Angry Planet - The Rise of South Korea

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

All three Angry Planet guys are on the show today. Kevin went to South Korea in September and he’s here to tell us all about it.“A shrimp stuck between two whales.”Shopping for a frigate in a glossy catalogWhy America doesn’t remember the Korean WarThe Don Draper connection“MASH was about Vietnam.”A nuclear penninsula?No one knows what’s going in in North Korea.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. One day, all of the facts in about 30 years' time will be published. When genocide has been carried out in this country, almost with impunity, and when it is near to come briefly, people talk about intervention. You don't get freedom peaceful

Freedom has never Saint-guided people Anyone who is depriving you of freedom isn't deserving of a peaceful approach Jason I was telling Kevin Before we started That this is going to be A loose episode

So to describe for the audience What's going on right now Kevin Nodell Jason Fields both here All three all three angry planet boys in the room, a rare appearance. Kevin is showing us his

South Korean shipping. This is, I mean, no, here's aircraft. They look like catalogs. They are.

Okay. So it's like, hey, would you like to buy, would you like to buy a frigate? Right. These are the frigate's available. That is what these are.

You know, I'm, I'm not really the target audience, but I did see the room. So these were aboard the South Korea's training crews that, their Navy's crazy training crews that came to Honolulu this summer, or I guess fall rather. Fall? I don't know.

Last year is a blur, but they were at the end of the tour of the ship. The ship was their new training crews to train their midshipmen, but it made a bunch of ship stops and places other than Hawaii, a bunch of countries all around the region. And I'm pretty sure the audience was actually their military counterparts in those other parts of the world to show them that they've got a defense industry and they're ready for business. Well, they're one of the largest manufacturers of ships in the world, right? Correct. Definitely. Yeah, I mean, I guess we can just get... Oh, yeah, this is... We're doing it. Like, yeah, yeah, this is...

We're doing it. This is the episode. This is happening. I have a suggestion. Yeah. Okay. Instead of the littoral combat ship, could we buy something from Korea? Because that's a piece of shit. You know, that's an excellent question. And I'm sure the Koreans would love to sell us something.

I have no doubt. Do they have littoral ships of some kind? I'm sure you probably don't actually know the answer to that off the top. No, but let me browse real quickly to see what they are selling there. I'm sure they have something kind of like that. They definitely have, I'm sure, there's some riverine type. I love to imagine like a southern senator in that room. Can you tell me about your littoral option?

Well, so what we can say, I think before we frame why we're talking about Korea, which we should probably do after this. We should probably do that, yes. Yeah, we should reorient. But the Cato Institute actually would like the U.S. to buy more Korean commercial vessels, because we have kind of a shortfall in terms of vessels that we have available to us. And it is true that they tend to, have higher environmental standards and their shipyard seem to be running a little bit better than ours. I mean, I don't think it's really a secret that the U.S. shipbuilding industry has seen better days. And for the Korean shipbuilding industry, it's kind of in its heyday right now. You know, they build a lot of ships, commercial and increasingly military. There's geographic reasons for that. But we're going to put a pin in that question.

So yeah, we're going to welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Galt. As I said, we've got Kevin Nodell, Jason Fields here. Kevin's been wanting to do an episode about Korea for a long time. He lives in Hawaii. And recently. Near Korea, basically. Right.

And you recently returned from, when were you in? You were there, right, recently? Yeah, I was in Korea in September. But had a bunch of interactions with the Korean government out here in Hawaii, which we'll get into. The Hawaii connection is not for nothing. Well, I mean, that begs the question, why is the Korean government hanging out in Hawaii? Well, okay. Explanation of that before we get into why I was there, which I think does kind of fit together well.

First of all, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is based here in Hawaii, and they've got a consulate out here, but their consulate also has a military ad-de-Shani office because the military decision makers for this region happen to be out here. You know, we think of the Pentagon as the center of where everything happens, and to some degree that's true, but theater commanders actually do have a lot of leeway and a lot of. decision-making and really are kind of the point people in building relationships around the region. And unlike, you know, Centcom, which is out in Florida, Indo-Pacific Command is actually in the Pacific and kind of a lot closer to the people who they're actually talking to. So they're more than happy to come visit here and more than happy to have American officials visit them. But there's also kind of an interesting history that goes back to what we're coming up. I think actually, I think it's the 100th anniversary this year is the 100th anniversary of Korean immigration to

the United States. The first place that Korean immigrants arrived was in Hawaii. You know, you have kind of the occupation of of the Korean peninsula by Japan. In fact, I think I got that wrong. I think it's 120th anniversary. So like longer than that. But you had these exiles, people who had fled Japanese colonial rule. And, you know, there were a lot of these exiles kind of in different places. Hawaii was one hub of them.

