South Korean news this week, when viewed overall, paints a picture that is both sad and pathetic at the same time.

A North Korean delegation in the South for Liberation Day (8.15) celebrations are cheered by young South Koreans (also calling for the withdraw of U.S. forces), while the ROK government engages in censorship by blocking websites that might be critical of the North. Polls show that so-called Korea ‘experts’ (not further defined) believe that U.S. forces will not be needed after reunification (despite the obvious, time-proven, and well-known threat of a regional arms race with the absence of U.S. troops in South Korea), while young Koreans overwhelmingly (66 percent) indicate they would support North Korea if the North fought the U.S.

Amid this the U.S. Forces Korea commander feels the need to reiterate what has been established since 1992; that the U.S. has no nuclear weapons stored in South Korea. Why? Besides the turn of sentiment following the June 2000 North-South summit, South Korean education is another answer. Some of their offical history texts have become targets of revisionist historians, and now (as leftist Korean academia has done for decades) blames the U.S. for the division of Korea (omitting that the other choice was Soviet occupation), and for giving ‘permission’ for Korean troops to converge on Kwangju in 1980, where said Korean troops massacred about 250 of their own people. In reality, the U.S. did not give permission, and did not need to; the U.S. acknowledged that the South was moving troops from the DMZ, which is very different than giving permission. Not that the facts matter in South Korea.

None of this sentiment is really new, but for those following Korean news this week, these stories together serve to highlight the situation.