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It's never easy for a mighty military to tread lightly on foreign soil. In the case of American forces in South Korea, protectors of the nation's sovereignty since the Korean War, the job is made doubly difficult by local sensitivities arising from a history of foreign domination. So when a few GIs commit particularly brutal crimes against the local populace, it's easy for some South Koreans to ask: Who will guard us from our guardians？
That kind of questioning grew more insistent on January 20, when police found the body of a 30year-old Korean woman, Kang Un-gyong, in the apartment she shared with her American. boyfriend. An autopsy showed Kang, who had bruises over most of her face and chest, died after being hit on the back of her head with a blunt object. Her boyfriend, Henry Kevin McKinley, 36, an electrician at the United States military base in Seoul, admitted heating her. McKinley said he pushed Kang, who then struck her head on a radiator, but denied that he tried to murder her.
On January 21 McKinley was arrested on charges similar to involuntary manslaughter under Korean law. As a civilian employee of the U.S. military in Korea, he comes under the purview of the Status-of-Forces agreement between Washington and Seoul. This grants the South Korean government criminal jurisdiction——but not pre-trial custody——over members of American forces in Korea. Because of the gravity of the charges against McKinley, however, the Americans waived their rights to keep him in their custody before trial.
The Kang case was only the latest in a series of crimes involving members of U.S. forces and Koreans. Just a few days earlier, a U.S. army sergeant was sentenced to six months in jail for assaulting a local in a subway brawl last May——even though some reports said it was a Korean who instigated tile fray. The murder also followed two separate incidents in which American soldiers were indicted on charges of attempted rape.
With the spotlight already on the behaviour of American servicemen abroad because of the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa, allegedly by a group of U.S. soldiers, the Kang murder burst the lid on many Koreans' resentment of the presence of 37,000 American troops in their midst. Official relations between Seoul and Washington remain on an even keel, and most Koreans don't blame the entire U.S. military for the crimes of individual servicemen. But the incidents have played into the hands of those who are questioning the very basis of the American presence in South Korea.
Some observers believe the weds of Koreans' estrangement from the U.S. military were first sown in 1980, when troops under the control of former President Chun Doo Hwan massacred some 200 pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Kwangju. Many left-wing students——usually at the forefront of anti-government protests——still insist that the U.S. military command acquiesced in the crackdown.
But public alienation against U.S. troops really took off after the brutal 1992 murder of a Korean prostitute by an American soldier. Pictures taken at the time-not released publicly but seen by the REVIEW-showed the dead woman's mouth stuffed with matches and a bottle stuck in her vagina. The man convicted of the murder, Pvt. Kenneth Markle of the U. S. army's 2nd Division, received a life sentence, later reduced to 15 years.
Cultural misunderstandings haven't helped matters any. Many Koreans believe all Gls are mist young men with little education from rural areas of the U.S. "I've been hit and called names by Koreans, but I didn't respond," says a soldier at Camp Humphreys in Pyongtaek. He says the U.S. forces' command "drills it into your head every day: don't fight with a Korean. You can't win."
Other factors are also at play, not least the swelling self-confidence of the younger generation of South Koreans, bolstered by their nation's growing economic and political clout.
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Up to a point. In the old days, trampled on by whites, they were made to accept a second-class life of scant privileges as a grim reward for being lighter-skinned than the third-class blacks. Today, they feel trampled on by the black majority. The white-led National Party; which still governs the Western Cape, the province where some 80% of Coloureds live, plays on this fear to good electoral effect. With no apparent irony, the party also appeals to the Coloured sense of common culture with fellow Afrikaans-speaking whites, a link the Nats have spent decades denying.
This curious courtship is again in full swing. A municipal election is to be held in the province on May 29th and the Nats need the Coloured vote if they are to win many local councils.
By most measures, Coloureds are still better-off than blacks. Their jobless rate is high, 21% according to the most recent figures available. But the black rate is 38%. Their average yearly income is still more than twice that of blacks. But politics turns on fears and aspirations. Most Coloureds fret that affirmative action, the promotion of non-whites into government-related jobs, is leaving them behind. Affirmative action is supposed to help Coloureds (and Indians) too. It often does not. They may get left off a shortlist because, for instance, a job requires the applicant to speak a black African language, such as Xhosa.
Some Coloureds think that the only way they will improve their lot is to launch their own, ethnically based, political parties, last year a group formed the Kleurling Weerstandsbeweging, or Coloured Resistance Movement. But in-fighting caused this to crumble: some members wanted it to promote Goloured interests and culture; others to press for an exclusive "homeland".
