‘The U.S.
Is No Longer a More “Developed” Country Than Us’
By Catherine Kim
Politico, 12/2/2020
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA—In Korea, the United States
is called 미국 (pronounced miguk), which directly
translates to “beautiful country.” It has always seemed
like a fitting name, considering Korea’s longstanding
admiration of the U.S. Until now.
These days in Korea, TV broadcasters talk about the
U.S. with grim faces, flashing to B-roll of lines of
Americans wrapped around buildings waiting for Covid-
19 testing or graphs depicting an exponential growth of
pandemic deaths. Newspaper headlines question the
strength of U.S. democracy above pictures of
demonstrators protesting mythical claims of voter
fraud. One recent column in the Hankyoreh, a major
center-left daily newspaper, is titled, “Covid-19 and the
downfall of the U.S.” Another headline reads: “The
surprising election system that makes you wonder ‘Is the
U.S. actually a democratic country?’” And it’s not just
in the news. In boardrooms, in classrooms and in casual
dinner table conversations, you’ll hear the same sense of
bewilderment: How did the U.S. lose its way?
It’s a shocking development for a country that has, for
decades, largely viewed the United States almost like an
older sibling—a model of success and progress that
Koreans were proud to emulate. Now, many Koreans
see the U.S. as a failing country, deeply divided and
unable to meet basic challenges. The shift began after
President Donald Trump’s 2016 win, when many
Koreans were shocked to see him claim the presidency
after a string of scandals. But the clincher has been
America’s bungled response to Covid-19, followed by
Trump and the GOP’s recent efforts to contest the
legitimate results of the 2020 U.S. election. For
Koreans, the past year has exposed the deep problems
within the American system, from hyperpartisanship and
deep distrust in government to a poor health care system
—issues that have long been familiar to Americans, but
not to Koreans, many of whom have maintained the idea
of American exceptionalism far longer and livelier than
many Americans.
Korea’s admiration of the U.S. was always bound to
drop somewhat as Korea grew from one of the poorest
countries in the world into its 10th-largest economy,
says Lee Hyun-song, a professor of interpretation and
translation at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
who wrote a 2015 article about Koreans' changing
perception of Americans up to the early 2000s.
“There was a strong belief that there was a lot to learn
from the U.S., but then that faith in Americans crumbled
after they voted for Trump,” he says. “As we’ve
watched the U.S. fail to contain Covid-19 and rebel
against mask-wearing through the media, we’ve come to
realize that the U.S. is no longer a more ‘developed’
country than us.”
It hasn’t always been like this. Korea has historically
maintained a friendly relationship with the U.S., and in a
2013 BBC poll, Koreans viewed the U.S. the most
positively out of all the Asian countries surveyed. It’s an
alliance that dates back to the 1950s, when the U.S.
helped end the Korean War and stabilize the Korean
peninsula. And since the 1970s, the two have become
close trade partners.
Korea has also been a successful target of U.S. soft
power. In 2016, 53 percent of the movies in theaters
here were Korean, while 42 percent were American. As
Hollywood infiltrated Korean theaters, the audience left
star-struck by scenes of grand, glittery parties, patriotic
soldiers and heroic protagonists. U.S. education has also
long been seen as the gold standard in Korea, a
necessary rite of passage for the elite or a ticket to social
mobility for those that can scrape together the funds. It’s
the second-most sought after destination for college,
following just behind China, a more familiar destination
which borders Korea.
There have been flares of anti-Americanism in Korean
history, but most were short-lived and targeted specific
American entities. Anger in the 1980s was directed at
the U.S. government for siding with Korea’s military
dictator and helping him suppress peaceful protests for
democracy. In 2002, it was directed at armed forces
stationed in the country, after a U.S. military vehicle
accidentally killed two schoolgirls. This time around,
though, the criticism is both broader and more
fundamental: Koreans are beginning to doubt the very
idea of America as a beacon of prosperity and progress,
as well as its standing as a global superpower.

Some of that questioning began with Trump, whom
many Koreans saw as a shocking U.S. presidential
choice who bulldozed democratic norms and sowed
division. It didn’t help, either, that he also often let loose
on longtime U.S. allies, including Korea. He demanded
a 49 percent increase in South Korea’s contribution to
their shared defense costs; he even bashed the Academy
for awarding Korean film “Parasite” Best Picture. As a
result, Koreans’ confidence in Trump sits at just 17
percent.
But disappointment in the U.S. has peaked this year,
particularly as Korea has been praised for its pandemic
management while the United States maintains the
highest number of Covid-19 deaths in the world.
Following strict contact tracing, universal mask wearing
and transparent communication from the government,
Korea currently has seen about 35,000 cases of the virus
and experiences less than five Covid-19 deaths a day. In
response to the two countries’ diverging paths,
favorability of the U.S. in Korea has dropped from 80
percent in 2018 to 59 percent in 2020, according to Pew
Research Center.
The shifting attitude is particularly noticeable in the
Korean media, where news broadcasters and reporters
often inject commentary into their work. Essentially
every news segment about the U.S. right now is tinted
by criticism. During one recent report by center-left
broadcast station YTN about New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s apology
for ignoring their own advice that discouraged
Thanksgiving traveling, the anchors closed with a
scathing line: “The hypocrisy of these leaders who are in
charge of people’s health and coronavirus control,
during a period that is crucial to curbing the pandemic,
makes you wonder if their apologies are even sincere.”
Kim Won-jang, a reporter for KBS, the national public
broadcaster of Korea, made his disappointment clear in
a recent column tilted, “There is no #1 America.” Kim,
who studied in the U.S. in 1993 and later brought his
whole family to the country in 2012 for a year,
documents his dismay at the president’s rhetoric against
immigrants, the U.S.’ failing response to Covid-19, the
unfounded claims of voter fraud and Trump’s refusal to
concede the election.
“Is the U.S. actually a No.1 country?” Kim questions in
his article, published on Nov. 9. “It can’t even manage a
presidential election, the largest event in the country.
Yet again they need the help of the police. And if things
get out of control, they aim at citizens. It’s like
Zimbabwe. The president denies the election results, and
social trust is at a rock bottom.” Kim says, “the U.S. will
only stray further and further from its greatness if its
people—many of different languages and ethnicities—
can’t unite under common values.”
Kim says he decided to write the article because the
current state of the country is far different from his
earlier memories of the U.S. When he was younger, he
remembers watching “A Few Good Men,” a movie that
taught him the diverse country united under a common
identity of being American. The same cannot simply be
said anymore, he says, and a division among the people
has cost the country both its faith in elections and public
health.
What does this mean for the future? Despite this drop in
respect, Korea will still continue its alliance with the
U.S. to keep neighboring countries like China, Russia
and North Korea in check. And familiarity will also
keep the two countries close, says Kim, since Koreans
still spend an exorbitant amount of money on American
brands: There are 3.3 million Netflix subscribers in
Korea, and the country annually spends over 1 trillion
won on Starbucks. But the U.S. might continue to
become a less popular destination for Korean emigrants
and students—to the detriment of the American talent
pool.
It’s possible President-elect Joe Biden might be able to
slow or reverse the U.S.’s dropping reputation in Korea
and help mend relations between the two countries. Lee
says many here were relieved to see him beat Trump.
All eyes will be on the new president to see if he can
curb the “America First” mentality that has wrecked its
alliances with multiple countries, adds Kim.
Some of the damage, however, may be irreversible. It
won’t be so easy for Koreans to forget TV clips of full
U.S. hospitals and maskless crowds. “To be clear,” Lee
says. “Koreans won’t be sending their unconditional
support to the U.S. as they did before.”