13th October 2015
Channel A News
Video at link
Republican presidential election front-runner Donald Trump has spread his opinion that Korea [the text uses the common phrase “our country”, 우리 나라/uri nara] receives national defence assistance from the US for free. He had to cope with a rebuke from a Korean-descent student.
Six months ago the same student also threw a hardball comment towards the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
Trump attended a political event. A Korean-American student threw a difficult question [literally a “gimlet”] towards him. Joseph Choi, a second-generation gyopo, said “Korea is not just a burden on the US defence forces, as you argue – the truth is different.” At that time a flustered Trump lost the flow of his speech and asked [Choi] about [his] nationality, with Choi hitting back straight away. Trump asked “you’re a Korean, aren’t you?” Choi responded “No. I was born in Texas and grew up in Colorado.” Not having realised that Choi was a US citizen, Trump again tried to put a damper on his comment. Choi continued “it doesn’t actually matter where I’m from, what I’m saying is correct. Every year Korea contributes $861 million [to the defence effort].” Trump spoke again, downplaying [Choi’s comment], saying that Korea’s contribution to the defence burden was only a small proportion of the total cost. “The amount they pay is insignificant. Wait a minute, wait a minute – it’s only a small contribution. If we compare it to the amount it costs, it’s only a small amount. It’s a small amount.”
Mr Choi, a fourth-year student at Harvard, had Japanese premier Shinzo Abe at a loss as to what to do when Abe visited the US in April. Choi asked “even with all the proof, why will you still not acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into sex slavery [during the the Japanese colonial period, by Japan]?” Through his brilliant mind Choi has become president of a combined Harvard-Princeton North Korean human rights student organisation and a political research group.
Analysis: this piece reflects something of the hierarchical nature of Korean society – it would be almost unthinkable for a native Korean young person to grill prominent public figures with such tough questions, and so Koreans feel proud and probably slightly scandalised that one of their own is speaking truth to power so effectively. Here we also see the second point of this story: although Choi made Trump look silly by confirming that he is a natural-born US citizen, he was being somewhat disingenuous by taking Trump’s question completely literally, as in both Korea and the US one’s ethnic heritage is enormously important. The fact that the Korean coverage mentions Choi’s status as a “second-generation Korean-American” and Choi’s own obvious interest in issues pertaining to Korea is proof of the same. Additionally during his comments to Abe, Choi talked about Korea being “his” country. (Choi’s exchange with Abe is well worth a watch, to see the Japanese politician attempting to cope with conditions outside of the tightly-controlled Japanese news media.) The article also probably exaggerates Trump’s reaction; he is an enormously practiced public speaker who is adept at dealing with hostile questions, and in the grand scheme of things Choi’s comments were made politely, nor did they destroy the basis of Trump’s point.