and double punishment, human right[s] problem[s], legal propriety" -- all refer to concepts developed in the Western legal tradition that the student is applying to the Korean criminal code, which itself is derived from the German legal tradition (hence 'Western'), thereby making extremely interesting a claim that appears in the essay's conclusion:

The problem is that as the west culture which is corrupted has overflowed at our societies, sex offends has increased.

Well, that's partly my fault, I suppose, since I'm a Westerner and have 'overflowed' like sewage into Korea's otherwise pristine culture. Or perhaps much like a mad cow, I've stumbled through the open gate of globalization and brought the bad prions of faulty Western thought to infect the minds of my students.

Maybe those thousands of Korean students protesting nightly in Seoul's city streets against importing 'degenerate' American beef are merely acting out a metaphor signifying the rejection of all things Western:

"Don't corrupt our minds!" they're demanding.

But given the mad rumors circulating through Korean society concerning the dangers posed by American beef, I think that the protests are years too late. The collective mind has already been poisoned.

Korean Anti-Americanism?

Comte de Buffon

What's he doing here?

Anti-American Degeneracy Theorist

(Image from Wikipedia)

Let me copy here for your edification a morality tale that I read yesterday about anti-Americanism on a peninsula at the end of a continent:

In the spring of 2001, through a rather absurd set of circumstances, my understanding of Korean anti-Americanism took at great leap forward.

One day, an editor of the New York Times travel section called me and said she needed something in a hurry. They were doing a feature on "farm stays" -- working farms that accommodate visitors who want a taste of the agricultural life -- and were an article short. Could I find such a place in South Korea and write it up pronto?

It didn't sound like my cup of tea, but I promised I'd look into it. Within an hour, I'd located a farm in Gangwon-do that sounded suitable and booked a room for my partner, his brother, and me.

A few days later we were there. High on a remote mountainside, it was the opposite of what Americans think of when they hear the word "farm": this was no patchwork of cornfields stretching to the horizon, but a cluster of small weatherbeaten wooden buildings surrounded by rocky scrubby earth, most of it far from horizontal, on which a few dozen goats and chickens grazed. It was, admittedly, picturesque: our room afforded a spectacular view of the valley and of a steep green mountainside down which narrow waterfalls trickled, like tinsel sparkling.

But the experience was ruined by the proprietor's behavior. Much of the point of a "farm stay" is to watch the farmer farm -- and our farmer obviously hated being in our company, and seemed determined to make his own company as unpleasant as possible. The three of us all came to the same conclusion as to why he was treating us this way, but I'll keep our speculations to myself; suffice it to say that I'd never encountered such incivility on the part of an alleged host. We'd planned to stay two nights but left after one.

Had there been time, I would've found another farm to write up; but since the Times needed something right away, I did what I had to. Though honesty required that I mention the host's conduct, this was a travel article and not an exposé, so I tried to be as positive as possible. I sent the piece in, and it appeared a couple of Sundays later. The next day, South Korea's newspaper of record, The Hankyoreh, ran a story summing it up. Now, what I'd written wasn't remotely newsworthy; the only reason the editors of The Hankyoreh thought otherwise was that South Korea had been mentioned in the New York Times. The attention surprised me.

Even more astonishing was what happened next. The owner of the farm, irked that I'd made a point of mentioning his rudeness, got his revenge by telling reporters that I'd demanded McDonald's hamburgers for dinner instead of that most South Korean of delicacies, Hanwoo steak. Though this was a transparent fabrication (his farm was in the boondocks, far from the nearest golden arches), the South Korean press lapped it up. The story received high-profile coverage all over South Korea and dragged on for days. After somebody at The Hankyoreh tracked down an essay I'd published in a Washington, D.C., policy journal, criticizing various elements of South Korea's statist economy and praising the at least somewhat market-friendly Grand National Party, the newspaper ran an article helpfully explaining that I didn't just hate the farm in Gangwon-do; I hated "pretty much everything about South Korea."

Meanwhile our inhospitable host became an instant folk hero. The next weekend, he was accorded a cozy ten-minute segment on MBC's Sunday evening -- the South Korean equivalent of being profiled on 60 Minutes. By the time the story had run its course, our unpleasant weekend trip had been transformed into a morality play about the threat posed by vulgar American urbanites to cherished native traditions. (Though two of our party of three had been South Koreans, we were referred to by more than one journalist as "the Americans.") I was flabbergasted. But my erstwhile host obviously wasn't: he knew his country; he knew its media; and he'd known, accordingly, that all he needed to do to spin events to his advantage was to breathe that talismanic word, McDonald's.

