KNOWING what to be scared of is, sadly, a skill we all need. But South Koreans seem a bit confused about this, judging from what’s making waves in Seoul right now.
First, the real world. Last week, the semiofficial Yonhap news agency raised the alarm about a new report on North Korea’s missile threat compiled by a researcher at a foreign ministry think tank called the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. According to the author, Yun Deok-min, the July 4 missile tests that caused an international furor were just part of a major expansion of Kim Jong-il’s capacity to menace his neighbors. All along its east coast, the report noted, North Korea is building underground missile bases and silos.
As the geography suggests, the main target is Japan, including American military bases there. Mr. Yun claimed that some 200 Rodong missiles (with a range of up to 1,300 miles, enough to reach anywhere in Japan) and 50 SSN-6 missiles (range of up to 2,500 miles) are already in place. Two new bases under construction in the northeastern part of the country are thought to be for the Taepodong-2, a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, which in theory could reach Alaska (although the July 4 test was, fortunately, pretty much a flop).
Lest South Koreans feel left out, the Dear Leader has not forgotten them. The report indicated that about 600 short-range Scud missiles are based just 30 miles north of the paradoxically named demilitarized zone and aimed at all of South Korea’s strategic targets and industrial complexes. That’s on top of 11,200 artillery pieces, some apparently outfitted with chemical shells, ever ready to pulverize greater Seoul and its 20 million inhabitants.
So are South Koreans scared of the menace to the north? Nope. It’s summer, and they are going to the movies in droves ― to scare themselves about something quite different.
“Guimul” (“The Host”) is a monster movie, and a monster hit, drawing a record audience of 6 million ― equivalent to one in eight South Koreans ― in its first 11 days. It’s about a child-snatching mutant that rears up into Seoul out of the Han River, spawned by toxic fluid carelessly discharged from ― guess where ― an American military base.
Harmless fiction? Not quite. The director, Bong Joon-ho, says he based it on an incident in 2000 when a mortician with the United States military was arrested over a discharge of formaldehyde. Though the incident was regrettable, the uproar it created was out of proportion. There was no lasting pollution, much less any monsters.
But the theme rumbles on. The United States is returning 59 military bases to South Korea, which has complained that many have unacceptable soil pollution (Washington says it’s being held to an unfair standard). The allies have been wrangling for two years about who will clean up.
Now environmental groups and anti-American partisans are milking “Guimul” for political gain, and the minister of the environment, Lee Chi-beom, says he is worried that the sentiments spurred by the movie could make it harder to reach any agreement on the bases.
There are echoes here of a 2002 case in which a United States military truck killed two schoolgirls on a narrow country road. The driver’s acquittal by a court-martial led to weeks of protests and were a major factor in the election of President Roh Moo-hyun, who let it be known that he would not “kowtow” to Washington.
While the accident was a tragedy, one had to wonder why it could incite so many South Koreans to take to the streets while the daily death toll of North Korean children from famine and conditions in Mr. Kim’s gulags sparked no such protests.
To an outsider, South Koreans seem to have a double standard in terms of threat perceptions. Having been fed propaganda for years by military regimes that painted North Korea as an evil monster poised to devour them, they now seem to dismiss even factual claims as cold war scare stories.
Many of them see North Korea as a slightly delinquent brother who needs to be cajoled into better manners. China, too, is viewed more positively than it is by most of its other neighbors. By contrast, American motives tend to be suspect, and wicked Japan can do nothing right. (The Roh administration’s first reaction to the North’s missile tests was not to condemn Mr. Kim but to criticize Japan for making “such a fuss.”)
It’s not self-evident, to say the least, that this perceived hierarchy of threats is in South Korea’s true national interest. Without reviving the old knee-jerk demonization of North Korea, South Koreans might at least be given pause by the foreign ministry report that says the regime “has made all-out efforts to bolster asymmetrical strengths at a time when millions of its people have died of hunger.”
I suppose we shouldn’t begrudge either South Koreans’ yearning for national reconciliation or their summer thrills. But maybe theycould think a little more deeply about where the real monsters are.
Aidan Foster-Carter is an honorary senior research fellow on Korea at Leeds University.
