Many South Koreans have family in the North so their wishing to send aid to the North is understandable.


many, but the number is small. I have not met anyone yet who had family up there. It is common to look very much down on the North Koreans, they are seen as poorer and less advanced, so in the social hierarchy that exsists here, the North Koreans fall toward the bottom. In this light, it is difficult to understand the desire to send so much aid.

Gary hits the nail on its head and drives it in with one swing:

Some of the most politically indoctrinated people that I have ever met were South Korean university students (I encountered these people while I lived in Germany). I had my undergraduate training at U.C. Berkeley. While I was there, I sometimes rubbed elbows with stereotype campus radicals, e.g. they'd yammer crazed Marxist polemics in Sproul Plaza, wear Che Guevara teeshirts, the standard package. These South Korean university students were at another level of indoctrination well beyond the U.C. Berkeley Che Guevara wannabe. I was not so surprised that these South Korean kids could be delusional (kids are easy to indoctrinate). However it did surprise me that the South Korean government had allowed this situation to exist. There was obviously some heavy duty North Korean indoctrination occurring in the South Korean university campuses.

The korean auxilliary soldiers they send to the US units must score relatively high on an english test. Therefor, most of them are from the top three universities in korea, Seoul Natl., Yonsei, Korea University. I make it a point to never argue with them about international politics, unless it has nothing to do with the US or Korea, they get so passionate and they jump from subject to subject, its impossible to carry on.

Its even worse when they come from the middle - middle/upper level universities. Some of those universities, and the areas around them, have been put 'offlimits' to US personnel because of the radical nature of them.

-Justin Kelly