ABSTRACT
It is a bipartisan commonplace in Washington for policy-makers and pundits to acclaim the Republic of Korea a grand success in democratization, with the assumption that two strong forces made it possible: the rise of the middle class and American support for democracy. When a new president, Lee Myong-bak, a leader eager to support the alliance and promote good relations with the United States, visited Washington in April 2008, it was as if nothing untoward had ever intruded on this relationship. Pundits blamed two previous presidents, Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun, for “10 lost years” of turmoil and anti-Americanism, as if George W. Bush’s policies would have met with universal acclaim in Korea had it not been for two misguided presidents and a handful of anti-American demonstrators.1 It is also assumed time and again that relations with Korea began with the courageous American defense of South Korea in the Korean War, when in fact a three-year American Military Government had preceded it, an occupation almost forgotten to history. When it is recalled (a rarity), again, the assumption is that Americans nurtured a democracy with few bumps in the road: as former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, put it in contrasting the turmoil in Iraq to previous occupations, postwar Japan, Germany, and South Korea were “all free from internal warfare and with a good economic base” (Gelb 2008).