In fact, the coloureds' sense of collective identity is undefined, largely imposed by apartheid's twisted logic. They are descended from a mix of races, including the Khoi and San (two indigenous African peoples), Malay slaves imported by the Dutch, and white European settlers. And though they do indeed share much with Afrikaners-many belong to the Dutch Reformed Church and many speak Afrikaans-others speak English or are Muslim or worship spirits.
Under apartheid, being Coloured became something to try to escape from. Many tried to pass as white; some succeeded in getting "reclassified". Aspiring to whiteness and fearful of blackness, their identity is hesitant, even defensive. Many Coloureds feel most sure about what they are not: they vigorously resist any attempt to use the term "black" to embrace all nonwhite people. "My people are terrible racists, but not by choice," says Joe Marks, a Coloured member of the Western Cape parliament. "The blacks today have the political power, the whites have economic power. We just have anger."
The apartheid government ______.
"It was the beginning of a revolution in America and the world, a revolution that some have yet to acknowledge and many have yet to appreciate," says Harold Skramstad, president of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. 1776？ No indeed: 1896, when Frank Duryea finally perfected the Duryea Motor, Wagon. At its first airing, the contraption rolled less than 100 metres before the transmission froze up. But by the end of 1896 Duryea had sold 13 of them, thus giving birth to the American motor industry.
That industry (whose roots, outside America, are usually attributed to tinkerings by Messrs Daimler and Benz in Germany) is being celebrated hugely over the coming months, culminating with a Great American Crnise-in in Detroit in June. "Our goal is to attract the greatest collection of antique and classic cars this nation has ever seen in one place at one time," says Mr Skramstad modestly.
Americans may indeed blame the car for almost everything that has happened to their country, and themselves, since 1896. The car has determined.
The way they live. From cradle to grave, the car marks every rite of American passage. Home by car from the maternity ward; first driving licence (usually at the age of 16); first (backseat) sexual experience; first car of one's own (and the make of car is a prime determinant of social status, symbolic of everything a person is or does). In Las Vegas, and elsewhere, Americans can get married at drive-in chapels. They then buy, or lust after, a house with garages big enough for not one but two or three cars. This allocates more space to cars than to children. And when the time comes, they may lie in state at a drive-through funeral home, where you can pay your respects without pulling over.
The way they shop. Main Street has been replaced by the strip mall and the shopping mall, concentrating consumer goods in an auto-friendly space. A large part of each shopping trip must now be spent, bags under chin, searching for the place where the car was left. (And another point: bags have annoyingly lost their carrying handles since shoppers ceased to be pedestrian) Since car-friendly living and shopping became the role, most built-up parts of America now look like every other part. There is simply no difference between a Burger Inn in California and one on the outskirts of Boston.
The way they eat. A significant proportion of Americans' weekly meals are now consumed inside cars, sometimes while parked outside the (drive-by) eatery concerned, sometimes en route, which leads to painful spillages in laps, leading to overburdening of. The legal system. Dozens of laws have been written to deal with car cases, ranging from traffic disputes to product liability. Drive-by shootings require a car, as do most getaways. The car is a great crime accessory; and it also causes the deaths of nearly 40,000 Americans every year.
Personal finances. Before the age of the car, few people went into debt; no need to borrow money to buy a horse. Now Americans tie themselves up with extended installment loans, and this in turn has spawned a whole financial industry.
The wealth of the nation. By 1908, an estimated 485 different manufacturers were building cars in the United States. Employment grew nearly 100-fold in the industry during the first decade of the 20th century. When Henry Ford, in a stroke of genius, automated his production line he required a rush of new, unskilled labour, which he enticed by offering an unheard-of ＄5 a day in wages. Henceforth, workers could actually afford to buy what they built.
And Americans never looked back. Today, the Big Three car manufacturers (Food, GM and Chrysler) generate more than ＄200 billion a year in business inside the United States. Directly and indirectly, the industry employs roughly one in seven workers. Every car job is reckoned to add ＄100,000 in goods and services to the economy, twice the national a
The result: The Beijing University researcher came in for stinging criticism in the same newspaper. One critic asked how someone from the university whose students launched China's historic prodemocracy movement of May 4, 1919, could argue that things such as national and economic development should take precedence over democracy. The episode illustrated both the problems and the promise of educational exchanges across the Taiwan Strait.
Gang was nevertheless just the first of what may soon be a steady trickle of students, teachers and researchers taking part in educational exchanges. Until now, these have been limited to brief conferences and getting-to-know-you tours of each side's educational centers. But now Taipei and Beijing are allowing longer stays for study and research a significant breakthrough that could help reduce the two sides' many differences.
