From Korea (Simon Winchester, 1988, 2004) pp181-4
Mr Kwong was very much a Korean nationalist. He loathed the Japanese for what they had done during the colonial period (which included, ironically, building Kunsan Air Base in 1938), and he was determined his son should grow up with a loathing for them, too. ‘There is a programme on our KBS television, a soap opera I guess you’d call it, about life under the Japanese. It is the only programme I force my son to watch. It is too easy for young people to forget what those Japanese did to us. We can never trust them again. They seem friendly now, but deep down they are not. They have plans for us, just like they’ve always had. They are not good for the Korean people. I dislike them — in fact, deep down I have to say I really hate them for what they have done. They took away our language. They took away our names and made us take Japanese names. They took away our king. They stole our treasures. They ruined our land. No, I can never forgive them for What they did. You in the West seem to have forgiven them for what they did to you. Me, I can never forget what they did to Korea. I am determined my children will never allow it to be forgotten.’
And yet, did I sense in him a growing unease about the American presence, too? It was difficult to know. On the surface Mr Kwong was very much a base employee, almost an American himself, the owner, indeed, of a couple of bars that were much used by the airmen. ‘You’ve got to remember that three-quarters of the population of this country has never experienced a war. You can understand why there is a feeling of growing anti-Americanism, of growing anti-militarism. The young students — they don‘t know what the Communists did to us, they can’t really see why the Americans are over here, and why we need so many troops in our own forces, and why they have to be called up and pressed into the services. I may not agree, but I can understand.’
Just then two burly and unshaven airmen walked past. One wore a patch on his jacket that said ‘Munitions Storage — We tell you where to stick it!’ The other had a T-shirt with the words: ‘Kill ’em All. Let God Sort the Bastards Out.’ Both were sporting newly stitched shoulder patches showing what appeared to be a small plane — the fuselage looking remarkably phallic — beneath the rubric ‘One Hundred Successful Missions to A-Town’. Mr Kwong shook his head with distaste.
‘That’s what I just can’t take. Don‘t they ever learn? We need to be respected here, and they’re not respecting us. They still treat us like we’re some backward Third World country, and you know we‘re not. We’re proud, we’ve got good reason to be. But this . . .’ He gestured with despair. I said I hadn’t found anything very offensive about the two passing airmen. ‘Maybe not, maybe I react too much,’ he said. ‘I have worked for twenty-five years trying to bring the two communities together. I organize them to go out to meet families. I try to persuade them to learn a bit of Korean, to eat some of the food, to understand why they’re here. But they don’t want to know. And I it’s the way some of them treat our women, and our men too. Some of them just have no respect for us. The way they see it, they’re top of the pile, and everyone else is nothing. It makes me mad.’ He stubbed his cigarette out angrily, then performed his sleight-of-hand act, and another was instantly alight in his mouth and he was puffing on it furiously.
‘Still, getting the communities together works in some ways. We have about three hundred marriages a year between Korean girls and American men. There are still a lot of girls who want to get out while they can, and an American passport’s a good way to do it. But in other ways it’s not so easy to get girls down here. We’re getting to be a much richer country, you know. Girls won’t come and dance and do all the other things they have to as hostesses in places like A-Town. They don’t have to. They can get other jobs now. You take a look — the average age of the dancers down there is going up. The girls aren’t very pretty. And there’s still this stigma of getting involved with a foreigner. Korea is racially very pure, still, more so than Japan. There’s a feeling that we shouldn’t dilute our stock if we don’t have to. I tell you, ‘I’ve got a difficult job down here; it gets more difficult, too. I earn my money, that’s for sure.’
I ended up rather liking Mr Kwong, despite his outward similarity to a snake-oil salesman. It was all an act, designed to impress his masters on the base. I think he knew it cut little ice with me, and so he dropped the pretence and became just an intelligent, acutely sensitive Korean. It is said that Koreans have an unusually developed nunchi w a deep sensitivity to the moods and attitudes of those around them — a very finely tuned set of psychological antennae. Mr Kwong had more nunchi than most, which is probably what has made him so adroit a liaison officer for the last quarter of a century, able to arbitrate between the conflicting cultures of the air base and the people on the two sides of the cyclone fencing. But the cultural divide was widening, without a doubt: his job was becoming more difficult, and he was shrewd enough to realize it.
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