Shanghai was another. But the first president of what is now considered the Republic of Korea or South Korea, as we tend to say it, was Sigmund Rhee, who was an exile and Honolulu entrepreneur who, you know, went to South Korea from Honolulu. And also, after he was exiled, again, when he was overthrown, returned to Honolulu and died here. So there is a pretty deep connection between Hawaii specifically and Korea. All right. Tell me about your trip. Yeah. So I went to Korea as part of a journalist exchange. It was six American journalists going to Seoul and going to a few other places. And six Korean journalists going to D.C. And it was hosted by the East West Center. at University of Hawaii.

I had not, this trip had been scheduled to happen in 2020, and we know how everything that was supposed to happen in 2020 went. Korea had pretty strict border regulations on, you know, who could come in and, you know, how long you could quarantine. But this year, they started to kind of dial back some of those restrictions. So it was decided that we could go ahead and do that. I say we as if I was signed up for the program. I wasn't actually.

What happened was while I was covering RIMPAC out here, which also might be relevant in this discussion because Korea was very involved in RIMPAC this last year. I got a call from the East-West Center saying that they were having this program. Basically, the conversation started with, hey, do you want to go to Korea? And I was told that they were doing this exchange, and one of the American journalists had kind of dropped out at the line. last minute. So there was a vacancy. And I said yes. And it turned out that I was going with a bunch of, you know, there was the opinion editor of the New York Times, Time Magazine's national, national security correspondent, producer, Dateline NBC, someone from CNN International, a really impressive investigative journalist out of Wisconsin.

So a lot of highly, highly accomplished journalists and me were going to Korea to do this and have discussions with some fairly high-level Korean officials. You know, we talked to the head of their National Assembly, so basically their version of Congress. we talked to, you know, various people, some of which I probably shouldn't say because those were off the record discussions. But some fairly senior people who are all over trade and security decision making and diplomatic decision making. And got to see some really interesting things. What was kind of top of mind there for them, for the Koreans? honestly the thing that they most want to talk about was the inflation reduction act really yes

everybody wanted to talk to us about that because they are pissed about the inflation reduction act about in particularly the tax credit for electric vehicles that is only applicable to american built electric vehicles part of the reason for this so you may or may not know this. You know, Tesla is the number one EV on the market in the U.S. Number two is Kia. So they're a big part of this shift or whatever kind of shift that we kind of have. And not too long before this, you know, Kia is a subsidiary of Hyundai.

time. They, so Biden was visiting Korea not long before this and had meetings, and they made a big announcement about how Yundai was going to make investments in the U.S. was going to build factories and was going to be, you know, agreed to this really big thing, which will be, which potentially will employ a lot of Americans and build a lot of electric vehicles. but that's a few years out. And so the Korean market is not going to benefit from these tax credits, not for some time. And it just there was hardly a room that we were ever in where somebody didn't bring this up to us.

It was a major thing. And I think still is because even out here, I had a conversation with a Korean diplomat out in Hawaii. sometime in December, I think it was, where this came up again. So that was the biggest thing. I assume that then the biggest national security concern is neighbor to the north, constantly testing missiles and rockets, right? It is, sort of. Yeah, I mean, it...

Is it like a... We were the ones asking questions about that. It was more us asking questions about that more than them volunteering their concern about that. I mean, there have been a, yes, last year was a historic year of tests, like, you know, more missiles than we've ever seen. Though it was also supposed to be the year that they were going to test a new nuclear weapon and that never happened. And, you know, we might get into the whole we don't actually know anything. which is, I think, an important thing to discuss, but we'll get into that later. Especially this week specifically for reasons unrelated to Korea, but we can maybe talk about that at the very end.

Sure. Oh, yeah. We might. But I'll talk about some of the threats that I think are really on their mind. But one thing that I think was telling, because the thing about North Korea is that's kind of always there. And it becomes something, it kind of becomes background noise. Like, you definitely have officials who are very worried about it, who are concerned. But, you know, we spend some time talking to some young people. And most of them said that none of them actually believe that there would ever be

war that it would never happen, that it's just not something that's going to happen. It's not something that they're worried about as young people. But after one of them said that, another one of them kind of spoke up and said something else. She said, you know, I used to think that I thought that. But she told the story of one time when she was at school. She grew up kind of near the DMZ. And she said one time they heard gunfire and like heard like, you know, military equipment and jets and things like things maneuvering and things popping off. And they thought that the war had started. And it hadn't. It was a military exercise.

