In a new book, David Straub explains why massive anti-American protests erupted across South Korea in 2002 and considers whether it could happen again.
South Korea is often seen as a pro-American ally, a model country that went from a poor, postwar nation into a maturing democracy in just four short decades.
But despite a historic alliance between South Korea and the United States, anti-Americanism flared throughout the Asian nation between 1999-2002 when a series of events and longstanding tensions aligned, according to Stanford researcher David Straub.
“It was a sort of venting of steam,” said Straub, an associate director at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
“Many Koreans at the time were grossly overinterpreting issues and incidents involving the United States. And this was because they were viewing the U.S.-Korea relationship through a lens of historic victimization by other nations, including the United States,” he added.
Straub, who held a thirty-year diplomatic career in the State Department, headed the political section of the American embassy in Seoul during those years and was deeply involved in managing problems in the bilateral relationship.
Boiling point
Since the end of the Korean War, the United States Forces Korea (USFK) has been stationed in Seoul – now about 28,500 uniformed personnel.
In June 2002, a USFK vehicle struck two Korean students in a tragic accident. In December of that same year, after a U.S. court martial found the drivers of the vehicle not guilty of wrongdoing, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Seoul and other major Korean cities. Not only did activists partake but ordinary citizens too, he said.
Straub said the South Korean public had been “unintentionally primed” for such a reaction to the USFK traffic accident; it was the “spark that lit the firestorm” after years of escalation. A series of events led-up to the mass protests, they included:
Asymmetry of attention
Straub said the shaping of Koreans’ views of Americans and fanning of tensions could be attributed in part to an “asymmetry of attention” on the part of the Korean and American publics to the U.S.-Korean relationship.
While the Korean public put tremendous focus on U.S.-Korean relations and the presence of U.S. military personnel in Korea, the American public was unaware of Korean attitudes and feelings, he said.
Similarly during the 1999-2002 period, Korean media reported hypercritical views of the United States and USFK, while the American media paid far less attention.
In negotiating with U.S. officials, South Korean officials would often allude to strong Korean public opinion and demand U.S. concessions. With no American public opinion on Korea issues to point to, U.S. officials were at a major disadvantage, Straub said.
U.S. officials would sometimes note opinions shared by members of Congress, he said, “however, for Korean officials, those claims weren’t as powerful as having a social movement literally on the front doorstep.”
In plain terms, the United States is much larger than South Korea. This very imbalance – which translates to military and economic power – added to Koreans’ assumption that they were “getting the worse end of the bargain,” he added.
“Most Koreans saw Korea as a victim of great powers,” Straub said. “It’s not just the media. It’s more than that, it was – and still is – a shared national narrative.”
Koreans’ sense of national vulnerability is magnified by their historic victimization to neighbors. South Koreans do not want to become a de facto tributary state of China or a colony of Japan again, he said.
Will anti-Americanism return?
USFK incidents were a main focus of Korean attention during the 1999-2002 period, and while there is always a possibility of problems arising, the intensity is gone now, Straub said.
“Some steam is under the lid again,” Straub said. “But I don’t think it’s nearly at the level like it was back then. I’m doubtful that we’d see an exact repeat.”
The media landscape in South Korea has improved and shifted away from its earlier position of “criticize the United States first and ask questions later,” Straub said.
Today, South Korea and the United States are in good standing at the government-level and among the people. President Obama and Korean President Park Geun-hye have an established rapport.
What troubles Koreans now is North Korea, a Japan focused on collective defense, and the strategic rivalry between the United States and China and its possible implications for Korea, he said.
“South Korea being sandwiched between the United States and China – based on a perception that China is going to be the world’s dominant power – is a real worry for many Koreans,” Straub said, and a large number of Koreans – albeit still a minority – feel that their country must find a more equidistant ground between the two.
Most Koreans, however, still believe in the need for the continued presence of USFK personnel, at least for the time being, said Straub, and must be reassured of their strategic alliance with the United States.
