Guess what? What many foreigners have been saying for a long time would happen HAS! While the Seoul Metropolitan Government wastes time asking western foreigners whether or not they like the toilets and tries to encourage tourism in Korea by just saying the country is now "sparkling!" foreign investment in Korea has been falling faster than a crackhead's mean body weight.
Any and all foreigners who've been in the middle of Roh Moo Hyeon's anti-American, anti-foreign, kneejerk nationalism has wondered how Korea would ever become the "hub of Asia" if any foreign firm who makes money here is constantly vilified beyond reasonableness, even as actual North Korean propaganda is allowed to be taught to schoolchildren by members of the Korean Teachers' Union, and the media continues to set up foreigners as the ultimate scapegoat for everything they can't now blame Lee Myung Bak for.
We've been saying it for years now.
If you're going to make Korea a place where it sucks to live, not to mention invest and make money, do you think anyone but the craziest or most committed are going to stay? Especially with the open and welcoming arms of China right next door? The first thing that Korean slogan and campaign planners need to figure out is that Korean automatically being the hub of anything was only a truism before there was international plane travel. Because now, people can fly OVER Korea without going THROUGH it.
I hate to say "I told you so." (Well, actually, I don't.) But "I told you so." And so did any other foreigner who's been here a long time and has been constantly shaking their head as Korea continued to embarrassingly piss yet another dream of being a "hub" down the proverbial drain.
And in this particular case, there's no one to blame other than -- wait for it -- the usual suspects: a formerly anti-American government and a continually anti-foreigner news media.
[Go read more here!]
Congratulations! This time, there's no one to blame but Korea itself! And with the hysterics over the KORUS FTA, wow -- for better or worse, Korea sure knows how to create a hospitable atmosphere for making agreements and then having the population go absolutely berzerk over it for the most irrational of reasons.
