Posted on 07/12/2011 6:56:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
South Korea has joined the only other two countries in the world that have dropped the name of the forthcoming film Captain America and replaced it with the subtitle, The First Avenger. The other two countries are Russia and Ukraine. According to the New York Times, “Although that country [South Korea] is one of Hollywood’s top-performing territories, resentment about the continued presence of the United States military runs deep.”
For years now I have intended to write a column about the most glaring case of international ingratitude of which I am aware. The Captain America story has finally pushed me over the edge.
For decades, there have been anti–U.S. demonstrations in South Korea. And each time I wonder the same thing: Do these people have any idea what that living hell known as North Korea is like? Do these people understand that the United States is the reason they are so free and prosperous, completely unlike their fellow Koreans who had the horrible luck not to be liberated by America? Do these people know how many Americans died to enable them to be free?
Whenever I confront someone who claims that America’s wars abroad were fought for economic gain or to extend its alleged imperialist empire, I ask the person about the Korean War: What imperialist or economic reasons were there to fight in that country?
The answer I most often receive is, “Frankly I don’t know too much about the Korean War.” And it’s a good thing for the critics of America’s wars that they don’t know much about the Korean War. If they did, they would either experience cognitive dissonance or have to severely modify their position on America.
Just five years after a war-weary America celebrated the end of World War II, Americans were asked to fight the successor evil to Nazism — Communism — in Korea, a country most Americans could not identify on a map. In an earlier version of what happened in Vietnam, the Soviet Union and China backed a Communist attempt to take over the southern half of the Korean peninsula — the northern half had been Communist since the end of World War II — and install a Stalinist tyranny over the non-Communist southern half.
Over 36,000 Americans died in America’s successful attempt to keep South Korea from becoming Communist. And another 92,000 were wounded.
So, forgive me for the contempt I feel for South Koreans who demonstrate against the United States and for the two-thirds of South Koreans who, according to a 2002 Gallup-Korea poll, view the United States unfavorably. Whenever I see those anti-American demonstrators or read such polls, all I can think about are the tens of thousands of Americans who died so that South Koreans would not live in the Communist hell their fellow Koreans live in.
Younger South Koreans want American troops to leave their country? Do these young people not know that on planet earth no other country suffers the mass enslavement, mass incarceration, mass death, or the deadening of the mind and soul that North Koreans endure because of the psychopaths who run that country?
And if they do know all this about North Korea, how do they explain why South Korea is so different?
Here is a suggestion: The South Korean government should conduct a national plebiscite on whether America should withdraw its troops from that country. Before the South Korean people vote, the United States should make it clear that if it withdraws its troops and North Korea later invades the south, we will send no troops to die again for South Korea; but we will vote to condemn North Korea’s aggression at the U.N.
If a majority of the South Korean people want us to leave, we should.
The beauty of such a plebiscite is that if a majority of the South Korean people wants American troops out, we have no moral obligation to stay there. And if a majority wants us to stay, the South Korean Left and other ingrates in that country should shut up.
I have been to South Korea and I live in a community with many Koreans. I have always admired their industriousness, work ethic, and strong families. But South Korea is surely the most ungrateful country in the world. And that is all the more remarkable — because it is also the luckiest.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist.
No good deed goes unpunished.
;)
South Korea will eventually be in the Chinese sphere of influence once they make a deal on what to do about the North.
Thoughts?
Yeah North Korea and China would be only too happy to absorb the economic plum that is South Korea.
Well they may well learn the lesson of the Vietnamese.
The South Vietnamese, after the war, called the Russians “Americans without money”.
South Korea ran something like a 300% duty on US cars until they got their auto industry running. Ungrateful merchantilists like the rest of Asia.
50+ years later and we are still there protecting them? I think during 50 years they could build their own military and stop relying on welfare from the US. We need to bring our troops home and stop spending that money.
Japan can make sure they stay on their God forsaken penninsula.
What an excellent (and yet alarming) column. Thank you for posting it.
I have to admit that I had no idea how badly many South Koreans think of our military.
Do they really think their military alone could stop a North Korean invasion? Do their think of our military as an “occupying force”? Do they have any idea just how bad things are in North Korea and do they understand that they’ll end up just like the millions of other North Koreans - starved and oppressed?
I think Prager’s idea is a great one. South Korea ought to hold a national plebiscite based on only one thing - do you want us to leave, Yes or No?
American troops and machines are defending the ROK.
And we’re borrowing the money from them to do it. Along with borrowed money from China, etc.
Madness.
That's the truth and there's no reason anymore for to spend the manpower and the money to maintain the DMZ. Let them defend it themselves. In these times of budget difficulty the left keeps demanding spending cuts from the DOD...that's a good place to start.
That's the truth and there's no reason anymore for to spend the manpower and the money to maintain the DMZ. Let them defend it themselves. In these times of budget difficulty the left keeps demanding spending cuts from the DOD...that's a good place to start.
We are in S.K. not for the Koreans but for the Japanesse. Defense of Japan starts in S.K.
I love Dennis Praeger but I can’t believe he wrote such an irresponsible article.
South Korea is now facing down the North with MORE resolve than the Obama administration favors.
In any war, South Korea will be ravaged. They are an incredibly important front against North Korea and Communist China.
It’s only natural that long periods of foreign troops on these nations’ territory leads to resentment. The Japanese want us out at least as badly, and they have been far less committed to their own defense. Has Praeger ever heard of how they hate us in Okinawa? Should we abandon japan?
A gross overreaction to a story about a movie title in South Korea.
According to defectors connected to the NK government:
In the 1990’s, the North determined that they could no longer defeat South Korea in a war. They simply don’t have the military infrastructure to pull it off. They can’t even perform large-scale exercises anymore. They also cannot trust their soldiers to get past the first grocery store.
And yes of course it’s sickening that South Korean and other nations’ leftists are as suicidal as our own. The left has always been the enemy of every nation it infests.
The ROK doesn’t need US troops to defend itself. It has something like 20X the economy of the Norks. Their defense industry is a world leader. Their economy is in better shape than ours. They have plenty of healthy young men to serve in their military, far more than the north.
The American troops are there purely as a political “trip wire.”
If it happens it won’t be by military conquest. It’ll be a reverse of what happened in Germany. The younger generation there appears to be that clueless.
South Korea is profitable because they do not have to spend any money on defense. We provide it for them. In return, they dump their crappy Hyundais in our market and the sheep by them.
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