And, you know, there's, you know, this is the most militarized stretch of land around. And they do hold exercises there. The South Korean military does this regularly. And after she did that, she thought to herself, there is military stuff all. here all the time. Why did I think the war started? Because it's background noise, but it's something that everybody there has internalized. It's something that could happen to the drop of a hat. It's not something that's in the front of their mind, but it's, I think it is in the back of people's minds. And, you know, that was also some young people, because actually, if you see pulling, there,

there have been a sudden and really aggressive shift toward being pro North Korea should have its own nuclear deterrent. This was my next question actually. Yeah. The polls are striking in terms of kind of that shift. And it was something that was discussed in the most recent, you know, presidential election that they had there in which the conservatives regained power. But I'll say this.

Every official that we talk to about that. So they do say that it's a non-starter, that they don't actually intend to do that. And the Americans are not interested in putting nukes back on the peninsula, at least under this administration, because that would violate a bunch of agreements that we already have. And also, as both you and I know, there's also discussion about news. sea-based nuclear deterrence anyway. So I think that there's an opinion among a lot of people that there's plenty of nukes moving around the Pacific and we don't need to be more. But there are other people who definitely are interested in more.

And there is a renewed interest among South Koreans in exploring something of their own. And there were, I know, some recent public statements by officials who said, you know, we could develop this real fast, which I think is true. The thing that I have serious doubts about with anybody is this includes China as well. I think that producing plutonium pits and having the amount of fissile material and the knowledge and the machines ready to make them. is turning out to be a lot harder than people remember it being 40 and 50 years ago. And I think the discussion around that specifically in the nuclear weapons field is going to get real weird in the next couple years. I think some people in America are about to learn how hard it is to manufacture these weapons and how long they've neglected that, industry, but that's a tangent.

And so I just imagine, like, I don't know, it'd be interesting to see them try to spit it up from the ground up. Like, where would they get the fizz-on material? I have a lot of questions, but that's a tangent. It's definitely an interesting one. But, but like I said, at least in our conversations with officials, and even like off the record, I mean, maybe they're, and also maybe they're just saying that because, you know, they don't want Americans to believe that. but I didn't get the impression that decision makers out there are truly that interested in that. Not all of them.

I mean, okay, there were a few kind of were a bit coy in their answers and coy about that. But I'll put it this way. I don't think that we're going to be seeing that soon. So what then, what about the national security situation around China, Taiwan, and Japan? Yeah. Yeah, those ones are, that, that I think is the big question. You know, and that what I was alluding to when I said that, you know, North Korea is definitely a thing. China, China's a complicated one for them.

I guess my first question is, do you want to know what they say, Publicly or privately. Well, I want to know the answer to both, but let's say publicly first. Publicly, China is not an enemy. It's a valued trading partner. You know, the new administration does take a little bit of a tougher line. That's for sure. And like the previous government was criticized for playing a little too close with them

and not not criticizing them when they do step out of line in terms of humanitarian norms. I guess that's the wrong word. The previous government had connections to the, that was the scandal government, right? That had the... Every government is the scandal government. The cult scandal government. Or was that the one before? I think that was actually the one before.

Okay. Just so everybody remembers, I'm a reporter. I am not a South Korea specialist. I know some things about the history, but I don't claim to be an expert. No, I was just curious because that was like one of the last times that like domestic Korean politics kind of broke through in America was when there was a scandal around the president who was a woman that had connections with a cult in South Korea. Okay, yeah. That was Park. Yeah. Okay.

Daughter of previous dictator, Park Chung-hee, we might talk about a little bit. But no, there was a, you know, President Moon's government was after that. Okay. a bit more of a dubbish government. You know, much more pro conciliation with the North. And, you know, a little bit more softer with China. But I wouldn't say friendly exactly, because again, we're talking, you know, public and private. The relationship with China is, I think, really deteriorated in some pretty big ways.

