Anti-America, anti-Japan, anti-China?

By Andrew Salmon

The waters of the West Sea/Yellow Sea are dangerous ― and I am not talking about North Korean gunboats. A South Korea Coast Guard vessel was just sunk after being rammed by Chinese fishing boats. This alarming news follows fatal clashes in 2011 and 2014.

Just previously, Seoul's decision to deploy the missile-defense shield THAAD on the peninsula ended President Park Geun-hye's dalliance with her Chinese counterpart Xi Jingping. At the outset of her administration, diplomatic pundits were surprised by her energetic courting of the Chinese leader, prompting some to ask whether she was turning her back on traditional ally, the United States.

Few ask that now. After Beijing ignored Park's pleas to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its strategic weapons programs, Seoul has swung firmly back behind Washington's aegis.

This makes me wonder: With anti-Americanism in hibernation and anti-Japanesism on the apparent wane, could we see anti-Chinesism rise?

Perhaps not. China is Korea's top trade and investment partner and its biggest source of foreign tourists. These are critical issues ― albeit, similar issues did not deter Korean activists from protesting against the United States and Japan, who were both important trade partners and suppliers of visitors (in the US case, troops; in the Japanese case, tourists).

Do Koreans fear irking an increasingly assertive, muscular China? When activists protest against America or Japan, they do so in the knowledge that these nations will not respond, they will play by the rules. Will China?

Korea, Inc., shudders to recall 2000, when Beijing halted shipments of Korean cellphones and petrochemical products in massive retaliation against Seoul's move to protect local farmers by slapping tariffs on Chinese garlic imports. But Beijing joined the WTO in 2001, and has not started a trade war over THAAD, despite dire (and so far, inaccurate) fear-mongering in the Korean media.

Even so, as recently as the 1980s, many Koreans despised China. After all, it had been communist China's military intervention which prevented Korean unification under the United Nations' banner in the winter of 1950. That generation, however, has passed from politics. The succeeding generation was different.

After the 1980 Gwangju Massacre, many Koreans were infuriated by Washington's support for their iron-fisted government; thus were planted the seeds of anti-Americanism. Meanwhile, education and popular culture had long demonized imperialist Japan, painting the colonial era as Korea's darkest period (although the Korean War's death-toll and destruction was higher).

Once democratization was achieved, these emotive forces - long-suppressed by authoritarian governments which had needed Japanese and US largesse to empower economic growth - were unfettered. As the 1990s proceeded toward the millennium, the Internet enabled social mobilization, as well as convenient dissemination of information and disinformation. While there were sound grounds for both anti-Americanism and anti-Japanesism, the evils of America and Japan were exaggerated. The furies gathered pace.

But while street protests were essentially "bottom up," they also seemed to mirror, "top down," the politics of governments-of-the-day.

The fiercest anti-American conflagrations were in 2002, as Korea passed from the leftist Kim Dae-jung government to the further leftist Roh Moo-hyun administration. Anti-Americanism withered soon after conservative Lee Myung-bak assumed power in 2008.

Under Lee, who had been jailed for anti-Japanese protests in his youth and who became the first Korean president to visit Dokdo, diplomatic relations with Tokyo frayed. In the media and on the streets, anti-Japanesism replaced anti-Americanism. That trend continued under Park ― until last December.

Then, Tokyo made an unequivocal, public apology and promised compensation for surviving "comfort women." Predictions in the Korean media that Tokyo would withhold the money until the comfort woman statue was removed from outside the Japanese embassy proved false. Tokyo behaved transparently and unconditionally, and handed over the cash.

While some comfort women (backed by media-savvy NGOs) resist the agreement, and films with independence-fighter themes continue to make box office bank, I sense anti-Japanese sentiment in the media and on the street is losing steam.

Could nationalist activism switch aim from Tokyo to Beijing?

In recent years, the only public anger aimed at China was a media brouhaha following Chinese claims that Goguryeo was a Sinic kingdom, and minor demonstrations protesting Beijing's forcible return of North Korean refugees. Beijing's assertion of an air-defense identification zone over Iedo islet passed without fuss, as did two disastrous Chinese "eat-and-run" investments (into Ssangyong Motor and display-maker Hydis).

But now Seoul has done a diplomatic about-face towards Beijing, a policy chasm is widening over North Korea, and continued clashes look likely in the Yellow Sea.

Yet students, the vanguard protesters of yore, can no longer spare time for activism. In today's economy, they need class-time, as good grades spell good jobs. So while nationalism remains potent, we can ask: "Have Korea's days of ‘anti-isms' passed?"

We shall see.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.