hankyoreh

Smoke pours out of a US cultural center in Busan on March 18, 1983. The arson was largely influenced by the Dec. 9, 1980, arson of a US cultural center in Gwangju, what some call the first act of the anti-American movement in Korea. (courtesy of the Korea Press Photo Association)

“In recent years, the debate surrounding anti-Americanism has rapidly escalated to become one of the most important issues not only on college campuses, but in our general society. The Molotov cocktail attacks on the US Embassy in Seoul and the American cultural center in Gwangju last month painfully demonstrated how deep anti-American sentiment has become, especially among the young.”

These lines from a June 7, 1988, editorial in the Hankyoreh convey the stance that many in South Korea held toward the US at the time. This is a far cry from the current situation, where the US has been South Korea’s favorite neighbor, as demonstrated through various polls, for years.

In the 70 years since the South Korea-US alliance was established in October 1953, South Koreans’ sentiments toward the US have fluctuated in response to the American attitude toward South Korea, South Korea’s changing economic status, and South Korea’s relationships with North Korea and China.

Until the 1970s, South Korea was known as a place that held no anti-American sentiments, devoid of chants of “Yankee go home.” But the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement in 1980 changed everything.

Disappointment and anger at the US for allowing the new military government of Chun Doo-hwan and his ilk to take power unchecked fueled the anti-American movement.

According to public opinion surveys conducted by the Dong-A Ilbo in the 1980s, the number of respondents who said they “liked” the US dropped from 69.9% in 1984 to 37.4% in 1988 and 30.1% in 1989.

A litany of horrific crimes and accidents committed by the US Forces Korea (USFK) has sparked public outrage over the unequal relationship between Korea and the United States.

Each time crimes by American troops in Korea came to light — the brutal murder of Yun Geum-i at a camptown in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, in 1992; the murder of a female waitress at a club for foreigners in Itaewon, Seoul, in 2000; and the deaths of two middle school girls fatally struck by a US military armored vehicle in 2002 — there were strong calls for a revision of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) to expand South Korea’s discretion in the investigation and trial process.

In December 2002, 100,000 people carrying candles gathered in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, to demand the revision of SOFA and the punishment of the US soldiers who fatally struck the two schoolgirls, marking the beginning of what would become a mainstay in South Korean politics: the candlelight protest.

With the launch of the Iraq War in 2003, there soon spread a sense of crisis that the next war the US will wage may be on the Korean Peninsula.

In a 2008 Research & Research youth poll, when asked which country posed the greatest threat to South Korea’s security, the United States (28.4%) was cited by more respondents than North Korea (24.5%).

The wave of anti-American sentiment began abating around 2010. Surveys on reunification attitudes carried out since 2007 by the Seoul National University Institute for Peace and Unification Studies have shown an annual rise in the proportion of respondents naming the US as the country they feel “closest to” among the four major powers associated with the Korean Peninsula.

The rate of those perceiving the US as a “partner in cooperation” has remained steady above 80% since 2016, reaching a peak of 86.3% last year.

When asked to rate their positive perception of five countries (the US, North Korea, China, Russia and Japan) on a scale from 0 to 100 in a regular Hankook Research survey last April, respondents gave the US the highest average score of 57.2, while Japan came in second with an average of 34.9.

“The anti-American movement in South Korea seems to have abated as people here have come to perceive the South Korea-US relationship more and more as a relationship of equals,” said Sheen Seong-ho, a professor at the Seoul National University Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS).

“South Korean society has been experiencing growth, and there has also been a shift in attitudes toward the US within the complex realities associated with things like the US-China strategic rivalry,” he explained.

Will this high rate of positive attitudes toward the US continue going forward?

“We could see this less as a case of attitudes toward the US becoming more positive and more as attitudes toward China and North Korea becoming more negative,” said SNU GSIS professor Park Tae-gyun, who wrote a commentary for the book “Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea” (2017) by David Straub, a former diplomat who worked as head of the US Embassy in Seoul’s political bureau between 1999 and 2022.

“Other potential variables include changes with the USFK, the US’ attitude toward the North Korean nuclear program, and South Korea’s relations with China and the North,” he predicted.

By Jang Ye-ji, staff reporter

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