Korean... "Exceptionalism"

Korea combines American in your face nationalism and Canadian insecurity.
--ESLCafe Poster.

I recently had the "I hate Korea week" that most new teachers experience within their first few months. I think I felt this way because of the exceptionally illogical way in which Korean public schools end their semester. The students take their finals.... and then have another two weeks of classes. With the "fist in the back" of exams removed, instructing the students become rather challenging for the native speaker and his Korean co-teachers alike. I ended up teaching my classes the old Beatles song "Yesterday." The lesson didn't actually go to badly. Nevertheless, lazy bum that I am, keeping the kids at school for two weeks after they had effectively called it in for the semester rubbed me the wrong way, and left my mind a fertile playground for vaguely anti-Korean thoughts.
My attention then turned to Dave's ESL Cafe, the internet portal which allows minor daily annoyances to blow up into full-fledged ethnocentric rants. I didn't indulge in such a rant, mind you, but I did read many such posts on the message board. Specifically, I became more aware of a rather ugly episode in 2002 when a U.S. Army tank ran over and killed two little girls north of Seoul. In spite of U.S. efforts to make amends for the tragedy, most accounts (and not just from the folks on ESL Cafe) describe what followed as a full-fledged orgy of anti-Americanism. Here's a sample:

http://www.angelfire.com/journal2/uglykorea/gallery1.html

Now, I am certainly not the first person in the world to defend U.S. foreign policy at every turn. Still, one must conclude that the alliance with the U.S. has been hugely beneficial to South Korea. Just as the Koreans should rightfully take pride in their accomplishment of building one of the largest economies in the world from practically nothing, so should Americans take pride in the fact that the U.S. "security umbrella" helped make the miracle possible. It's no accident that in their frantic attempts to put lipstick on the pig that is the Iraq boondoggle, GOP officeholders often invoke South Korea as an example of a country that flourished because of America's dogged insistence on seeing a foreign commitment through.
Seeing things this way is very hard for Koreans, though. Having a foreign nation's troops on your soil IS emasculating, no matter how well intentioned those troops may be. America thus becomes the scapegoat for Koreans' inadequacy over centuries of war and occupation, sometimes in equal measure to Japan (the occupier itself).
This is all exacerbated by the fact that Koreans have an almost racist obsession with blood purity. Koreans are not alone in this respect- the Japanese are every bit as xenophobic as they are, and I'd venture that quite a few people of European and African extraction (even in the American "melting pot") would prefer not to see their children interbreed with members of other races. It's more problematic here though, because Korea is divided. People want to identify with their cultural "brothers" to the North, rather than the "foreign occupier", but to do so requires them to ignore the artillery batteries pointed at Seoul. The result of all this is the mother of all cases of cognitive dissonance. If I'm a Korean schoolchild, I'm taught that the Korean "race" is special and that preserving it is of the utmost importance. Yet, at the same time, I'm also aware that other Koreans are in a position to destroy everything that my forefathers have worked so hard to build, and worse, the intervention of a foreign power is what prevents this from happening.
What makes this all the more sad is that Koreans can be extremely kind and generous. My co-workers, in spite of the language barrier that exists between us, are always bringing me food and other small gifts. My students, even the little snot-nosed ones, have brightened countless days. It's hard to believe that some of their countrymen can harbor attitudes towards my country that are so hurtful and mean. My own cognitive dissonance, I suppose.