Obama and Park are expected to meet in Washington in mid-October, and Straub said it will be used as an opportunity for both sides to reinforce the importance they attach to the alliance and to pressing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.
Links to related articles
NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism dwindles, but roots remain: diplomat
NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism: a thing of the past?
Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, July 2015
Asia Times: American faces Seoul court over infamous unsolved murder
In an NK News' series of interviews with a panel of U.S. experts on North Korea policy, David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program and former State Department Korea director, analyzes the U.S. approach toward Pyongyang. With NK News' permission, downloadable PDF versions of the interviews are available below.
The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Japan Program with the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies (FSI) as well as the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and the Stanford Department of Economics will be hosting a memorial conference and service on December 4th and 5th in honor of the late Masahiko Aoki. December 4th will be a full day conference featuring topics within Masa's extensive field of study and research including theoretical and applied economics, theory of institutions, corporate architecture and governance, and the Japanese and Chinese economies. The day will culminate with a cocktail reception. The Celebration of Life on December 5th will be a gathering for family and friends in remembrance of Masa with a light lunch reception to follow.
December 4, 2015
Memorial Conference
Agenda
8:30am - 8:50am Breakfast & Registration
8:50am - 9:00am Welcome Remarks: Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
9:00am - 9:30am Kenneth Arrow (Stanford University), “The Role of Organizational Structure in the Economy”
9:30am - 10:00am Paul Milgrom (Stanford University), "Designing the US Incentive Auction"
10:00am - 10:30am Break
10:30am - 11:00am Koichi Hamada, Yale University, “Masahiko Aoki: A Social Scientist"
11:00am - 11:30am Kotaro Suzumura (Hitotsubashi University), “Masahiko Aoki (1938-2015): Recollections of his Pilgrimage and Legacy in Japan”
11:30am - 12:00pm Yingyi Qian (Tsinghua University), "Masahiko Aoki and China"
12:00pm - 1:15pm Lunch
1:15pm - 1:45pm Jiahua Che (Chinese University of Hong Kong) presenting Masahiko Aoki's
"Three-person game of institutional resilience vc transition: A model and
China-Japan comparative history"
1:45pm - 2:15pm Miguel Angel Garcia Cestona (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), "Corporate Governance and Employee Participation: some lessons from Mondragon"
2:15pm - 2:45pm Herbert Gintis (Santa Fe Institute), "General Social Equilibrium and its Dynamics"
2:45pm - 3:15pm Break
3:15pm - 3:45pm Dale Jorgenson (Harvard University), "
3:45pm - 4:15pm Avner Greif (Stanford University), "Comparative Institutional Analysis: China and Europe Compared"
4:15pm - 4:45pm Francis Fukuyama (Stanford University), "Asian Kinship, Industrial Structure, and Trust in Government"
4:45pm - 5:00pm Closing, Takeo Hoshi (Stanford University)
5:00pm - 6:00pm Cocktail Reception
*Agenda is subject to change and will be updated as speakers are confirmed
December 5, 2015
Celebration of Life
Agenda
10:30am - 11:00am Registration
11:00am - 12:00pm Celebration of Life
12:00pm - 1:30pm Lunch Reception
Jeremy Weinstein
His research focuses on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge University Press), which received the William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. He is also the co-author of Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action (Russell Sage Foundation), which received the Gregory Luebbert Award for the best book in comparative politics. He has published articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Journal of Democracy, World Policy Journal, and the SAIS Review.
Weinstein received the International Studies Association’s Karl Deutsch Award in 2013. The award is given to a scholar younger than 40 or within 10 years of earning a Ph.D. who has made the most significant contribution to the study of international relations. He also received the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford in 2007.
