Just what message are South Korean NGOs trying to send with daily U.S. flag desecrations?
Last week a group of people the Korea Herald described as "concerned civic leaders¡± held a demonstration in front of the American embassy in Seoul. The concerned ones had descended on the American compound for the umpteenth time this month to deliver a letter to George Bush. The letter, published in English translation on the web, was polite and mostly respectful in tone. It called on Bush to apologize on CNN for the deaths of two young South Korean girls who were killed in an accident involving a U.S. military vehicle in June. But the protesters at the sit-in also delivered a not-so-polite message with their letter: several of them were using American flags to protect their concerned posteriors from the dirty sidewalk.
Does anyone need further proof that these "civic leaders¡± are nothing but a bunch of rabble-rousing anti-American nutjobs who --like the well-trained commie agitators they are-- use polite words and demands for ¡°respect¡± only to score propaganda points? Sadly, most Koreans, even those who should know better, do. But before I go further on that score, some very unpleasant background is required.
Stars, stripes, a torch and circle of guys with big dung-eating grins on their faces. It is an image many Americans remember from the 70s when Iranian students stormed our embassy and held 54 Americans hostage for longer than a year. These days, it is an image we expect to be carried on the wires when Saddam Hussein orders one of his spontaneous anti-U.S. demonstrations. 
But we almost never see it from our allies, even allies with vocal anti-American groups, such as France, Germany and Russia. Right-wingers in Japan, despite hardly being masters of diplomatic statement, never set match to Old Glory in their Yankee Go Home rallies. Even those bozos have that much class.
In fact, the only OCED member country where Old Glory tops the list of most popular bonfire ingredients is curiously the Republic of South Korea. (I say curiously because, remember, this is the country 50,000 Americans died to defend from genocidal communist dictators in the 1950s and then subsidized to the tune of 20 billion in direct aid in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.) In fact, excluding Axis of Evil member nations, you would be hard pressed to find a country where more U.S. flags are torched than South Korea.
Just who burns American flags in South Korea? It is not just a few Marxist loonies. Old Glory goes up in smoke each time a labor union rallies to protest the sale of a Korean firm to Americans and each time farmers protest the opening of rice markets. Peaceniks have burned and defaced our flag to protest U.S. troops in Korea, missile defense, the war on terrorism and deals to sell jet fighters and advanced radar. Pro-North Korea reunification groups meet seemingly for the sole purpose of setting our flag on fire. Even Green Korea, an organization of pacifist environmentalists, has stolen and defaced flags from U.S. bases in Korea. ¡°We¡¯ll return your flags when you leave our country,¡± said a sign at a Green Korea rally last year.
But the most prodigious --and creative-- American flag burners and defacers in Korea are hands down college kids. Try to find a major Korean college campus that doesn¡¯t have a huge American flag painted on one of its major walkways for all to tread upon. You will have a hard time. And the kids appear to compete to outdo each other at this sick game. At a rally in June, one group of college kids burned a flag about the size of the one the Pentagon hung on the gash left by the hijacked plane on 9/11.
A week later at another rally a trio of modern dance students torched a U.S. flag in a performance that had Martha Graham-inspired moves. During the World Cup, students at one Seoul area university were invited to boot soccer balls at Old Glory. Another school had a flag taped to the ground next to a desk with a guest book. Students were invited to spit and write down any grievance they had with Uncle Sam. Some reportedly listed their dislike of American fast food and the high cost of studying in the U.S. as their reasons for desecrating the American people's most beloved symbol.
Yes, the vast majority of South Koreans don¡¯t burn or spit on American flags (at least not once they graduate from college). Most Koreans, however, from what they tell me, see little wrong with images of Old Glory going up in smoke every night on the evening news. I have never read a single editorial in any Korean newspaper condemning the practice. But I have read editorial upon editorial proclaiming that some of the people who regularly use our flag as picnic blankets at their sit-ins are the ¡°backbone of Korean democracy.¡± 
I can almost hear the apologists scream as they read this: don¡¯t you respect free speech? South Koreans, they always argue, paid dearly for free speech in their battle against dictators. Now you want to try and silence them.
My response: Duh! I never said Koreans don¡¯t have the right to burn the Stars and Stripes. I am not calling for the geniuses behind the Old Glory spittoon to be locked up. I defend their right to make complete jerks of themselves and turn the majority of Americans against whatever cause they claim to support. Free speech absolutely requires protection from legal sanction for unpopular and even outrageous opinions and gives people the right to be bloody fools. It most certainly does not, however, compel one to respect all speech. To be honest, this is such a simple point I am astonished at how often I have to state it.
The apologists also like to point out that the flag burners have legitimate grievances: U.S. troops should not be in Korea, they say. GIs here have committed murder. They are outraged by civilian deaths in the Afghan war. They want Bush to make nice with the tyrants in North Korea.
My response: Double duh!
If reason, fairness and justice are all on their side, why then do these groups need to hurl the most hateful, blood insult they can imagine at the U.S., the very image patented by those who make no bones about their desire to destroy America and kill Americans? To get our attention? Hogwash! Do Klan members burn crosses because they want to speak their peace in the affirmative action debate?
Burning and defacing an American flag is an act that connotes a very specific meaning. It is not a demand for respect, dialogue or justice. It is not a statement about George Bush or Hollywood or even the U.S. military. Rather, it is a call to arms. It says, America we think you are thorougly and unredeemably evil and we crave your destruction.
The people who are constantly burning and defacing U.S. flags in Korea in truth want nothing from America no matter what message they have scribbled on their picket signs. They seek only to humiliate the U.S., its institutions, its values, its people. In their twisted little minds, they somehow believe this will raise their status in the same way a crazy drunk guy who spots Mike Tyson in a nightclub thinks he can prove his manhood by taking a swing at the ex-champ.
Like the skilled Fascists north of the DMZ, many "activists" in the South know that burning a U.S. flag is an extremely effective tool for rallying people around a bogeyman. Seoul¡¯s American flag burners are trying to saturate the minds of all Koreans with an image of hate in order to lead them places they otherwise would not want to go. It is scary at how well their plan is working.
by Ben Eller
Seoul
Just what message are South Korean NGOs trying to send with daily U.S. flag desecrations?