By Deauwand Myers
“I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this." — from Homer’s epic tragedy, “The Odyssey.”
“You will be lonely. You will howl like a dog as you walk alone … Your spirit will wane and dwindle to blue, the color of despair…” from an old Native American tale on a soldier’s fate, relayed in Charles Frazier’s epic American Civil War novel, “Cold Mountain” (1997).
I use these two quotes because they really deal with the deep moral dilemma, if not the immorality, of those who make, profit from and participate in war, what we call in contemporary times, and euphemistically, “defense.”
Dwight Eisenhower, the United States’ 34th president, warned of the moral precariousness of America’s burgeoning military-industrial complex, a newly coined term at the time. He states, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
The current Korean president, and former Korean presidents of both political parties and varying political ideologies, lack Eisenhower’s prescience in this regard, and have sought to increase the scale, scope, technical prowess and efficiency of its industrial sectors, from Samsung making advanced microchips and phones, heavy industries like shipbuilding and yes, most problematic, in my view, defense manufacturing.
In some sectors of the military-industrial sector, Korea has surpassed much more mature defense manufacturing countries, like Japan and France.
If we are talking about just naked achievement, this is quite an impressive feat. In less than four decades, ravaged by war and poverty and inept or anti-democratic governments, Korea is one of the biggest shipbuilders in the world, the second and by some estimates the first, purveyor of electronics, beating out older companies like Japan’s Sony and Panasonic, both of which have greater experience in advanced exports.
Just look at Korea’s auto industry, once mocked, Hyundai, Kia, and their sister luxury brand, Genesis, are now all esteemed brands.
All laudable achievements, and these industries, except semiconductor chips (which can have a multiplicity of functions, including military hardware uses) don’t represent any obvious moral questions.
But what I find perplexing, if not disturbing, is how little discussion there is about the deep moral implications of providing lethal, advanced military hardware to other countries within Korean society’s academic, political and social circles.
I need to make this crystal clear. A Samsung smartphone, flat-screen LG television, K-pop group LP, Korean barbecue or fried chicken restaurant chain, or an EV Genesis coupe are galaxies away from anything innately sinister and potentially deadly as becoming prodigious, prolific and profitable in the dark art of arms dealing.
My home country, the United States, knows (but continually fails to absorb) the problematic and bloody business of prolific defense contracting. The United States, via defense industry giants like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, has sold advanced and lethal defense packages to so many bad actors and nation states, a complete list is impossible to enumerate here.
Having said that, let’s do an abbreviated one: Iran, (after the democratically elected president was removed by CIA operatives via Operation Ajax, an episode you should Google if you don’t know the story), Iraq, when we liked Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, ditto, Saudi Arabia, and a host of Central and South American countries.
American gun manufacturers, with purposefully lax regulation of that industry by the American government, purvey personal and wartime arms. Coupled with America’s lust for illicit drugs, this fuels and funds what can only be called a mass-causality civilian war being perpetrated by competing Mexican drug cartels, who also dabble in human trafficking and the murder of innocents in the selling of human organ harvesting.
Again, that was an abbreviated list.
Korea has a long history of being stuck in the middle of superpowers vying for power, ancient and present-day China and Japan are not exemplary cases.
The trauma of poverty has a doubled-edged sword. It fuels those so unfortunate to experience poverty to strive with Herculean strength to climb out of it. That same Herculean strength, the naked pursuit of wealth, can and too often does blind that same person to have moral clarity.
Currently, Korea has no blood on its hands insofar as death being meted out by one of its defense products. But with the many recent civilian deaths of the Yemenis via Saudi Arabia using American military hardware, and the same American hardware causing the high death toll among Palestinian civilians by Israel, it would seem the Korean government and Korean citizenry should ask a fundamental question: do we really want to get into this particular line of work?
Korea doesn’t have to be good at everything. Defense exporting is definitely one of those things.
Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master’s degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside of Seoul.
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