The ignorant face of Korean and religious collectivism

[musashi]

A crazy turn of events is happening in South Korea. Several months ago a group of 30 Christian missionaries from South Korea were kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Over the last few months a few of these hostages have been executed. Now South Koreans are having mass protests,

• Not against Christians missionaries,
  Not against Muslims,
  Not against Afghanistan
  Not even against the Taliban…

The South Koreans are protesting the United States ???!

"In South Korea, a nightly candlelight vigil calling for the South Korean hostages to return home safely has recently moved to a new site in central Seoul next to the U.S. Embassy. Some protesters have carried signs with a U.S. flag being smashed by a fist and appealed to the White House: "Bush: Don't kill, negotiate."

Candidates in South Korea's December presidential elections have been happy to play the populist, anti-American card, which finds resonance in a country often torn between greater powers.

"I want to ask what kind of judgment the U.S. government would have made if the 23 hostages were Americans," Chung Dong-young, a well-known liberal presidential hopeful, told reporters this week."

For starters before the US toppled the Taliban government being a Christian found within their Islamic state was a capital crime. These 30 missionaries would have been executed just for traveling to Afghanistan.

OK so the US kicks the Taliban out, and minuscule degree of religious freedom is restored in the country. These missionaries decide to proselytize in Afghanistan at their own expense, and at their own risk. Somehow South Koreans feel the abduction is the fault of the United States? Our that The US is supposed to come to the rescue?

[Raaz Satik]

The perception is that the US now runs Afghanistan and hence has the ability to meet the Taliban demands.

[musashi]

You are right that is the flawed perception.

The US probably isn’t even “running” its own military bases in Afghanistan, let alone the whole country. News reports have claimed that the Taliban held the hostages within one of the larger US bases for a time.

I think the whole World knows that Osama bin Laden is somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Yet the US forces can’t track down a 6’7” man connected to a dialysis machine.

It appears to me that South Koreans have been coddled and subsidized for so long, that their perceptions of US influence have become warped.