KOREA'S "MENDICANT MENTALITY"?
Article Summary and Author Biography
NOT long ago, at a social gathering, I overheard a high-ranking U.S. military officer berating the Korean people for their "mendicant mentality." He was deeply annoyed by the inability of the Koreans to find a way to live independently, without always looking to the United States for financial help. He did not see how the American taxpayers could be made to carry indefinitely the burden of helping a poor nation that seems unable or unwilling to help itself. He cited the billions of dollars of American aid that have been poured into Korea since 1945. If this has not made the Koreans self-supporting by now, could there ever be an end to American almsgiving? The Koreans must be made to realize, he said, that they had to get onto their own feet very soon; otherwise continued American aid would only create what one American news magazine several years ago termed a "handout mentality."
A CRITIQUE OF U. S. POLICY
NOT long ago, at a social gathering, I overheard a high-ranking U.S. military officer berating the Korean people for their "mendicant mentality." He was deeply annoyed by the inability of the Koreans to find a way to live independently, without always looking to the United States for financial help. He did not see how the American taxpayers could be made to carry indefinitely the burden of helping a poor nation that seems unable or unwilling to help itself. He cited the billions of dollars of American aid that have been poured into Korea since 1945. If this has not made the Koreans self-supporting by now, could there ever be an end to American almsgiving? The Koreans must be made to realize, he said, that they had to get onto their own feet very soon; otherwise continued American aid would only create what one American news magazine several years ago termed a "handout mentality."
This line of argument is by now familiar. As one of the Koreans who is presumably afflicted with a "mendicant mentality," I feel constrained to present the Korean view of the question. First of all, if what we Koreans have been receiving in the form of American foreign aid has been nothing more than charitable handouts from the American people, we have for 20 years been chasing a rainbow. If the American military aid with which the Korean armed forces have been equipped and supplied has been a "handout to a mendicant nation," the Korean soldiers who have fought and died are not even worthy to be called "international soldiers of fortune"-they were armed beggars. Have we really shed our blood and tears, during and since the Korean War, for no reason at all except to maintain the flow of American largesse? If so, I must admit that various Americans are right in arguing that the billions of dollars spent for Korea have been wasted. Of course, those who make U.S. foreign policy do not necessarily think of aid to Korea as almsgiving on an international scale. If it turned out that they did, Prince Sihanouk and the Cambodian people would soon have the Koreans for company. I am not here advocating that the Koreans should join the Cambodians in their political gyrations. It is only because I am worried that such a state of affairs might arise in Korea, and with such serious consequences, that I am writing this criticism of much American thinking in connection with my country...
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