Is American Backlash Inevitable?

Let's get this straight: I like Korea. If I didn't, I would have left when creepy men started knocking on the door of my apartment (see previous post, "Red Hair District.") But for every two or three friendly, generous, open minded people one meets in 2008, it seems that one can now find a traditionalist, or a Nationalist, expressing frustration with North American influence on their country. And maybe they have reason for doing so-maybe the Starbucks-ification of the local village is not so great. Koreans should protect their unique culture, of course.
BUT-words are powerful. CNN and the Internet rapidly spread Korean people's words everywhere. I am not surprised to read on-line and hear from friends back home that some Americans are reacting negatively to the anti-Lee and anti-FTA protests in Seoul. The average American citizen does not speak Korean (they speak English and or Spanish), but they can interpret signs with pictures of deranged cows with American flags on them.
I read on two websites today that the intelligent, Democratic presidential candidate Barak Obama addressed the early Korean anti-FTA protests in a comment at a campaign rally in May. (His comments should be understood in light of the fact that any Democratic candidate needs the support of American labor unions and farmers to get elected, but they are also objectively interesting.) And he, Obama, is the unabashedly more LIBERAL candidate! If this is what he is saying, imagine what the more conservative, free-market adoring J. McCain might say....
Mr. Obama reportedly said...
“You can’t get beef into Japan and Korea, even though, obviously, we [the U.S.A] have the highest safety standards of anybody, but they don’t want to have that competition from U.S. producers,” Mr. Obama said last month in a speech to farmers in South Dakota.
Some may disagree about the standards, but my point here is not the reality of the standards, but how Americans perceive them. Americans back home seem to see the beef issue as much ado about little.
Then last week, near Detroit, Obama reportedly argued that “if South Korea is selling hundreds of thousands of cars to the United States and we can only sell less than 5,000 in South Korea, something is wrong.”
I hear that line about cars from my fellow Americans a lot lately. A lot. Frankly, I have thought it myself. The media image of Korean protectionism could be bad for Hyundai. American consumers are fickle. Saturn's cars are just as affordable. Koreans are free to express their rage over the FTA. I applaud free speech openly expressed. Koreans just might not like the free speech they get back...

Editorial note:I heard a scary rumor that a very zealous, female, anti-FTA Korean Internet crusader was listing the full names and workplaces of foreign bloggers who have written blog entries disagreeing with the recent anti-Lee and anti-F.T.A. protests in some way. Reportedly, this Korean woman is encouraging Korean citizens to contact the employers of these foreign bloggers and complain about them, just because the foreign workers (sometimes they are teachers) support the US stance on the FTA. I really hope that this rumor isn't 100% true. That story sounds an awful lot like a witch hunt to me. I am still moved by the generosity and diligence of many of the Korean people whom I know. If this woman has really started this anti-blogger campaign, she makes herself look closed minded and mean spirited. She also could harm the image of her fellow Koreans. Americans read blogs and social networking sites, too, in huge numbers.
P.S. I learned a few hours later that the source of that rumor among ex-pats was a blog entry by blogger "Brian In Jeollanam-do." He writes that...
"I've attracted the ire of Korean netizen bullies.
This morning a couple Korean blogs have started linking to me as well as the "Candlegirls" cafe. The Candlegirls site links to me as a "촛불시위를 비하하는 외국인강사." Another blog, in an entry called "광우병 촛불집회를 비하하는 외국인," has posted my name, blog, and Facebook page, as well as the information of the Gwangju News, and has reposted the article I wrote in this month's issue. It also includes the name, school, and contact information of my editor, and has directed readers to email our employers. I'll copy and paste what they wrote in case the link changes."
Unfortunately, the Korrean net bully who wrote about him did so in Korean. So I could really only understand about 40% of what was written. As I get older, my thirst for knowledge is SO hampered by my crappy third language acquisition skills! (Plus, in my time off, I'm lazy.)