How to fight a winning war:
find ammunition that doesn't run out...
I added an important note to this page on the right - this page was first written in the early fall 2002.
The reason you find the name "Green Korea" so often on this site, or read the same civic groups quoted ad nausea in the Korean press, or see the same faces in many of the protest pictures, is they are part of the core group of Koreans that keep the hate alive even in the lulls between spikes in demonstrated anti-Americanism.
(A "spike" comes in two forms: one where more and more "average Koreans", who normally focus on the daily needs of their family, will decide it is a good time to join in street demonstrations or other forms of protest against the US in Korea and the other form being simply when the amount of press coverage the dedicated anti-US elements are able to stir up will lead a large chunk of the society to create a "buzz" around the office water-cooler or over drinks with friends and co-workers and relatives --- about how - yet again - the US is being such a cancer on their society).
As I will
point out time and time again, The Process in Korea is about maintaining
an acceptable
level of ill-will for USFK and the US position with Korea month to month, year after year.
Then when the society is in the right mood and the right "issue" or event
arises (again) - to draw much from this well of bad blood in rapid order.
These sharp "spikes" in demonstrated anti-US attitudes are a key part of the pattern of maintaining Korean nationalism.
The most important thing to
remember is that these spikes -- whether the issue is a brutal murder by
an American soldier or a minor environmental infraction -- are possible only
because anti-US thought is cultivated routinely and frequently, through
various social institutions like the press and education, within a vast majority of Korean
society.
The Environment -- has
become one of the best tools in the cultivation.
The Environment is also a very
handy tool for the expats to point out to others who have never lived in
Korea to explain how it all works, because it shows the depths of the hypocritical nature the Koreans throw at the American military and
government.
I have put together a couple of reviews of two of the
minor uses of The Environment.
Camp
Eagle
Camp
Long
Then, I did a long review of the infamous 2000 Water
Dumping incident that even had non-American expats in Korea scratching
their heads and becoming irritated at the mind-boggling double standard
and fury expressed by the whole of Korean society.
2000
Water Dumping
(Editor's note in fall 2003 - one year after the initial
writing:
Green Korea first made it big in 2000 with the water
dumping case, and it was mainly an anti American group. It did
not investigate the Korean military or corporations instead just
looking at USFK and places like the US Embassy.
It seems from
looking at their site recently, they have branched out to cover more
issues, though I didn't find attacks on Hyundai or Daewoo
or others besides those on the Korean government and the condition of
rivers and lakes and woods and such in general. It has also cleaned
up its earlier Eng. language sites that too clearly showed their bias
and how it connected more to xenophobia than it did to any real difference
between the actions of USFK and other elements of Korean
society.
Keep in mind as well that Green Korea is an umbrella group
with too many loosely connected civic organizations to
count.
What seems to have happened is that more non totally dedicated to
anti Americanism local groups have joined to add their
information.
Teaching in
Korean
elementary schools how
the US is
destroying
the
world.