You know, they're, South Koreans have been watching, you know, what happened in Hong Kong. They've been watching kind of what's been going on in the South China Sea, and we'll get to why that matters to them, I think, pretty shortly. You know, China is by far their largest trading partner, you know, and with free trade agreements and, you know, the 90s was when they had. their economic boom and trade with China was a huge enormous part of what made that possible. It's an enormous part of what has brought a lot of Koreans out of poverty, such as it is. We'll also talk about maybe a bit why that's complicated too. But for a long time, culturally and politically, you know, there were questions sometimes, but Koreans were mostly pretty pro-China in terms of it's a good relationship to have.

investment is good, trade is good, we're not actively hostile with them, you know, nothing to worry about. But, you know, that was very much the era of Hu Jintao. And things have changed in the era of

Xi Jinping, this kind of new nationalism. One thing that's important to remember is, you know, we talked a bit about why shipbuilding is important for them. And it's because with the standoff, with the north, They don't really trade through their northern border, and all their other borders are ocean.

So they really depend on shipping being able to move freely. And some of these rumblings in the South China Sea and in the Taiwan Strait, you know, if war breaks out in these sorts of places or China decides to, you know, really restrict navigation, That's kind of a problem because that's the waterway through which a lot of these ships go and their ability to keep their economy going, particularly as they grow and want to trade more with Europe, invest more in Africa and do more stuff in Southeast Asia. So freedom of navigation is really important. And, you know, I was actually kind of surprised. You know, they usually don't take hard lines on Taiwan. you know, and actually they were pretty pissed about Pelosi's visit.

And not just politicians. Like there was kind of a dip in U.S. approval in both Japan and South Korea after that visit, but it seems to have kind of leveled out since then. But yeah, one of the things that we were told about, and on the record, no less, was that the Taiwan straight needs to stay open and free. and that Korea is willing to take steps to ensure that that stays the case. Now, that's different from necessarily endorsing Taiwanese independence. You know, it stays short of that.

But it's definitely something that is on people's mind. I remember we were talking to somebody, kind of a trade guy, former official, and I asked him a question about this, kind of about, you know, keeping these sea lanes open and, you know, wouldn't it be, would it be bad if there was a conflict that broke out with Taiwan or in the South China Sea or if there were these issues? And he said, you know, that's not a, that's, that's a, that's a business question or trade question. That's a security question. I said, but it would be bad for. portrayed, wouldn't it? And he kind of paused and kind of said, you know, yeah, but we just don't like talking about that. He said, you know, I went to business school in the 90s. That's when I got my master's degree. And, you know, I came up in the time when it was all WTO, global prosperity. You know, it was that era. And he said, you know, that era. And he said, you know, that era is.

is not quite, not necessarily over, but the era in which security matters for trade is, is here and it's now. And it's something that people don't really want to talk about because it would change everything. We pointed out the crisis in the Suez recently with the ever given that ship that got lodged there. And, you know, it, that only lasted for a few days. but it caused problems for weeks and months in the global shipping industry. So even like a week or month-long confrontation in the South China Sea, let alone a war, is going to have much larger implications. It would change everything.

So it sounds like the kind of prevailing mood is around security concerns. Let's just, can we just keep the ships moving? Let's not rock the boat with the big boy to our west. Well, the boat. Funny. Rock the boat. Yeah. Well, I think that's sort of, that's definitely what they say publicly and even privately. But it is a little bit more complicated than that because they realize that China has been more aggressive.

And also China has been kind of moving into some waters that Korea considered its own kind of in the Yellow Sea. There have been these kinds of things with the Chinese fishing fleet. There have been, you know, military convoys transiting around there publicly. Again, if you ask them, they say there isn't an issue or working it out. But yeah, privately they, you know, privately it's, you know, China is a challenge. They're not going to call China an enemy because at this point, China is not an enemy of South Korea, but it's emerged as a concern. And it's a concern not just for South Korea, but also regional countries that have claims in the South China Sea, several of which are becoming interested in buying South Korean Navy warships.

During Rempack, I toured the Philippine Navy's newest warship, and they said right away, like, you know, it's brand new, built in Korea. They were very happy with it and very proud of it. And, you know, I toured it. It's a nice ship clean. It's got that new ship smell. You know, it is very well built. These are sturdy, reliable ships. There's a reason why countries around Southeast Asia and beyond are getting interested in the South Korean defense industry.

All right, angry planet listeners. We're going to pause there for a break. We will be back on with Kevin O'Dell right after this. All right, angry planet listeners. Welcome back. We were talking about Korea. Tell me about relations with Japan. A lot of historical unpleasantness between the two countries, to put it mildly.

