Anti-American sentiment in Korea
There have been a number of high-profile cases of American soldiers committing rape and assault on Korean people, with an example being the 2002 Yangju highway incident,[2] as well as the 2008 Camp Humphreys expansion controversy.
[3] After the Japanese defeat in World War II the United States set up a self-declared government in Korea which pursued a number of very unpopular policies.
The military government also created an advisory council for which the majority of seats were offered to the nascent Korea Democratic Party (KDP) which mainly consisted of large landowners, wealthy businesspeople, and former colonial officials.
Furthermore, the U.S.'s refusal to consult existing popular organizations in the south, as agreed upon at the Moscow Conference, and thus paving the way towards a divided Korea, embittered the majority of Koreans.
Finally, pushing for United Nations elections that would not be observed by the Soviet-controlled north, over legal objections, enshrined a divided Korea, which the majority of Koreans opposed.
Inconsistencies with the Pentagon's investigation led to Korean War veteran Pete McCloskey (who had been brought in to advise on the report) state, "the government will always lie about embarrassing matters.
Among them was a report by the U.S. ambassador in South Korea in July 1950 that the U.S. military had adopted a theater-wide policy of firing on approaching refugee groups.
[22] American military police and South Korean officials regularly raided clubs looking for women who were thought to be spreading venereal diseases, locking them up under guard in so-called monkey houses with barred windows.
[30][31] On June 13, 2002, a U.S. military vehicle fatally injured two 14-year-old South Korean girls, Shin Hyo-sun (신효순) and Shim Mi-seon (심미선), who were walking along a street in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi Province.
The incident provoked anti-American sentiment in South Korea when a U.S military court found the soldiers involved, who were sent back to the United States immediately after the decision, not guilty.
[35] The song was written by a South Korean band to condemn the United States and its military for its role in the Iraq War.
In Salt Lake City, Utah, Apolo Anton Ohno emerged as a popular athlete among US fans for reportedly charming them with his cheerful attitude and laid-back style.
During the 1500 m final race, South Korean Kim Dong-sung was first across the finish line, but was disqualified for blocking Ohno, in what is called cross tracking.
Strongly anti-US foreign policy and anti-Bush, the song was written in 2002 at a time when, following the Apolo Ohno Olympic controversy and the Yangju highway incident, anti-American sentiment in South Korea reached record high levels.
[42] From 2004 to 2008, a series of large protests against the South Korean and American armed forces plan to expand Camp Humphreys and the subsequent relocation of residents.
The film was in part inspired by an incident in 2000 in which a Korean mortician working for the U.S. military in Seoul dumped a large amount of formaldehyde down the drain.
[47] At about 7:40 a.m. on March 5, 2015, Mark Lippert, United States Ambassador to South Korea was attacked by a knife-wielding man at a restaurant attached to Sejong Center in downtown Seoul, where he was scheduled to give a speech at a meeting of the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation.
[48] The assailant, Kim Ki-jong, is a member of Uri Madang (우리마당), a progressive cultural organization opposed to the Korean War.
[49] He inflicted wounds on Lippert's left arm as well as a four-inch cut on the right side of the ambassador's face, requiring 80 stitches.
[48] Kim has a record of militant Korean nationalist activism; he attacked the Japanese ambassador to South Korea in 2010 and was sentenced to a three-year suspended prison term.
The reason is that the United States wants South Korea and Japan to work together to check economically growing China, rather than the human rights and justice of Japanese war crimes Korean-victims who are still alive.
[58][59][60] The Japan-South Korea Comfort Women Agreement temporarily increased anti-American sentiment among South Korean liberal-to-progressives.
[61][62] The Moon Jae-in government and subsequent South Korean liberals are supporting a foreign policy to turn North Korea into a "pro-U.S. country similar to Vietnam" to keep both China and Japan in check.
This provoked negative reactions from American analysts and politicians, who claimed that the decision would worsen North Korean security threats.
Robert Hathaway, director of the Wilson Center's Asia program, suggests: "the growth of anti-American sentiment in both Japan and South Korea must be seen not simply as a response to American policies and actions, but as reflective of deeper domestic trends and developments within these Asian countries.
"[73] Speaking to the Wilson Center, Katharine Moon notes that while the majority of South Koreans support the American alliance "anti-Americanism also represents the collective venting of accumulated grievances that in many instances have lain hidden for decades.
