Editorial in the Chosun Ilbo, ‘Damned If They Did, Damned If They Didn’t:’

A ruling-party lawmaker, Kim Won-wung, last week asserted that all the nation’s misfortune was planted in a secret 1905 agreement between the U.S. and Japan, the so-called Taft-Katsura Agreement, in which Washington acknowledged Japan’s colonial control of Korea. “We have to protest to the U.S. against this secret agreement, which was a serious criminal act under international law, and demand an apology for it,” the lawmaker demanded during a parliamentary audit of our embassy in Washington…

…But the purveyors of this historical view also grumble about the U.S. intervention in the Korean War and want to topple a statue of U.S. general Douglas MacArthur in Incheon. It must be based on such views that Rep. Kim alone did not go along with the other lawmakers when they paid their respects at the Korean War memorial after the audit in Washington.

To blast the U.S. for failing to intervene in one instance and for intervening in another, for not seeing one attack on our sovereignty (by Japan) but seeing another (by North Korea) is tantamount to damning the U.S. if it does and damning it if it doesn’t. While anti-American acts may seem profitable gimmicks for our politicians and America-bashing is rewarded with popular applause, we should also think how such careless accusations make us look in the eyes of the international community. [emphasis added]