He has also worked at the highest levels of government on major foreign policy and national security challenges, engaging in both global diplomacy and national policy-making. Between 2013 and 2015, Weinstein served as the Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and before that as the Chief of Staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. As Deputy, Weinstein was a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee – the sub-cabinet policy committee with primary responsibility for advising the National Security Council, the Cabinet, and the President on the full range of foreign policy issues, including global counterterrorism, nonproliferation, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the strategic rebalance to Asia, cyber threats, among a wide variety of other issues.
During President Obama’s first term, he served as Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House between 2009 and 2011. In this capacity, he played a key role in the National Security Council’s work on global development, democracy and human rights, and anti-corruption, with a global portfolio. Before joining the White House staff, Weinstein served as an advisor to the Obama campaign and, during the transition, as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.
Weinstein obtained a BA with high honors from Swarthmore College, and an MA and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on a number of non-profit boards and advisory groups.
Booseung Chang joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2015-16 year. His research interests span comparative foreign policy and policymaking process.
Currently, he is working on two projects. One deals with application of game-theoretic approaches to the inter-Korean relations. Specifically, he is interested in how the tools of the game theory can contribute to the improvement of the cooperation as well as the security in the Korean peninsula. The topic of the other article will be the change of Japanese foreign policy. The goal of this article is to shed light on the implications of the recent change in Japanese security-related laws and to measure its domestic, regional, and global impact.
His dissertation, which he seeks to build upon, is titled “The Sources of Japanese Conduct: Asymmetric Security Dependence, Role Conceptions, and the Reactive Behavior in response to U.S. Demands.” It is a qualitative comparative case study of how key U.S. allies in Asia – namely Japan and South Korea – and major powers in Europe - the United Kingdom and France - responded to the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.
Chang completed his doctorate in political science from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in 2014.
Before joining the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, he worked for the South Korean Foreign Service for 15 years between 2000 and 2015. During the service, he mostly worked on Northeast Asian affairs including the North Korean nuclear issue. He spent three years in the embassy in Beijing and two and a half years in the consulate general in Vladivostok.
The fourteenth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held Stanford University on June 25, 2015, convened senior South Korean and American policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss North Korea policy and recent developments on the Korean Peninsula. Hosted by the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Forum is also supported by the Korea National Diplomatic Academy.
Straub, a Korean-speaking senior American diplomat in Seoul at the time, reviews the complicated history of the United States’ relationship with Korea and offers case studies of Korean anti-American incidents during the period that make clear why the outburst occurred, how close it came to undermining the United States’ alliance with Korea, and whether it could happen again.
David Straub has been associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2008, following a thirty-year diplomatic career focused on U.S. relations with Korea and Japan.
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No longer in residence.
David Straub was named associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) on July 1, 2008. Prior to that he was a 2007–08 Pantech Fellow at the Center. Straub is the author of the book, Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, published in 2015.
An educator and commentator on current Northeast Asian affairs, Straub retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. Department of State senior foreign service officer after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.
Straub served as head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 during popular protests against the United States, and he played a key working-level role in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program as the State Department's Korea country desk director from 2002 to 2004. He also served eight years at the U.S. embassy in Japan. His final assignment was as the State Department's Japan country desk director from 2004 to 2006, when he was co-leader of the U.S. delegation to talks with Japan on the realignment of the U.S.-Japan alliance and of U.S. military bases in Japan.
After leaving the Department of State, Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in the fall of 2006 and at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University in spring 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations. His foreign languages are Korean, Japanese, and German.
In this talk, Wellington Shih will provide a historical and legal overview of the Republic of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. He will also review the latest developments in the ongoing dispute between the People’s Republic of China, the ROC on Taiwan, and other claimants in the region, including the Philippines, and discuss the South China Sea Peace Initiative proposed by the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou.
Writing for the National Bureau of Asian Research, Daniel Sneider examines Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent attempts to revise Japan’s defense guidelines. He considers how these attempts may affect the Japanese domestic political landscape and the implications that Abe’s actions may have for key issues in the U.S.-Japan alliance, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and U.S. military interests in Okinawa.