Ironically, the exchanges are gaining momentum despite recent cross-strait tensions. In mid-January, university presidents and administrators from two dozen educational institutions in China met their Taiwanese counterpart for 10 days at National Cheng Kung University in the southern city of Tainan. They discussed how to move from perfunctory to substantive exchanges. "In the past, academics were led by politics," says Wu Jin, the university's president. "This is not right. We should deal with academics and politics separately."
The conference concluded with a politically neutral statement with the bland title: To Create the 21st Century for the Chinese People Through Academic Cooperation. In it, the presidents of leading schools in Taiwan and prestigious mainland institutions agreed to open teaching posts in each others' universities, cooperate on research projects and open doors for students to study on both sides.
Weng Shilie, an engineering professor who's president of Shanghai's Jiaotong University, said in an interview that the next time he see Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who is a Jiaotong alumnus, he will brief him on the latest developments in cross-strait exchanges in education. "Education is forever," says Weng, implying that political problems are merely temporary. Temporary or not, the obstacles to cooperation remain formidable. Neither side recognizes the other's academic credentials and both governments impose paralyzing restrictions on students. In Taiwan, screening committees at two ministries must vet applications from mainland-Chinese students. Taipei allowed an estimated 6,000 Chinese residents to visit Taiwan for education and cultural exchanges last year, an increase of 50% over 1994. Most were athletes, performing artists and scholars attending conferences.
Following Gang's three-month stay last year, Taiwan agreed to let 14 graduate researchers come from China to study; the first are expected to arrive in March. They will research Taiwan-related topics at nine universities. Each student will receive a monthly scholarship of NT ＄15,000 (＄546) for his first four months, a round-trip air ticket, accommodation and health insurance. Education officials in Taipei say they hope to increase the number of scholarships to 20 next year. "We have opened the door," says Bruce Wu, who administers the scholarships from the Chinese Development Fund of the Mainland Affairs Council, a cabinet-level agency in Taipei. "Everything now depends on China's cooperation."
Given the political stalemate between Taipei and Beijing, however, skepticism abounds. In practice, says political scientist Lu Ya-li of National Taiwan University, it is very difficult for the two sides to treat education in a politically neutral w
"Dimpy," as her friends call her, heard about the hazards of smoking in health class. "They showed pictures of lungs of people who smoked, h was gross," says the petite 14-year-old. Yet, as she shops along the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, Calif., the ninth grader points out all the places where she regularly buys cigarettes without hassle. "All my friends smoke," She shrugs, explaining the habit she developed in the sixth grade. "Once they pressure you, you start. And it's kind of hard to stop."
As the cigarette industry draws increasing tire, teen smokers like Dimpy are becoming the focus of concerned policy makers around the country. Sported by a University of Michigan study showing a dramatic rise in adolescent tobacco use, the White House is considering ways to curb the surge. Among the options: eliminating cigarette vending machines, restricting tobacco advertising, increasing the federal excise tax on cigarettes and launching a national media campaign directed at adolescents. A grand jury in New York has begun an investigation to determine whether Philip Moms Cos. concealed information linking nicotine levels and addictiveness. And the Justice Department is looking into whether tobacco company executives committed perjury in their April 1994 congressional testimony on how smoking affects health.
Lack of credibility. But it's tough to get an antismoking message through to teens. The California Department of Health Services spends ＄12 million a year placing antismoking commercials on television, including popular MTV programs, but many teenagers aren't buying the message. Says Erica Leona, who will enter eighth grade in the fall, "I don't think those ads work, became it's like a cartoon. It's too exaggerated."
In fact, teens seem skeptical about the potential effectiveness of any organized efforts to reduce smoking, like increasing taxes. While research shows that every time rexes go up, sales go down, including among teens, young people say the cost is relatively low in comparison with other vices. "You want weed, it'll cost you," says Robert Caldwell, 14. "For cigarettes, you just go anywhere, put 12 quarters into one of those machines, take it and go." Other teens maintain that eliminating vending machines won't make cigarettes any harder to buy. "You give a guy enough to buy you a pack and a beer, and he'll buy the pack," says Cameron Davis, 13. And advertising isn't really what entices adolescents to smoke. For the most part, they say, teens smoke because of peer pressure. "It's like sex." says 13year-old Frances, who started smoking at age 9. "You feel like, if you don't do it with your boyfriend, he won't like you."
In addition, messages that relate to health don't compute with adolescents, who often feel invincible. It doesn't help, says Roxanne Cannon, editorial director of Teen and Sassy magazines, that so many teen idols such as Ethan Hawke, Jason Priestley and Luke Perry are seen smoking.
Teens say any message is more effective if it's communicated by other kids. But even a White House appeal made by Chelsea Clinton might not get through to adolescents eager to smoke. "I don't listen to my mom when she tells me to stop," says Dimpy. "Why would I listen to anyone else".
Dimpy, the girl named in this passage ______.
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