That is one way to describe it. And also, kind of the beginning of their emergence, Korea's naval history with the MGen War. Just before I get into that, like that's, you know, we talk a lot about World War II. and, you know, the occupation, or, well, actually, we should talk more about that. Americans don't know anything about this. But the Imgen War is important because it was, you know, a major naval victory for Korea in resisting Japanese invaders back in medieval times. And part of it was they built what they call their turtle ships, which were these kind of,

it's not an ironclad because they're made out of wood. But, you know, these were kind of battleships as we would think of them today. You know, you couldn't volley them with arrows because they actually had roofs. You know, seems quaint, but, you know, at the time it was really kind of an innovation. You know, these were just really sturdy, really tough ships that were able to kind of change the game on the sea. But yeah, there's an expression in Korean history that Korea is a ship or no, is a shrimp between whales. The two whales being China and Japan and that when the whales fight, the shrimp is crushed. Japan has a long history of, you know, exerting its imperial power on Japan and, yeah, occupied it quite brutally for, you know, the early 20th century.

You know, you had, you know, they would draft young men and send them to fight in the Pacific, something that gets kind of lost. And you can find it in the accounts of American service members. Sometimes when they were gunning down these Japanese troops who were trying to surrender, the ones who were trying to surrender weren't actually Japanese. Some of them were Korean conscripts. And, you know, you had forced labor, really brutal stuff, and the comfort women, you know, really brutal sexual exploitation of these women that were taken by the, the Japanese military, both in Korea and moved abroad.

We saw some of the protests that still go every day. You'll see people almost on a daily basis protesting the Japanese government and demanding more recognition of some of these crimes. So it's a difficult relationship. But Japan is also a really important trade partner. And, you know, a lot of young people out there, they, a lot of cultural, like, it's a complicated relationship. I mean, I use the word complicated so many times here, but, you know, whatever. You know, you've got anime is popular there just as it is in the U.S. and in other places.

A lot of Japanese products are still valued. And, you know, with these mounting concerns about freedom of the seas. there still is a shift toward closer relationship between Japan's maritime self-defense force. It's not Navy and the Korean Navy. They're really trying to improve their interoperability, improve relations, and the current government is not shy about it. Sometimes it's been a little bit more couched. But in public opinion does seem to be shifting a little bit.

toward, if nothing else, pragmatically recognizing that this relationship is probably beneficial at this time. You know, there's definitely difficult memories. You know, there are people who are not jazzed about seeing Japan's kind of resurgent interest in building up a military and reassessing its past, it's kind of historic pacifist post-war. foreign policy. Not everybody's excited about it, but at the same time, with this interest in keeping sea lanes open and wanting to have allies and wanting to have enough muscle to kind of keep that, maintain the status quo, that relationship, I think, is evolving. Is there a sense that sometimes you have to pick a whale? Yeah, I think so. And I mean, and now America is, kind of one of those two.

You know, it's, it's, I think there is that sense, but, but I mean, there also is the sense that they, they want to build up their own capacity. And it's why they've built up their Navy and continue to build it up, why they're pursuing, they want to have their own aircraft carrier eventually, they want to have more submarines. They, they also want to be a power in their own right. And already, I think, perceived themselves to be. You know, they went from being kind of a basket case dictatorship that democratized in the 90s, and it's now the world's 10th largest economy.

Now is a major donor of aid to other countries around the world. And are quite proud of that being involved in development projects. And I would say, you know, in talking to people there, they, you know, they're in the young, democracy phase. So I think they're starting to adopt, there's starting to be some cynicism in other ways, but you know, in terms of Korea's role in the world,

there's still a lot of pride, I think, in the way that they're engaging with other countries. And also other countries around the world mostly view South Korea favorably. You know, Korean products are, there's a growing

awareness of how much Korean products they use. The products are mostly good, products. It's not only that the soft power is exploding too, right, pop culturally. Like K-pop, K-pop fans? I was going to pivot to that

shortly as I got done talking about aid. But yeah, in addition to the aid in investment, definitely. K-pop is huge. K-dramas are huge. And it's definitely something

that is a point of pride for some people, but I do think it is interesting. And I'll talk about that in a second. There, I guess I could just talk about it right now. Describe our cyberpunk present for us through the lens of Korea. Yeah, because, well, because, yeah, let me tell you, Korea pretty cyberpunk. Parasite and Squid Game have been, you know, them being international phenomenons, and I've heard them as being evidence of Korea's relevance globally.

But neither of these are things that are about how good Korea is. In fact, both of those cultural artifacts are about discontent of Koreans with Korea as it exists right now. I'm also picking back up on a show that I started watching on the plane ride over there called Signal, which also has a lot to say about corruption, about classism, and about how the rich have everything and the poor have nothing. Now, the poor are not destitute in South Korea like they once were, but there's a glaring inequality gap. So it is, I think, interesting that we tout that that and that some kind of Korean officials tout these things as proof of their success when the art itself is. hypercritical of systems of power. Explicitly, explicitly calling out some of these same officials.

