Summoning Ill-Repute

Protesters kick and hit a policeman who was pulled out of his riot police squad while blocking demonstrators in central Seoul from marching toward the Blue House. (Joong-Ang Daily, 27 June, 2008)

When it comes to lousing up its reputation abroad, Korea - as a collective entity - is not only known to shoot itself in the foot, it often squats down to get better aim. Not content to let news of North Korea dominate international coverage of the peninsula, local demonstrators this week continued to throw themselves into protests with an abandon bred of an immunity to reason, furthering only their prophecy that the policies of President Lee Myung-Bak are destined for failure.

Any week in which North Korea makes the front pages of newspapers around the world is a bad week for South Korea. To be sure, North Korea's demolition of the cooling tower at its ramshackle Yongbyon reactor is, if largely symbolic, a positive development. This news, however, merely reminds the world, yet again, that the Korean peninsula is still officially in a state of war and, what's more, pestered by an indigent nuclear dictatorship. Even when positive, news about North Korea is negative: either the story reminds everyone that the menace still lurks and that war is always possible, or it hints that reunification, and thus economic disaster, is imminent.

South Korea may not be able to keep its northern sibling out of the papers, but one would think the residents of these more liberal climes could at least portray themselves in a more positive light. Instead, pictures and articles of battles between demonstrators and riot police on the streets of Seoul fill my daily newspapers, images which have caused Moody's to warn of lasting damage to Korea's reputation with international investors. What exactly these folks are protesting - American beef, abuse of presidential power, energy prices, dingleberries - is no longer clear, and yet they continue, night in and night out, to storm the Bastille of imagined affronts.

One grievance voiced by the protesters throughout their month-long tantrum has been that the policies of Lee Myung-Bak are destined to bring ruination upon Korea. Lee's goals of privatization and economic liberalization, argue his detractors, will surely drown the peninsula in the Plagues of Job and undo all the "successes" of the Roh Moo-Hyun administration. And these critics of Lee, these militant nitpickers, just may, through their own actions, bring to fruition the economic doom they prophesy.

The "Korea Discount" may not be entirely within the realm of South Korea's control, but sometimes the country, in its endless petulance, seems hellbent on soiling its own good name.


idiots' collective