For me, the episode raised a few questions. Why had the South Korean press paid so much attention to a mere travel article? Why had it then been so eager to repeat a cartoonish lie and obsess over it for days? Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I'd left? Or did they reflect a culture -- or, at least, a media class -- that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions, but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?

This sort of story will sound depressingly familiar to many expats living here in South Korea.

However, the story isn't about South Korea at all. It's about an experience that Bruce Bawer had in Norway and recounts in pages 96-97 of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Another, shorter version of the story can be found online, in Bawer's article "Hating America," HudsonReview.com, Vol. LX, No. 3: Autumn 2007.

Here's the code for deciphering the story posted above: Korean = European; South Korea = Norway; Gangwon-do = Telemark; The Hankyoreh = Aftenposten; Hanwoo (i.e., Korean beef) = reindeer; South Korean = Norwegian; Grand National Party = Conservative Party; and MBC = NRK.

Many of the American expats that I meet in South Korea have never lived elsewhere abroad. They therefore experience culture shock and anti-Americanism for the first time and conclude that South Korea is uniquely hostile to America, but we see that Bruce Bawer's "morality play" recounts an experience eerily similar to one that an American expat could easily have here in Korea.

Or elsewhere in the world.

In addition to living here in South Korea, I have lived in Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Israel, and -- of course -- the Democratic People's Republic of Berkeley, so I'm quite familar with the anti-Americanism of other lands.

Korean anti-Americanism merely fits into a common, easily recognizable pattern, so I didn't let it rile me much when I first encountered it since I'd already experienced the European (and Berzerkeleyan) variety.

Anti-Americanism in Korea

The Host

Anti-American Film?

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some of you may recall that my friend Kim Myongsob and I co-presented a paper, "The Two Koreas and the Clash of Civilizations in East Asia," at the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Korean Association of International Studies in Seoul, May 12-13, 2006.

For those interested in reading a bit on Myongsob's views, see an article published by him in yesterday's Korea Herald: "Anti-Americanism: Two faces of one coin?" (August 17, 2006). The title strikes me as a bit obscure -- anti-Americanism on each side of the coin? Or "anti" on one side and "Americanism" on the other? The article, however, clears the point up:

[T]here has been a general tendency to see South Korean nationalism and anti-Americanism as two faces of one coin.

Interestingly, Myongsob's own scholarly work suggests the opposite:

Contrary to this widespread [two-faces-of-one-coin] hypothesis, however, a nationwide survey that the author has conducted with Dr. Choi Jun-young (from March 7 to March 19 in 2005) indicates that South Korean nationalism based on enhanced national self-esteem increases trust in the United States and may contribute to attenuating anti-Americanism in South Korea.

This point, plus a number of related ones, will also be noted in the published version of our KAIS paper, which will appear in an upcoming issue of the Korea Observer ... some time in October, I think.

For those of you concerned with the current state of the American-Korean alliance, take note that Myongsob's Korea Herald article is the second in a 14-part series dealing with Korea-U.S. relations, and this looks to be a very interesting set of reports by various scholars.

By the way, yesterday's Herald also contained a related article by Jasper S. Kim: "How superpowers might treat Korea" (August 17, 2006). Remarking on the popularity of the anti-American film The Host (Gwoemul), in which a monster (괴물) spawned in the Han River by U.S. military base pollution attacks Koreans, Kim notes the current "wave of anti-Americanism" rolling across Korea and engages in a bit of counterfactual thinking in hopes of countering this wave more successfully than British King Canute countered the waves of the English Channel. Kim suggests that we imagine an East Asia in which some nation other than the U.S. (e.g., Japan or China) had dominated the Korean peninsula in the latter half of the 20th century. His point is to argue that

... relative to other possible superpowers, the United States is a relatively benign (yet robust) superpower, and thus, should be given its due respect for not exercising its might and will upon other nations, including Korea, as other superpowers probably would have chosen to do.

Kim then drives this point toward his conclusion that "anti-Americanism [is] really [not] what would benefit Korea's national interests" because driving the American's out of Korea might be tantamount to inviting somebody else in.

And that 'somebody else' might be the real monster (괴물).