The Oct. 2 edition of The Tribune conspicuously ran two Korean-bashing articles: a front-page story by Ronald Yates (”Koreans feel a bit tarnished”) and Bernie Lincicome`s ”No fond farewells to this Olympics.”
After rehashing a few wiedespread gripes which our press has lately ascribed to Koreans said to be disenchanted with the Olympics, the Yates piece concludes by quoting, with no further qualification, a statement by an American veteran of the Korean war that Koreans are ingrates or, at best, extremely forgetful; and a remark by a Seoul banker to the effect that his compatriots have shown themselves to be less than fully mature in their recent reactions.
The invoking of one American veteran`s angry observations is a cheap shot. ”Thousands of Americans died over here,” the man is quoted as saying, ” . . . so this country could have the opportunity to achieve what it has.” I can imagine a travel-weary individual veteran muttering something of the sort. But I can`t believe even a small fraction of the Americans sent to Korea thought for a moment they were fighting to assure the future prosperity of one segment of Korean society-presumably the achievement alluded to in the bitter words Yates chose to end with.
More than travel-weary, Lincicome sounds plain disgusted. Like the fake name-brand consumer goodies churned out by ”this imitation nation,” he says, ” . . . even the athletes were phoney, pharmaceutically manufactured.” The phrasing here invites us to reflect, as does much of the rest of his diatribe, on the extent to which the ”awful odor and a blank rudeness”-apparently prevading the host city-may have exacerbated, if not exactly caused, the overall decline of international sports ethics.
If on reflection this reasoning proves hard to follow, there is no mistaking Lincicome`s meaning when he descends at several points into old-fashioned ethnic slurs.
