Because it's Bush's fault!

Have you ever actually been to France? Paris in particular is home to several millions of blacks, Arabs, Viets, Chinese, Latin Americans, etc. "You all look alike"?….spare me.

Why do so many Korean people condemn Japan for colonial crimes committed by Imperial Japanese over 65 years ago, but totally overlook North Korea starving 1.5 million Koreans to death, gang-raping female inmates, doing medical experiments on prisoners, administering forced abortions, torturing inmates, kidnapping foreigners (not just Koreans and Japanese, but also Filipinos, Thais, Romanians and Lebanese, amongst others), counterfeiting U.S. currency, and illegally building nuclear weapons and selling arms to terrorists? By the way, the late Kim Dae-Jung and Roh Mu-Hyeon facilitated the latter by giving so much bribe money to Kim Jong-Il.

Some Koreans will say, "That's different, because we're the same race/ethnic group as North Koreans." So that makes North Korea's current injustices accepatble, but Japan's past ones unacceptable? Alrighty then…are you saying that it's all right for some Koreans to disrepect foreigners and their cultures (without whom and which South Korea wouldn't even exist today), but only vice-versa is wrong?

More justification for the black, white and brown people to leave korea to the Chinese.

Too bad Obama will not listen to me.

Take, for example, the Vietnam War. Surely you are familiar with the photo of the public execution that was spread across the nation that demonized your presence there. What wasn't told to the public was that the executed prisoner was guilty of espionage and that the legal penalty for such was indeed death. And yet had you told anyone who had seen that picture on TV, can you really say that the response you would have gotten would have been too different from "everybody says so?" Perhaps it may have been closer to disbelief that you could be so "stupid" as that is closer to the American Way, but even so, the basic tenet would have been the same.

The media (and by extension, liberals) are quite dangerous, and if they feed on the public's more basic instincts (such as preservation of children and women), it becomes easy to see why the nation may have become so incited. Also keep in mind that the entire country is about the size of Delaware. Organizing the entire country is not so far-fetched, especially with the support of the media (which is already traditionally left-leaning).

And, sadly, I am sure there are those who simply went along with it because the vocal majority was so forceful with it.

Regardless, I can tell you now that while there is a faint lingering of those emotions, they are by and large gone. There are new liberals spreading new reasons to hate America, but at least they are tempered by somewhat cooler minds. The fact that there is a conservative in the Blue House helps. The fact that North Korea recently showed its true colors twice in one year helps even more, although I'm afraid that the liberals are again making the nation weak in leaning on the president to become softer.

Korea is indeed quite homogeneous, and while there are some bad points (perhaps too many), certainly there are still yet some good parts of it. America is a nation that is no longer proud of itself, a nation that is beginning to self-destruct because not only does it not defend itself but it also openly attacks itself with words, a stronger weapon than bullets or bombs could ever be. It even goes to the extent of demonizing those who *are* proud of their American culture and heritage, how can such a thing strengthen a union?

And, if the result of your multi-culturism is unending terrorism and submitting to Islam, I would then feel quite safe in our xenophobia.

But I do grant you that our country has yet a long way to go regarding certain crimes. We do not have an exemplary record in our government. That said, barely a century ago, we did not have widespread electrical power or railroads and lived under a monarchy (soon to be annexed by Japan). Today we are on the cutting-edge of technology. Sadly, our societal advances have been lagging behind, but we will catch up. America began its industrial revolution in the early 1800s, had it in full swing by 1860, and passed the 19th Amendment in 1920. And even then, it took some time before women were considered equal, as even as late as the 1950s, women were seen as little more than kitchen adornments. I'll be generous, however, and say that from the beginning of America's advance into the future and the social recognition of women was roughly 120 years. Given that Korea has had but sixty with which to catapult from a war-torn nation to one of the strongest economic, technological, and communication powers of the world, I believe I can safely wager that they will soon catch up socially, and faster than America has.

America has had the luxury of time and (perhaps more importantly) democracy, something I would remind readers that the Republic of Korea has not truly enjoyed until the early 1990s. We are still adjusting, and there is quite the sore spot for any perceived injustice, as there has been quite a few valid injustices already committed. I'm afraid it is a case of the victim seeing muggers everywhere they go. That, and comparatively, America has an atrociously short memory. Most of Asia (Korea included) have histories that are decidedly longer, and the memory of committed wrongdoings done by outsiders will unfortunately taint our perceptions of any further mistakes.

For the record, "outsiders" haven't had the greatest record, and that goes all the way back to the French Catholic missionaries that spat on our culture. And while you may not be French, I am afraid that you all do indeed look quite alike. So it is not too hard to understand why we are not overly fond of foreigners.

I'll grant that because of the WC, a lot of the initial incendiary reaction was overshadowed. But it's not like people just all of a sudden decided to show up at CRC and breach the Main Gate after the WC loss. The propaganda machine, and leaks of gruesome photos on protest placards (being held by citizens and kids), mobilized by the weekend of the incident, esp in Dongducheon, Uijongbu, and Yongsan. After the WC, the full movement of "crazy" found a nationwide audience, to be sure.