Why Trump hates Koreans

U.S. President Donald Trump simulates holding a gun and how a law enforcement officers challenged a suspect during speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Convention Monday, AP-Yonhap

By Oh Young-jin

Why does U.S. President Donald Trump hate Asians? Considering his favorites include odd balls like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korea's Kim Jong-un (Kim is more dictatorial than Korean and Asian), being disliked by the U.S. leader whose days in power may be increasingly reduced by the day (Viva Pelosi!) is not exactly a badge of shame.

Still, for the collective peace of mind for people on this side of the Pacific and to keep alive a hope of working together in the post-Trumpian world, it is worth a look at the workings of his mind. A kind of counter-indication for Americans as well as for us.

Trump has used a lot of rhetoric abuse and invective against Koreans, Japanese and Chinese and the latest account by Guy Snodgrass, former speech writer for the ousted Defense Secretary James Mattis, in his recent memoire titled "Holding the line: Inside Trump's Pentagon with Secretary Mattis."

According to Yonhap, Snodgrass claimed in his book that Trump called South Korea a "major abuser," and said "China, South Korea … they both rip us off right and left," and Korea needs to pay $60 billion if it wanted to maintain U.S. troops for its defense against North Korea. The U.S. has 28,000 troops in Korea, which pays about $1 billion for their upkeep besides big purchases of U.S. weapons and provision of facilities and other privileges given to them.

Another saucy anecdotes from the Hold the line include Trump asking Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson if the U.S. troops could be pulled out from Korea and nixing ROK-U.S. military exercises out of hand without seeking expert advice after his June 2018 Singapore summit with North Korea's Kim. Mattis was fired for objecting to Trump's Syria policy and Tillerson for calling him an idiot behind his back.

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Fitting his billing as transactional man, Trump as confirmed by the Snodgrass account sees everything only in dollar figures and reacts with animal instincts to changes on the bottom line. That Trumpian characteristic is reinforced by his patriotic slogans like "Make America great again" with its logical flaws hidden out of sight in the process and making his supporters following him blindly.

True, the U.S. virtually liberated Korea from Japanese colonial rule by the World War II victory, has helped it build its economy from scratch and defended it against the communist North triggered by the latter's invasion during the 1950-53 Korean War. True, Korea's prosperity is made possible in the U.S.-led global order.

But it is not one-way street. A flip of the same coin shows that Korea was divided by the insensitive ad hoc agreement of U.S. and Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War, coincidentally the end of the Second World War, has been living in constant fear of war for the seven decades as the result of the U.S. indecision-induced truce, worked as frontline unit promoting the U.S. fight to keep the communism at bay, started as factory of cheap consumer goods for U.S. consumers and come to become part of global supply chains with much of U.S. industrial base being a beneficiary.

Again, Trump is wrong to consider Americans have a Midas hand _ Korea and Japan are among the few success stories but Iraq is the latest among the failed cases, being in a worse mess than before because of the U.S. military intervention and flawed nation-building campaign. The entire Middle East is being shaken as a result.

Americans may get intoxicated with Trump's populism but Trumpism, to drive the point home, will certainly turn out as ravaging as opioid epidemic that is eating the U.S. from inside (I hate this metaphor but I can't help cry out "Americans, wake up!), being motivated by selective memory, self-righteousness and pure illogic. These symptoms are aggravated by the basic, irrepressible instinct he displays through his White Supremacist tendencies (The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia). His baggage include besides Yellow Peril, disdain for Hispanics (Mexican wetback rapists) and his political inherent animosity against blacks (Obama).

Picking China for a trade war has been couched as a preventive war by the U.S. against China's rise but the way Trump handles it reminds its Asian friends of the same fit of anger for somebody's success or schadenfreude, insisting that China leeches on U.S. for big trade surplus and steals high tech from it to become the global economic power that it is now. Trump refuses to recognize all Chinese-made consumer products fed American consumer craze and China is the biggest outside holder of its debt to help its economy get going. When Trump calls Chinese, Japanese and Koreans ingrates, it is not entirely out of question that all three feel like calling him the same name, despite their differences.

Few here would love China for what it is becoming _ a replacement of U.S. as hegemonic power, because of the reasons we well know. But Trump's illogical animosity is pushing Asian friends away. That would be a losing deal not just to us but to the U.S. I hope against hope that Americans will get over with the Trumpian diversion and put things back to where they were.

Oh Young-jin (foolsdie@gmail.com, foolsdie5@koreatimes.co.kr) is digital managing editor of The Korea Times.