"and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside."
Seoul Again Delays Vote on Military Backing for U.S. in Iraq
Elected in December on a wave of antimilitary sentiment, President Roh Moo Hyun is trying to bridge the yawning gap between his electorate and his desire to keep in South Korea the 37,000 American troops posted here.
"Will General Tommy Franks suddenly `discover' that he needs the Second Infantry Division in Iraq?" said Robyn Lim, a conservative foreign affairs professor based in Japan, referring to the front-line American troops here. "In crying `Yankee go home!' South Koreans should have been more careful about what they asked for."
Among South Koreans under 30 years of age, popular support for the military alliance between the United States and South Korea has been undermined by years of unchecked anti-Americanism in South Korean schools and television talk shows. On Thursday hundreds of teachers demonstrated here against the American-led war on Iraq.
"The current Iraq war is one-sided massacre without cause at the minimum level," reads material used in workshops by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union. "The blood Iraqis bleed today heralds the death of Korean people tomorrow."
Any student who scores less than 80 percent on the Iraq workshop questionnaire is labeled by the teachers' union as "a person looking like a Korean outwardly, but in practice more likely to be an American."
