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(은근히 친미 성향의 후보는 누구이고, 그렇지 않은 후보는 누구인지 암시하고 있음)

American Policies and Presence Under Fire in South Korea
(By HOWARD W. FRENCH with DON KIRK)

SEOUL, South Korea, Dec. 5 — Buddhist monks and Christian groups have held hunger strikes near the hulking United States Embassy here all week, and while the riot police keep the demonstrators from the gates, they cannot stop the taxi drivers from honking their horns in protest.

In even angrier demonstrations, students have thrown firebombs at American military bases here. During a recent music award show, meanwhile, a pop star smashed a model of an American tank on live television, drawing a rousing cheer. Foreign diplomats say universities have withdrawn speaking invitations to the American ambassador, for fear of trouble if he appeared on campus.

South Korea and the United States have long been the closest of trans-Pacific friends, but the recent turbulence goes well beyond youthful fashion or passing unrest in a country with a long tradition of protest. The growing estrangement has been evident in the race for president, to be decided in an election on Dec. 19, and many here are warning that the relationship is undergoing fundamental changes, with even more difficult times ahead.

Roh Moo Hyun, the candidate who holds a narrow lead according to opinion polls, has repeatedly criticized Washington's Korean policies as "hard-line," and he boldly said that if elected he would "guarantee the security of North Korea." The 37,000 American troops here are committed to protecting South Korea from any attack by North Korea, and President Bush has said the North is a member of an "axis of evil."

The immediate source of anti-American sentiment was an incident in June in which two 14-year-old girls were crushed by an American armored vehicle as they walked to a birthday party on a narrow road north of Seoul. Simmering anger has flared into outrage with the acquittal last month of two United States Army sergeants by an American panel in a military trial.

But many authorities say the divide has deeper roots, involving this country's rapid passage to affluence and its perception that its distant ally is heavy handed and insensitive, particularly with regard to North Korea.

Relations are worse than they have been in about 25 years, said Shim Jae Hoon, an expert on Korean affairs. Others say even longer.

"The main issue then was human rights," said Mr. Shim. "Today the main issue is North-South relations. The two countries don't see eye to eye on foreign policy, and neither of them is handling the worsening relationship very well."

The widening gulf between the two allies, and in their perceptions of North Korea, is reflected in numerous public opinion polls. In September, a Gallup Korea poll found that a majority of 1,056 South Koreans surveyed felt there was little or no chance of an attack by North Korea. After a disputed call during the 2002 Winter Olympics, when a jostled South Korean skater lost the gold medal to an American rival, another Gallup poll here reported that nearly 60 percent of respondents "disliked" the United States.

Another poll taken before the deaths of the schoolgirls, which was published in November 2000 by The Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, found that only 42 percent of respondents supported maintaining the current number of American troops in South Korea, while 15 percent supported withdrawing them altogether.

Mr. Roh, a labor lawyer and a former legislator and cabinet member with a background in social activism who has never visited the United States, also once said that American troops were not needed in South Korea. Nowadays he calls the military alliance vital.

But he routinely emphasizes that the alliance is badly in need of revision, and the popular anger toward the United States has even forced his main rival, Lee Hoi Chang, a conservative whose international views are generally more in line with those of the Bush administration, to campaign for major changes.

For a half century, the alliance has been the bedrock of South Korea's prosperity and of Washington's security planning in Asia.

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Few countries have made the economic strides that South Korea has made in recent decades. It leads the world in broadband Internet access, and it is second in shipbuilding; it is also the third-leading producer of semiconductors and fifth in automobile manufacturing.

An important psychological lift came in June when South Korea served as a co-host, with Japan, for the World Cup soccer tournament, and its team made it to the semifinals. For the first time in the modern era, Koreans feel a swaggering sense of self-assurance.

Yet daily life still serves up rude collisions between this newfound confidence and the country's dependence on what many Koreans now consider an ally that sometimes seems overbearing.

For travelers, a bracing dose of this comes upon arrival at South Korea's dazzling new airport, just outside Seoul, where often the first thing passengers may see are American sergeants in combat fatigues barking orders to arriving American servicemembers.

