Ich bin ein Berliner. (I am a Berliner.)
23 July 2008 - Filed under Life Outside Work
As part of his presidential campaign and tour of the Middle East and Europe, Senator Obama will give a speech in Berlin tomorrow. Berlin, I learned, is the site of the famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech by President Kennedy in 1963 and the “Tear down this wall” speech by President Reagan in 1987. I am not really interested in what Senator Obama’s speech will be about or how significant an event it will be recognised by history down the line. What did capture my attention, however, was the Kennedy speech, which was re-played in part on NPR with commentaries today. The speech was given at the peak of the Cold War, one year after the Cuban missile crisis and two years after the Berlin Wall was built.
There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.
… What is true of this city is true of Germany – real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.
… All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Neither the divided Germany nor the Cold War exists any more, but what is sadly ironic, or ironically sad, is that there is still at least one “free” country in the world of 2008 to which this speech can and should be given verbatim. After 60 years of technically unfinished war against the communist North, it’s amazing how South Korea, of all countries, has witnessed pro-communist ideals covertly (and openly) permeate every corner of society: the media, teachers, priests, former presidents and cabinet ministers, union governing bodies, and so on. Most unfortunately, this is the exact opposite to the direction the soon-to-be-unified Germany was tipping some 20 years ago.
Even though the word “ideology” has lost its usage for many decades in many parts of the world, ideological clashes within the Republic of Korea, the world’s 13th largest economy, have been on the increase and are getting uglier, more costly, and more destructive by the day. How tragic. How wasteful.
In 1968, armed communist North Korean guerrillas who had infiltrated a small village off the east coast of South Korea murdered a 7-year-old boy and his family. The boy was asked whether he preferred the North or the South. When Lee Seung-bok replied “I hate communists!”, the guerrillas ripped the boy’s mouth, shot him, and then butchered the rest of his family although his older brother survived. The I-hate-communists slaughter, later claimed by leftist groups to have been fabricated, resonated throughout the nation whose constitution to this day is founded on anti-communism.
Believe it or not, 40 years on, it would now be a recklessly life-risking courageous act to declare something like that in public in South Korea. If you stood on the streets of Seoul today wearing an “I hate communists” t-shirt, a mob of the so-called progressive candlelight protesters vigil participants might come after you and mock you and terrorise you over the “obstruction of civil rights” or “denial of national sovereignty” or “violation of the people’s will” or “succumbing to Western superpower colonialists” just as they have done in recent months over the government’s decision to resume U.S. beef imports. Inspired by a major national broadcaster’s attempt to provoke public uproar, they claimed that the U.S. will sell them trash infected with mad cow disease, and expressed their anti-government sentiment with vandalism and violence for months.
What I am unable to get my head around more than anything is that the same candlelight mob is staying enigmatically quiet over issues like importing all sorts of food items from China that have sparked real public health concerns, human rights abuses in North Korea, and North Korean soldiers shooting to kill an unarmed female South Korean civilian. Maybe I am missing something here. Either that or… don’t waste candlepower over the wrong agenda, says the directive from the Dear Leader?
Speaking of candles, by the way, those countless protest vigil candlesticks that lit up the streets of South Korea could have been put to a much more practical use north of the border where the average citizen has not been supplied with sufficient electricity at nights, let alone food, for many many years.
Back to present day U.S. politics, there is one thing Senator Obama, while he is out and about, can do once and for all to reassure his voters and allies who might cast doubt over his core values as a candidate for the head of the democratic world: Go to Panmunjeom and deliver a speech that articulates his liberal democratic beliefs. If Senator Obama wanted to do what President Kennedy did in 1963, that is the best place to do it in 2008.
And for the record: Ich hasse Kommunisten.
Update (1 August 2008): On the topic of the northern half not generating sufficient electricity, here’s a “NASA low light level image of the Korean peninsula taken on the night of April 15, 2001.” I know it’s unaltered. Shocking. (Source: freekorea.us)
2008-07-23 » JK