why Korea has little to fear

As the Virginia Tech tragedy continues to play out in the media, it has become obvious to many pundits in the Koreablogosphere and the mainstream media that Korea will default to Cover Your Ass mode. This will include loudly questioning how a Korean could possibly have done such a terrible thing, as well as focusing not on the thirty-two people who were killed, but on the question of American Backlash Against Us.

I think the fear of backlash is largely unjustified. America is stereotyped as a land of shotgun-toting bumpkins, ruled by a fear born of ignorance, but this is far from the case: our country is still one of the most welcoming (if not the most welcoming) nation on earth when it comes to immigrants and the tolerance of difference. If you judge us by our bumpkins, we'll feel free to judge you by yours. That's only fair, I think.

What you won't see in America is mass demonstrations by non-Koreans shouting, "Go home, Korean bastards!" What you might see is random acts of vandalism and perhaps the occasional act of violence as the ignorant among us show off their stupidity. These incidents will be few and far between. American "Netizens" will not be secretly cheering these punks on, and signs saying "Koreans Not Welcome" will not be appearing on restaurant and shop windows. Groups of wild-eyed white folks will not be burning Korean flags, and no Koreans will be lynched. As one commenter at the Marmot's Hole suggested, the Korean fear of the American reaction to this mass murder is sourced in projection, because as we expats know, Korea often slips easily into heedless massmind behavior. Perhaps from the Korean point of view, such a reaction is natural. But most Americans don't roll that way.

Koreans will probably latch upon every isolated instance of violence and take it as confirmation of their suspicion of a larger anti-Korean trend. When no such trend appears, many Koreans will simply drop the issue without publicly admitting they were mistaken. Such behavior isn't unique to Koreans, of course; I see it in all-Westerner comment threads all the time.

What's truly unfortunate is that some Koreans will also remember that certain Americans did, in fact, attack people who either were or looked Arab in the wake of 9/11. But as the years after 9/11 have shown, attacks on Muslims and mosques were nothing on the scale of what still happens in places like France, where Jewish schoolchildren are sometimes assaulted by Muslim children, and Jewish synagogues and cemeteries are routinely burned or defaced. I highly doubt that gangs of anti-Korean Americans will prowl the streets in search of Korean churches to spraypaint or Korean businesses to vandalize. If such gangs do appear, they will be the glaring exception, not the rule, and I will abominate them along with scandalized Koreans. What happened to certain Muslims in the months after 9/11 was unjustifiable, of course, but it needs to be put in perspective.

One reason why I think America will not react badly toward Koreans is that, in the wake of the VA Tech killings, Korea's reaction was not the same as Palestine's after 9/11. There, in Gaza, thousands of esctatic Muslims poured out into the street in celebration. As I recall, Korea's reaction immediately following 9/11 was the same as the rest of the civilized world's: there was an outpouring of sympathy from the peninsula to the States. Many of us Americans remember that and are grateful. Korea's reaction now, while perhaps selfish in the Cover Your Ass sense, is a far cry from jubilation in the streets. It is, in my opinion, a civilized reaction: people here are shocked, reflective, critical, and self-critical. Americans have doubtless taken note of this. Given that many Komerican communities routinely practice some form of neighborhood outreach, I doubt that those communities are in danger of being attacked and plundered.

In fact, if America's stupid people do rouse themselves to violent action, I suspect that many of them will hit the wrong targets: Chinese and Vietnamese and Japanese folks just minding their own business. So my message to Korea this evening is: remain calm. And if something does happen in the States, don't take that as evidence of an ominous trend. Such fear is self-justifying and self-perpetuating. Wait until there actually is a plottable trend before letting us have it in your papers and TV news. Remain at your civilized best.

Some bitter foreigners may find this hard to admit, but Korea is an eminently civilized country. Look around you, expats, and notice the distinct lack of AK-47s firing into the air. Koreans have little to fear from us, and we have little to fear from them.


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