Also jarring is the gigantic Yongsan Army Garrison, covering 630 acres in the heart of this crowded city. The location of the post, in the center of the capital, is often justified by the nearness of the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea — 40 miles away — but it is still something that other countries with American bases, like Japan and Germany, do not have to endure.

"We have a joint working group with our Korean partners to study ways to move this out of the central city," said the American ambassador, Thomas C. Hubbard. "We recognize the imposition that having a command headquarters in the middle of Seoul causes for many Koreans."

Diplomatically, on both sides of the Pacific, many people say things began to go wrong at the first meeting between the freshly inaugurated President Bush and President Kim Dae Jung at the White House in March 2001. Mr. Kim went to Washington hoping to maintain the momentum of the last months of the Clinton administration, when it appeared that a historic security agreement with North Korea was in reach.

Instead of an endorsement, many South Koreans, including some who are not partisans of Mr. Kim, felt that Mr. Bush showed insufficient deference to their president and was dismissive of Mr. Kim's policy of reconciliation with North Korea.

For his part, Mr. Kim failed to understand how much Washington's outlook had shifted with the change in administrations, his critics say. "The perception is that the U.S. has been vacillating, but over the years, the Koreans have vacillated at least as much as the U.S. has," said one Western diplomat.

Things have only grown worse since then, with Washington leading a campaign to force North Korea to abandon a nuclear weapons program whose existence, secret until recently, violates many arms control agreements. South Korean officials say their country's intelligence agencies, and not the United States as is commonly believed, first detected the existence of the North Korean nuclear program. Yet Mr. Kim, in the waning months of his presidency, has continued to press for engagement with the North. Mr. Kim is barred by the Constitution from seeking a second five-year term.

With their overwhelming economic superiority and vastly better weaponry compared with their neighbor, South Koreans increasingly regard an unprovoked attack by North Korea as unimaginable, and public opinion has largely followed Mr. Kim. More than 62 percent of 1,013 respondents in a Sisa Journal-Media Research survey earlier this year called Mr. Bush's approach toward North Korea unhelpful.

"The Bush administration looked at the political calendar and made a calculation that they would be in office after Kim Dae Jung, and have given the appearance of just trying to wait him out," said Scott Snyder, the Korea representative of the Asia Foundation. "The unintended consequence is that Koreans have been getting the impression that their country isn't taken seriously.

"Depending on what happens with North Korea," Mr. Snyder said, "I think the entire relationship could be on the table."

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Western diplomats deny there has ever been a strategy to simply await the end of Mr. Kim's term to reactivate diplomacy concerning North Korea. In any event, today the payoff of such an approach looks uncertain at best.

Until less than a month ago, Mr. Lee, the conservative opposition leader, looked like a shoo-in for the presidency, but the merger of Mr. Roh's campaign with that of a third-party candidate and the uproar over the American acquittals in the deaths of the two girls have transformed the tenor of the race. The changes helped make a favorite out of Mr. Roh, whose diffidence toward Washington would almost certainly make for a pricklier relationship.

Some experts say the biggest challenge to the South Korean-American alliance may be generational. Since the division of the Korean Peninsula was solidified after the Korean War, South Koreans have felt an ache from the separation of tens of thousands of families. Despite this country's prosperity, there is a deep anger over having been victimized by outside powers.

"For Koreans, it is very ironic that we were divided by World War II, and Japan, your defeated enemy, was not," said Chung Mong Joon, the scion of the Hyundai industrial empire, and the unsuccessful candidate who merged his campaign with Mr. Roh's. "In Europe, Germany was defeated and divided, but Japan was aided by the Korean War, which left us divided. This is very unfair."

As the generations age, fewer people have memories of the horrors of the Korean War, and of the poverty that South Korea overcame, and that benefits North Korea.

"There are perfectly sound arguments that can be made for the U.S. presence, but they are less clear now that they have been in some time," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a Korea expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "In the meantime, U.S. forces are making sonic booms over people's houses, causing environmental damage and doing the unpleasant things that unattached men all over the world sometimes do.

"If the alliance has a purpose that is spelled out, then people can tolerate these sorts of things," Mr. Eberstadt added. "If not, we will have problems."