March 16, 2007
Ingratitude personified
South Korea's highest-grossing movie is Host, the tale of a monster wreaking havoc on the residents of Seoul.
Slate's review notes the essentially anti-American thread that runs throughout the flick.
In a prologue set in the year 2000 on a Seoul military base, an American scientist orders his Korean lab assistant to dump gallons of leftover formaldehyde directly into a sink drain. When the underling protests that the toxic chemicals will run directly into the water system, the arrogant doctor rationalizes that "the Han River is broad. Let's be broad-minded about this."
[...]
[The Korean main characters are] our heroes, our only hope in a world of bureaucratic mismanagement and boneheaded American interventionism (when a Yank in a haz-mat suit arrives to debrief the families, the first thing he does is take a comic pratfall).
[...]
Like all great monster movies, The Host gestures at the cultural anxieties it channels without ever naming them outright. The movie's vision of Americans as oblivious, trigger-happy, and dangerously stupid is a jab at the American military presence in South Korea and, possibly, at the war in Iraq as well.
I rarely curse when posting on this blog, but I'm sorely tempted now.
"Boneheaded American interventionism"?
"[O]blivious, trigger-happy, and dangerously stupid" Americans?
And as for the evil American doctor, the monster's inadvertent creator, and his comment about how broad the Han River is, well, Americans know all about the Han River. They fought their way across it more than once.
A dead Marine lies in the foreground, as a wounded member of I Company, 5th U.S. Marines, is dragged to safety during fighting for the high ground overlooking the Han River. The Marines would soon cross the river to recapture Seoul.
Almost 30,000 American GIs were killed or wounded fighting to push the North Koreans and Chi-Coms out of South Korea. According to the BBC, more than 2 million Korean civilians were killed, a result of the North Korean invasion.
When the Communist forces seized Seoul, they rounded up and murdered civilians. When the North Koreans retreated, they massacred civilians and American POWs; the wounded were buried alive.
More than 50 years later, South Korea's prosperity -- second only to that of Japan -- is a direct result of the blood spilled by American GIs and Marines in the terrible heat of the Korean summers and the unbelievable cold of the brutal winters.
Sure, it's just a movie, but the contempt expressed for Americans in this blockbuster is infuriating -- even if it fails to register with the ever-so-sophisticated Slate reviewer.
Take a moment and look at the list of Americans awarded the Medal of Honor during the Korean War. Click on their names and read the citations. Note how many were awarded posthumously.
So, you'll pardon me if I say that the South Koreans can piss off.
We need troops for Iraq? Every last "Boneheaded American intervention[ist]" GI should be withdrawn from the Korean peninsula. And should the tyrant Kim decide the time was right to move south of the 38th Parallel, the South Koreans should feel free to call the French.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 16, 2007 05:28 AM
| TrackBack
Comments
I take it from this that you will not be visiting the memorial at No Gun Ri?
Posted by: John at March 22, 2007 09:09 AM