The Hindu : South's Kim seeks to douse anti-U.S. feelings

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Dec 08, 2002

International

International

South's Kim seeks to douse anti-U.S. feelings

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Dec. 7. The South Korean President, Kim Dae-jung, has cautioned his compatriots against allowing their anger over America's perceived arrogance to escalate into demands for the withdrawal of the `U.S. Forces Korea' (USFK) and for the abrogation of the bilateral alliance. Mr. Kim's intervention is designed to douse the sense of outrage that is now sweeping across South Korea over the acquittal of two U.S. military personnel by a Court Martial in a case concerning their alleged culpability for the death of two young girls in a gruesome accident last June that involved a vehicle belonging to the USFK.

On Saturday, protest demonstrations continued for yet another day. Mr. Kim's comment on the USFK is that he is opposed to the demands for the pullout of an estimated 37,000 American military personnel from South Korea. The issues concerning the Korea-U.S. agreement, which governs the legal status of the USFK personnel, are not to be confused with the bigger picture of America's protective military umbrella over South Korea. The President does not want the present protest to escalate into a wider movement against the strategic alliance that exists between Washington and Seoul.

The current waves of popular anger over the acquittal of two American military men have been sparked by a sense of helplessness among the South Koreans that their laws concerning crime and punishment do not apply to the members of the USFK. Mr. Kim's comment should be seen in this context. Moves have been initiated in South Korean Parliament for a resolution seeking the revision of the existing Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Seoul.

Faced with this gathering crisis, reminiscent of what had happened in the Philippines in a somewhat similar situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the South Korean Government has also expressed its willingness to consider steps that could `improve' the implementation of the existing SOFA. This offer assumes importance in the context of the demands for a revision of the SOFA. Sensing the anti-America mood in South Korea, Henry Hyde, Chairman of the U.S. House International Relations Committee, is reported to have postponed a planned visit to Seoul at this juncture. Mr. Kim's attempts to mollify the ruffled feelings of his compatriots over the issue of perceived American arrogance are a sequel to the recent bid by the U.S. President, George W. Bush, to repair Washington's dangerously drifting relationship with an important ally in East Asia.

Mr. Bush has conveyed his apologies to the Government and people of South Korea over the death of the two young girls at the centre of the present controversy. Mr. Bush's apology was designed not only to allay South Korea's fears of having to live in the shadow of an arrogant `ally' but also to prevent a chain-reaction that might render America's strategic presence in the wider East Asian region vulnerable to popular pressures.

Of concern to the U.S. was the manner in which North Korea had also begun to fish in the troubled waters with a view to weaning the people (even if not the Government) of the South away from Washington. The issue of an extensive American web of strategic alliances in East Asia is entwined with the South Korean sense of outrage over the fate of the two young girls, however accidental their deaths were.

The current unravelling of an entrenched network of terrorism across several pockets of South-East Asia and North Korea's new feud with the Americans over its suspected nuclear-weaponisation overdrive have also complicated Washington's strategic presence along the Asiatic rim of the Pacific Ocean. Official America's discomfort-level, as regards such aspects as Pakistan's suspected collaboration with North Korea in the alleged swap-deal of nuclear arms for ballistic missiles, has given Pyongyang a chance to raise the stakes of pan-Korean "nationalism''.

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