BY SUKI KIMMAY 8, 2017
When I returned to the United States recently after a few weeks in Seoul, I was surprised to find Americans in a state of panic about North Korea. Some of this came, as usual, from Pyongyang’s own dramatic language, designed to instill fear. But this time the warmongering was also coming from Washington. Back in South Korea, however, the public was more concerned with America’s antics than with the North’s. A once triangular relationship, where Seoul and Washington were joined together against Pyongyang, is degenerating into two antagonisms: the United States versus North Korea and the United States versus South Korea.
It’s hard to be a midsized country stuck between great powers — a shrimp between whales, as Koreans sometimes call their nation. Historically, that meant dealing with the vast cultural and military weight of the Middle Kingdom and the imperial ambitions of the Mongols and the Japanese; in recent decades, it has meant a complicated positioning among China, Russia, and the biggest (if furthest away) leviathan yet, the United States. But one of the fiercest reactions has been the development of a keen sense of national pride. Koreans don’t forget — or forgive — when it comes to hearing their country being put down.
That’s why it came as such a bite when U.S. President Donald Trump, in a typically careless comment, claimed that he had learned from Chinese President Xi Jinping that “Korea actually used to be a part of China.” The South Korean Foreign Ministry took about a week before officially correcting Trump’s false claim, dismissing it as “not worthy of a response.” Sino-Korean relations have ranged from amity to diplomatic submission to fierce wars of resistance, but Korea was never ruled by China. But Trump followed up his historical blunder by more present insults: a threat to terminate the free trade agreement with South Korea, which Trump called “horrible,” and a demand that South Korea pay for THAAD, the American anti-ballistic missile defense system, reversing the previous agreement.
The repeated snubs hit a raw spot during the South Korean presidential debates, counting down to the May 9 election. Social media has been buzzing with outrage over America’s gapjil (bossy bullying), which treats Koreans as a hogu (pushover). Trump’s insults came on the heels of the past five months of protests that led to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye. Park was the daughter of another former president and thus the closest thing to royalty in modern South Korea. Her fall was a revolt against bullying by the rich and powerful — like Trump.
The first foreign dignitary to be invited by the Trump administration was Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, a country still loathed by many South Koreans for its brutal almost four-decade occupation of their homeland.
But the distaste for Trump’s bullying is compounded by long-standing anti-American feelings. South Koreans have always been deeply ambivalent about the U.S. troop presence in their country, and there are regular protests outside military bases. That can sometimes peak violently, as in 2002 when U.S. troops on maneuver accidentally ran over two 14-year-old girls and an American military court acquitted them of any wrongdoing. Between THAAD and Trump, another of these periods may be coming.
But Koreans are not intrinsically any friendlier toward China than the United States. Before America, it was China that insulted, patronized, and frequently intervened on the peninsula. And Sino-Korean online fights over history and culture are as common as rants about America are.
要するに、韓国は日本も中国もアメリカも大嫌いだ、侮辱するな！と。
因みに、
I was surprised to find Americans in a state of panic about North Korea.
韓国からアメリカに行ったら、アメリカもパニックっていたのに驚いた、とーーてか、韓国呑気すぎでしょう。
アメリカに届く核兵器なんか作るから、おれらやっちゃうぞ、とアメリカは言っていて、トランプ政権と北朝鮮政権のやりとりをみていて危機感がないとしたらそっちのほうがおかしいだろう？
