The continuing protests here in South Korea are receiving increasing coverage in the international press, including this op-ed
piece by Philip Bowring in the June 16th edition of the International Herald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/16/opinion/edbowring.php
The title itself, "A Potent, Troubling Nationalism," should be enough to indicate that he is either confused or spinning in entirely
the wrong direction, and so I sent off the following letter to the paper's editors over in Paris, France:
"As a long-term US resident of South Korea, I have often been perplexed by certain extreme manifestations of Korean nationalism
on both sides of the DMZ; however, I do think Philip Bowring has somewhat missed the mark in "A Potent, Troubling Nationalism"
(16 June, 2008), where he overstates the anti-US and nationalistic aspects of the continuing protests over resumption of US beef
imports in South Korea. Fears of BSE-tainted US beef, while legitimate to a certain extent, were merely the spark that set off a
much wider firestorm across the Korean Peninsula; in effect, US beef was used as a kind of stealth WMD by opponents of the
newly installed Lee Myung-bak administration, in order to put a check on his various neoliberal policies (including privatization
of numerous state companies and services). Thus, to an outside observer like Bowring (whose byline indicates filing from Hong
Kong), the protests may seem to be anti-US, but 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-US sentiment to them. For someone often so critical
of nationalism, perhaps Bowring might want to be more careful the next time he tries to view a complex social phenomenon
through a narrow nationalistic lens?"
-- J. Scott Burgeson
Seoul, ROK
For your viewing pleasure. |
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More Mad Cow Madness: A Letter to the IHT 
[re] More Mad Cow Madness: A Letter to the IHT 
