US Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris has some unusual explanations for the harsh criticism he has faced in his host country. His mustache, maybe? Or a Japanese ancestry that raises unpleasant reminders of Japan’s former colonial domination of Korea?
However, many South Koreans have a more straightforward explanation for Harris’ struggle to win hearts and minds in Seoul, and it has more to do with an outspoken manner that they see as undiplomatic and rude.
Since arriving in Seoul in July 2018, Harris, a retired US navy admiral born to a Japanese mother and a US Navy officer, has been the focus of keen attention because of his military and ethnic background. The 63-year-old former US Pacific Command chief has sometimes drawn criticism from those who take issue with his manner when dealing with South Koreans.
Photo: AP
His mustache has become the subject of ribbing online, with jokes made about how it resembles those of Japanese colonial masters, who brutally occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. However, there is more serious concern that the discord could widen a growing rift in Seoul’s relations with Washington at a time when diplomacy with rival North Korea seems in danger of imploding.
Harris has said his appearance and ethnicity have been a source of his criticism in South Korea.
“My mustache, for some reason, has become a point of some fascination here,” Harris told a group of foreign reporters in Seoul last week. “I have been criticized in the media here, especially in social media, because of my ethnic background, because I am a Japanese-American.”
It is not the first time a US ambassador in South Korea has been in the news for things other than diplomacy. In 2015, then-US ambassador Mark Lippert was slashed in the face and arm by an anti-US activist.
However, unlike Lippert, Harris has repeatedly irked many South Koreans since US President Donald Trump sent him here.
After meeting Harris in November last year, Lee Hye-hoon, then chairwoman of the South Korean Parliament’s intelligence committee, said the ambassador repeated about 20 times Trump’s calls for Seoul to drastically increase its financial contribution to US troop deployment in South Korea.
Four students were arrested in October last year after they broke into Harris’ Seoul residence during an anti-US rally. A mock mustache was plucked from his picture at another demonstration.
Harris said his mustache has nothing to do with his Japanese background and that he started growing it only to mark the start of his career as a diplomat.
“To those people, I say that you are cherry-picking history,” Harris said, adding that some Korean independence fighters also had a mustache.
Harris said he understands the historical animosity that exists between Japan and South Korea.
“But I’m not the Japanese-American ambassador to Korea,” he said. “I’m the American ambassador to Korea.”
Kevin Gray, a professor of international relations at the University of Sussex, England, on Friday last week tweeted that “Koreans’ reaction to Harris’ mustache is vastly exaggerated.”
He said what did rile South Koreans was Harris’ “imperialistic manner,” and efforts to “undermine” South Korean President Moon Jae-in and “dictate” South Korean government policy.
A Monday editorial in the Korea Times said that “the point is not his mustache.”
“South Koreans would not have cared that much about his mustache if he was a ‘normal’ ambassador,’” the editorial said.
Most surveys show a majority of South Koreans support the US military presence in South Korea as deterrence against potential North Korean aggression, but there is a small, but determined anti-US network.
South Korean media have often compared Harris with his popular predecessor, Lippert. Images of Lippert bleeding after the 2015 knife attack shocked many South Koreans and triggered an outpouring of public sympathy. The attack during a breakfast forum left deep gashes on Lippert’s face and arm, and required five days of hospitalization.
While leaving a Seoul hospital, Lippert inspired many by saying in Korean: “The ground hardens after rain. Let’s go together.”
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