It is very interesting to me. And actually, I mentioned that in one of the articles I wrote. And one Korean diplomat who talked to me about the article kind of blew past that and said that it was great that I mentioned all of that. But privately, one of them said, I'm really glad that you mentioned that about Squid Game and Parasite. Because it is kind of weird that we talk about it that way. It's kind of funny, right? That all through this conversation, I'm catching this air of everyone wants to keep globalism and to certain extent like the 90s going. But there is an air that there's discontent.

and everyone is looking internally a little bit, starting to batten down the hatches, is getting ready for what they assume is coming next. No one's quite sure what that is. Right. That is kind of, to be clear, I mean,

there's, I've talked to a few, you know, military folks with the Korean military too. Definitely the impression that you get is that they're not, interested in having a war. You know, every once in a while, you know, any good military professional

is at least curious about how well they'll do, curious what their new equipment can do. The one thing, and it's one of the reasons why the U.S. Navy and actually other navies are interested in working with the Korean Navy. This was something actually that Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the Pacific Fleet told me, was that he really respects how experienced they are.

And you don't really think about this as much, but most navies in the world today, you know, post like Korean War actually have not really been involved in much ship-to-ship fighting. The Korean Navy currently is actually one of the only navies that has. not in major ones, but in its skirmishes with the north, even into this century, they have experience being in a standoff with an actual enemy. You know, we've had our kind of confrontations with China, which, you know, is a rival. And we start, sometimes we're using adversary now, but we haven't fought the Chinese in a very long time and have an active trading relationship. with China. North and South Korea have sank each other's ships in the not distant past and have had to kind of

conduct these operations. So they do, I think, have an appreciation for also Seoul is a very modern city. And part of the reason why everything is so modern and everything is so new is old soul was kind of decimated and destroyed. There's not a lot left of what Seoul looks like before the Korean War. And I think that that memory is still alive. And I think that there is still enough people out there who have a memory of how bad things can get. And, you know, they want to invest in their ability to participate in a war or to, like, defend their own interests.

Should war come to them? But I don't detect an eagerness. They really, I think, see military tools as about deterrence. They do not have enthusiasm for fighting a war anytime soon. So kind of on that note, can you talk more about why we're bad in America? like we fought a long bloody war that like a hero for World War II got fired. People were talking about using tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons were moved around.

It was a horrifying war. Like we like the term brainwashing got, went into popular parlance in America. But it's forgotten. Literally it's called the forgotten war. I don't remember really learning about it in, in like school at all. All of my knowledge of it has come kind of after the fact. Why do you think there's no cultural memory in America of relations between North and South Korea and the Korean War?

Yeah, it's kind of bizarre, right? I've definitely thought about this. You know, it became a big part of my college academic career, I wrote a bit about the U.S. relationship with Korea. And I had a personal reason for doing that. My grandfather served in Korea. But interestingly, he did not actually serve during the Korean War. He served there in 1945.

He was one of the U.S. soldiers who arrived in Korea to process Japanese prisoners and to do kind of post-World War II duties, which is a period of time that we completely gloss over also. It's actually kind of bizarre to me. Because, like, you know, I feel like, you know, we teach kids, and I don't expect people to know everything. I, you know, I'm not insane in that way. You know, some people who get into history,

they're like, you know, people need to know all the details of this. And no, no, people don't need to know all the minutia of all. the details of everything that happens or they don't need to know everything about your pet issue. But that being said, it is given how much of a trading partner and given that kind of our cultural connection, you know, huge Korean communities in, you know, Los Angeles and, you know, up and down the Western seaboard, you know, huge trade relationships and the fact that we fought this bloody war there and shaped, you know, the country. It's crazy. to me that we don't really talk about it at all. Because we, we talk, I think, I remember

learning about the occupation of Japan and about the splitting up of East and West Germany and how that happened. Not all the details, but you know, cliff notes. You know, you get enough that you kind of know that that happened. But when it comes to the Korean War, I do remember learning a little bit about it, but it kind of like, and then this happened, but they don't explain how our interest started there or about how the U.S. and that, you know, we talk about how the U.S. and the Soviets split up east and west Germany, but we don't talk about what happened on the Korean Peninsula and how the 38th parallel was drawn at all. It just becomes, and then this happened, and we fought a three-year war there.

