FTA Can Bridge Gap Between Korea, Korean-US Community
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The South Korean and U.S. governments should pay more attention to the potential value of the Korean-American community in the United States to promote bilateral relations, an American expert on international relations said Wednesday.
Derek Mitchell, senior fellow and director for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), offered a set of recommendations for how to utilize the Korean-American community to bridge the gaps that may appear in the bilateral relationship in the future.
Mitchell referred to the role of the Korean-American community as the ``K factor.''
``Despite the community's overall high levels of education and economic success, however, it remains disproportionately divorced from the American body politic,'' the researcher said in a presentation to a seminar in Seoul. About two million ethnic Koreans live in America.
``Its potential has yet to be realized and the community is not currently a consistent player in either domestic or international issues or an influential actor in promoting U.S.-Korea relations,'' he said.
Mitchell cited the community's lack of knowledge and information about Korean affairs as the main reason for the wide rift between South Koreans and ethnic Koreans living abroad.
``The Korean government in particular should be more proactive in its outreach to the Korean-American community to help educate leading community groups about Korean political affairs; cultivate relations with leading Korean-American figures; and pay special attention to up-and-coming Korean-Americans who demonstrate an affinity for and interest in promoting U.S.-Korea relations,'' he said.
The Seoul government should also consider greater contributions to general education on Korea at the high school and college level within the United States to ensure equal time alongside China and Japan, he added.
There is a substantial cultural divide on how different generations of Korean-Americans view the process of civic organization and activism, leading to alienation particularly among the younger generations, Mitchell noted.
This situation has complicated efforts to rally the community and effect large-scale mobilization around common interests, he said.
He said Korean-Americans are also generally uninvolved in political life, largely due to conditions associated with the relative short period in which Korean-Americans have been part of the fabric of America, such as the lack of English-language facilities for the first generation, and corresponding lack of public service mentors for the 1.5 and second generations.
``The Korean-American community will need to do much more itself internally to become an effective actor within the U.S. political system to promote its values and interests, including U.S.-Korea relations,'' said Mitchell.
``What is lacking is unity, communal will, self-confidence, and perhaps compelling agenda to do so. Investigators agreed that whether the Korean-American community will overcome such obstacles in coming years will depend more on the drive and commitment from within than on any constraint from without,'' he said.
The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement would become a good opportunity to bridge gaps between the Korean government and the community, he said.
Recent activism concerning North Korean human rights and the issue of South Korean ``comfort women,'' as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II, are ``clear indicators'' of an awakening in international awareness within the community, he added.