America and Korea

A Can of Man

Je suis aware
Continued between a discussion between Aiki and I.

I think it's been alright but obviously there's been a lot of anti-American sentiment here. The GOOD news though is the previous president who was elected pretty much on an anti-American ticket sucked ass so anti-Americanism has dropped compared to the previous few years. Still it's not that great.
The issue a lot of Koreans have about America is that the US apparently has a lopsided advantage over trade etc. (which I am not so sure about since the US has given South Korea a lot of advantages over the years in order to help it to develop). The rest, I believe is a bunch of leftist crap brought about by the three previous presidents who were very warm to North Korea, the previous practically being a North Korean spokesman.
As relations with North Korea warmed, the blame on why the two countries were separate fell onto the United States, which was a funny thing because without US intervention, the communists would have taken the whole peninsula and in fact, not only was Korea desirable to China and Japan, but during the early 1900s, the Russians expressed interest (though not much effort) in occupying Korea as well.
What people don't realize is that if the US is kicked out, we are basically inviting any one of these neighbors to come in and really shaft us when it comes to sovereignty. In America, if the country is embroiled in an unpopular war in a foreign country, the citizenry take to the streets in protest. In China, they think that every piece of land surrounding China should belong to China. Do you know what the Chinese think about the violence in Tibet? They think it was an uprising by local Tibetans against innocent Han Chinese folks and that the Army had to intervene to keep the Han Chinese safe from hooligans. Unbelievable! But that's the kind of country China is.
As for America, Korea is an ideal ally for a few reasons.
The US mistakes Japan as a reliable and strong ally, but in reality the Japanese only go along with the US right now because they fear the American military machine. Once that is broken, the American base in Okinawa will be sent packing and the Japanese will look to be the de facto power in the Pacific and Southeast Asia. Japan has the possibility of becoming too powerful for America's own good.
We don't even have to go into how a US-China relationship will turn out.
Korea however, will always have stronger countries to deal with and therefore even if the United States gave more military help to Korea, it will NOT become a threat to the United States. Japan can. China most likely will be. Korea can't. Yet, it is strong enough to make a difference in the region.
This is why I say, whether or not Koreans like the US or not is irrelevant. Korea needs the US to maintain its independence and rights and the US needs Korea if it really wants to stay in the game in Asia.

You want to sell F-22s? Sell it to Korea instead of Japan.
 
I think the USA and South Korea need each other for more than just that as well.
As for Russia not putting forth much effort for Korea in the earlier 1900's, I don't think they wanted another butt whoopin like they had received from Japan in the early 1900's. Hopefully your right and it is only the lefties that feel that as we have plenty of those as well unfortunately.
I am not sure I would say America mistakes Japan as a reliable ally, after all, they are still only allowed a defense force.

My entire adult life, I have thought and still do that China is an under cover enemy. I also think they are a Super Power that no one wants to admit to. I've always been laughed at for that but something tells me that even if I am wrong, I am not far from being correct on the concern. Many Korean hate the Japanese for what they did to them through history, my understanding is Korea has had many problems uniting it's people to deal with Japan whereas Japan had no problems with that. It seems China has taken over the reputation in the Far East of what used to belong to Feudal era Japan in many ways.
 
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If you understand how the Japanese occupied Korea you would know why it was so hard to put up a resistance. If you tried to pull off some bullsh*t like Gandhi did in India, you'd just get machine gunned to death and you'd be a footnote in the next day's newspaper which would be glorifying the courage of the Japanese machine gunners.
The "peaceful" crowd just haven't dealt with a true oppressor.
Of countries that Britain colonized, several do not have hard feelings towards Britain. Of the countries that Japan colonized, everyone f*cking hates Japan. There's a reason for that.
Korea's history with either Japan or China is pretty bad. But it seems a lot of people here are forgetting about the China part.
 
That's a more recent history.
In fact, Japan's victory in both the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War secured Korea for them.
But when we're talking about anything before the 16 or 1700s, China was without a doubt the de facto power in the region without rival (except for a time with the Mongols).

The Sino-Japanese War was a typical lesson in that the military machine is not about showing off flashy equipment. It was where the Chinese "modern" Army with its new equipment was crushed by the Japanese who had modern equipment as well. The Chinese were too damned corrupt and incompetent to make it count.
 
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