It was a kind of big deal, and then we kind of moved past that so we can get to the civil rights movement and talk about Vietnam. And we just really blow past this Korea thing. And it actually does seem irresponsible. Because, yeah, it's one of the closest

relationships that we have is with this country. Even today, I think people realize that it's, when we had our roundtable, the trip that we had, you know, the American journalists had a roundtable in Hawaii with the Korean journalists when we both returned from our respective capitals. I remember that there was one of the Korean journalists kind of brought up concern that there were some polls that American said that if North Korea were to invade South Korea, they wouldn't care. about rendering military aid. But what I told them about that is,

the polls might say that now, but if it actually happened, I think the polls would change. Because like, and I kind of draw the connection with what happened with Ukraine. But even more so, you know, you have huge Korean American population

centers in Los Angeles. You have Korean American celebrities. You know, you have Glenn from the walk Dead, which, you know, like, I say that, but like, that's white people love the Walking Dead. And Glenn was one of the favorite characters in that show. So white people love Koreans. I'll just put it that way. That's simplistic. But, you know, Korean culture is visible to Americans much more now than it has been. But it's, it's kind of building on something that's been here for a long time. Like, that relationship is established. And it's, it's a big one. I don't know how much it gets.

reflected in kind of East Coast D.C. media because it's, you know, a much more it is kind of a more West Coast relationship, I think, is somebody who grew up West Coast. I see it a little bit more. Had friends

growing up who were Korean American. And also anybody who's grown up by a military base will have met at least one half Korean kid for, you know, reasons. I don't know. I'm kind of rambling on at this point.

There was MASH during the 70s and early 80s. That's true, but MASH was about... One of the most popular shows of all the time. Yeah, it was going to say, but MASH was about... It was. No, no, no, but people... I think that's a subtlety that not everybody understood. Oh, exactly. Right? They kind of...

I mean, when I was a kid, I assumed that the... And I didn't know any better. My dad watched MASH all the time. I assumed that we were in Vietnam. And that is what I was watching. Right? Yeah. Yeah, a lot of people I think didn't.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's television. Not everybody engages it super closely. But, but no, I mean, yeah, lost my train of thought, as I've done so many times. It's more, it's morning on the edge of the empire here. I'm thinking about the 407-7 now and the opening theme song. Yeah. I was just in that part of California, you know, where the hills are actually the hills where they flew the helicopters over. and I just think I'm in Korea every time I drive through there.

Well, yeah, and it's, but no, it is, I think, really, but that brings it back to, I think it's weird that, maybe not super weird, but yeah, American education and American attention has been very Eurocentric, even though a lot of our policy and also a lot of our relationships. And again, this might be an east coast, west coast separation. But, you know, people who live in west coast states tend to be a little bit more aware of America's relationship with Asia, both because that's where immigrants got off the boat and where a lot of the companies that we trade with, you know, the ports up and down the west coasts and out here in Hawaii, you know, Asia is very visible. And it's very evident that while, you know, America has its European roots.

It's also a Pacific country. It's, you know, and we've got, you know, our island territories and all of that. A lot of complicated history with that. But it's shocking to me, really, when I look back and think about that, how little anyone bothered to formally teach us. I did a lot of informal reading because I was a nerd, but it wasn't part of the curriculum. I think it's because it doesn't fit into America's self-conception of itself in the 1950s. It is a bad thing that started off the greatest decade in American history, right? It's kind of that like the older generations, I think what their idea of it is.

I think like the greatest pop culture hero of the Korean War in modern, in the modern American mythos, is a guy. that stole someone's identity after he died on the front line. And then, and then like, Draper. Yeah, exactly. It turned himself into an advertising executive. And is kind of this villain is too strong a word, but like is part, is like one of the darker aspects of American life

is a figure like Don Draper. And he's born out of the Korean War. Like that is kind of our relationship to it now, I think. is that it was this terrible event that kick started this wonderful decade. This decade that people say is wonderful. But we all know is much more complicated than that. And that we don't, other than that, we don't want to think about it. I think that that may, I think there's definitely truth to that.

But that's interesting. But yeah, overall, though, I think my main point, though, is it's probably something that Americans should pay a little bit more attention to. Oh, I know where we should end up. All right. Take me there. North Korea and why we don't know anything about it. Yeah, why don't we? Especially, like, you would think that people in South Korea know more about North Korea than they actually do, right?

