Throughout The Korean War by Bruce Cumings, I was struck by how repeatedly it was said that America was largely blind to the reality of what the Korean War was about. This blindness was in effect, due to America's racist views that it had inherited from the days of black slavery.
"It is our blindness, our hidden complex of unexamined assumptions, that constitutes the core of Kim-hating - what makes him simultaneously so laughable, so impudent, and so outrageous; we revile him, while he thumbs his nose at us and our values and gets away with it. We have proved over seven decades that we do not understand North Korea and that we cannot do anything about it, however much we would like to. We can do something about our prejudices" (Cumming, 99).
This idea of our blindness, I feel, is further shown in last nights film, in which a South Korean man angrily yells at the camera, "Yankee go home!" When asked why, another South Korean man steps in and explains. Following Korea's freedom from Japan's colonialism, America stepped in and put into power Korean's who collaborated with the Japanese. This is an insult to all Koreans, because while South Korea was said to be a democracy, it has been ruled by military dictators. America has helped to (in a sense, and perhaps viewed by many) recolonized Korea, but this time with Russians and Americans as the overlords.
"Korea is the place where the Cold War arrived first, and where it never ended and never left, and where we can still see it on cable television. In Cold War bipolarity we are in the right, our motives are pure, we do good and never harm. They are a hateful mob, criminal when not just Communist, invisible (or even aliens and Martians in 1950s movies), grotesque, insane, capable of anything. We are human and dignified and open, they are inhuman, a mysterious, secluded Other with no rights worthy of our respect. We would happily go home if the enemy would only do the right thing and evaporate, disappear, efface themselves. But the enemy is obstinate, persistent, ever-present in its malevolence (in the summer of 2009, day in and day out, CNN presented news about the North under the title "North Korea Threat"). After seven decades of confrontation, the dominate American images of North Korea still bear the birthmarks of Orientalist bigotry" (Cummings, 100).
This quote followed the other one I used, and when I first read it I was troubled. Because frankly, if you take out any mentioning of Korea, or the Cold War, and apply it to any known conflict America has been in, its true. America is always portrayed as being in the right. Seeing last nights film further confirmed this, because largely the U.S. marines that were interviewed really seemed to have no clue as to why they were "really" in South Korea. Did they know that according to North Korea, they were keeping down and exploiting South Koreans? Did they know that largely North Korea was founded by people who fought against Japanese Colonialism? That America was seen as the newest colonial power trying to subjugate Korea?
This blindness and raciest attitude of Americans is astonishing, because not only does it harm others, it also harms America. The division of Korea was an American creation, without any outside, or specifically Korean, involvement or say in the matter. Both countries still bear the scar of the Korean War. I looked up North Korea on an impulse, and was shocked to see a NASA overview of Korea at night. South Korea is light up with lights from cities, with Seoul being the brightest. North Korea by contrast? Completely dark except for a very dimly lit Pyongyang. Scars indeed.
Sean T
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