These aren’t welcoming times for America’s troops in South Korea. Anti-U.S. protests have drawn thousands to candlelight vigils and forced GIs to raise their guard. Student radicals have attacked bases with firebombs; U.S. soldiers have been accosted on the streets. President-elect Roh Moo Hyun, who made the conduct of U.S. troops a major theme in his campaign, spoke at one rally beneath a banner that read YANKEE GO HOME. Bars in Seoul have banned GIs from entering. A local coffee shop hung a sign branding them “murderers” and refused service. According to a recent poll by The Korea Times, nearly as many respondents viewed U.S. troops as a source of tension on the Korean Peninsula as contributors to peace.
The anti-American backlash surged in November after two GIs charged with negligent homicide in the deaths of two junior-high-school girls were acquitted in a military court. The incident–in which an armored vehicle struck the girls on a narrow road during maneuvers–was ruled an accident, yet the verdict brought thousands of angry demonstrators into the streets outside the U.S. Embassy in Seoul. Their demands: a direct apology from George W. Bush (his sorrow conveyed through the embassy was rejected as insincere), and rule changes to allow Korean courts more latitude to charge U.S. military personnel with crimes. The cause drew not just campus radicals but middle-class adults. “Your president’s attitude is really ticking people off, if you’ll excuse my French,” said one U.S.-educated mother of two who took her kids to yell chants outside the embassy. “Our old people say Americans helped us a long time ago, so we shouldn’t be angry with them now. But I’m very angry.”
The girls’ deaths were merely a catalyst. These days South Koreans are angry about issues ranging from perceived U.S. heavy-handedness in the Middle East to a gold medal lost to an American speed skater at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics last year. The young voters who elected Roh are particularly assertive and patriotic. Ignorant of America’s role as savior in the Korean War, they see U.S. troops as an occupying force and believe peace with North Korea could break out tomorrow if only Washington would stop meddling.
Protest fatigue is taking its toll on many of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. Criticism from what he describes as “a vocal minority” has compelled Air Force Capt. Garrett McCoy to question both his mission and his family’s security. “I don’t want to defend people who don’t want me here,” says the A-10 pilot over lunch at a food court on base. With North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship intensifying and anti-U.S. protests welling in the South, “I’m considering sending my family home early,” he says. “To avoid the rush.”