It was kind of your sense? Yeah, I think, and that came up in our last, in our meeting was that, you know, getting a sense of what's actually going on there is very, very difficult. You know, you have the defectors who can give you a sense of how things are, but the defectors are also people that South Korean media have to have to treat with some skepticism sometimes. They're the people who didn't like it. If they liked it, they would have stayed. Right. But I mean, that's not all of it. Like sometimes they get sucked into interesting politics and also, yeah, there are incentives to say certain things.

But it's not the issue of whether maybe things are actually perfectly okay up there. I don't think anybody's, I mean, other than the most ardently, you know, contrarian. academics, most people are not going to make that case. It's a locked down authoritarian society. And what little we do know for sure is pretty terrifying. Jason, I can't hear you. Why do I do that? Anyway, all right, just a very, very brief aside.

I actually know someone who defected to North Korea, who was my age. Defected two? Yes, indeed. Oh, oh boy. We're in for a story. Yes. No, I mean, he was, he liked, his name was Mark Green. He, uh, you knew Mark Green.

Well, I mean, I don't know if it's the same Mark Green, but, uh, yeah. So this guy, he went through college, like, learned the classics, whatever, but like was always sneaking around with guns. and just loved North Korea. And eventually he left a friend of mine who was his girlfriend and moved. And as far as I know, he was there for at least five years. I think I'm remembering the same guy. Well, yeah, there have definitely been a few high profile defector.

I mean, by definition, anybody who decides to move there becomes one of the high profile. because there are not many of them. Not a lot. Yeah, not a lot of people choose to do that. But in bringing it back to... Because a lot of people, even that we were talking to... You assume that the South Koreans will know more, but that's not necessarily true. I mean, definitely they can speak the language better,

but that's actually also a little bit weird because the dialects are different. And, you know, they speak in North Korea a version of Korean that kind of existed, you know, before the splits. And, you know, they've been culturally isolated. The language has shifted and evolved in South Korea. And so the way that they speak to one other is actually not the same. It's kind of like if you were to bring somebody, you know, we just talked about the 50s. like take it take somebody directly from the 1950s and try talking to them today and see how well

you would communicate you would struggle i think um language evolves and language changes and you know they they even struggle on that way but also you know we we talked earlier about um how last year there was just an outrageous amount of missiles fired from north korea and how seemingly everybody was sure that there was going to be a nuclear test. The question wasn't if, mostly when we were talking to people, it was rather when they're going to do it. Are they going to do it before or after Xi Jinping does his party conference? Is it going to be, you know, like, but it was like, it's going to happen this year. And it didn't. It just didn't happen. Because you can, it's just such a closed society. You can really hardly know. Any journalist that goes up there, they're on what we can nicely call the guided tour. A nice Potimkin tour of North Korea. But also something that was interesting that came up in our conference was actually the way that even American media can sometimes shape. You know, we've talked about South Korea's cultural power and growing cultural power and imprint on the global stage.

But to this point, I think it's inspeatable that nobody's cultural power rivals the United States at this point. I think that's still true. There are things about that that are changing, but that's still the truth. And nothing, I think, better illustrates this than when we talked about, do you remember not too long ago when Kim Jong-un died? remember that? That media story, you know, he'd had a heart attack or something and died.

So they talked about when I don't, I don't want to say which one, because I don't entirely remember, but a few American outlets started going with that. Like American media did report that citing like high level sources.

In one of the Korean journalists talked about how one of their editors brought that to them. They said, hey, the Americans are reporting this. We got to run with it now. Like, like, you know, they say that they've confirmed it with top officials. Like, this is it. He's gone. He's dead. So they went ahead and went with it. And as we know, not dead. So it's really getting. It's really guesswork when we try to figure out what that regime is doing, what it wants, and how it interacts with the world.

I think that is a beautiful place to end on. Kevin Nodell. Thank you so much for coming on to the show and walking us through this. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Nodell is created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, if you really like us, why AngryPlanet.substack.com or AngryPlanetpod.com, give us $9 a month.

You get commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes, and you get them early. You also get our weekly newsletter, where I'm breaking down the geopolitical events of the past week. You can see what I have to say about the Chinese balloon in our most recent dispatch. The vibes are bad. It's kind of the short version.

Lots of balloons. This is the first one we've shot down. Well, I guess, as I'm recording this at 340 on February 10th, the second one that we've shot down that we know about. Anyway, I'm sure there will be more about that in the next dispatch, which you can read on Monday at angryplanet.substack.com if you're giving us that $9 a month. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an

Great Planets. Stay safe until day.