People are angry at the fact that Psy participated in an anti-American rap in 2004. 

While I wasn’t going to comment, let me just briefly lay out the history of the US and Korea for you people so you guys understand why I don’t think Psy is an evil fucking person for saying bad things about the US. 

First off, the song isn’t wrong. On the surface it’s a criticism of US foreign policy and Bush’s policy of increasing war in the Middle East. On another level it criticizes the US’s history of utilizing “Murder, Crime, Genocide” as a tool while also criticizing various other aspects, such as JP saying “빌어먹을 세계에서 제일 잘난 USA” which translates “The USA, the best country in the damn world” which is a criticism of US exceptionalism, or MC Sniper’s criticism of how the US has never ended the cold war per say and still uses it to legitimize imperialistic military action even in today.

None of those criticisms are wrong. 

“But Psy’s calling for murder of Americans is wrong!!!” 

You could call them extreme to a certain level, but on another hand there’s historical context that you’re very much ignoring or don’t know about. 

The US is responsible, either directly or as a contributing factor, to some of the worst atrocities in Korean history to date. Let me walk you through. 

Let’s rewind to about the 1890s. Japan, aiming to become an Imperial force, decides to try and claim Korea as their own, only to find resistance by the Chinese leading to the First Sino-Japanese war spanning from 1894 to 1895. This control is again contested by the Russians, leading to the Russo-Japanese war in 1904 to 1905. The only reason the Japanese do not colonize Korea is because of the threat of western countries such as the US getting involved and preventing Japan from becoming an imperial force in the East.

What does the US do? 

Sign the Taft-Katsura Agreement in which the US agrees to Japanese control of Korea, which was done without the agreement or even inclusion of Korean people, as long as Japan did not disturb with their control of the Philippines. 

What this means is that the very beginning of US-Korean relations is the US being complicit in the colonization of the Korean people by the Japanese, ironic for a country that prided itself on being about freedom and representation. 

Why is this such a horrible move on the US’s part though? Because by allowing the Japanese to colonize Korea, they are also complicit with the various atrocities committed by the Japanese in Korea during the occupation. This includes attempts to eradication the Korean language and culture, sexual slavery in the form of comfort women, the usage of Korean male laborers as the modern equivalent of slaves, using Korean people for secret military medical experiments, and other atrocities. 

These all come from, to a certain degree, the US being complicit with Japanese imperialism as long as it served to further their own imperialistic ends, which would change during World War 2. 

Now, during the Japanese occupation, there were certain Korean people who worked for the Japanese and enforced and approved of the Japanese occupation, who were called chinilpa, or pro-Japanese sympathizers in Korea. A good comparison would be Nazi sympathizers in France during Vichy France and afterwards who, by enforcing and allowing for various atrocities, benefitted from a colonial rule. 

Thus, after the Japanese rule, when the US army, under the ruse of protecting Korean from communism under the ideals of the domino theory come into Korea and temporarily declare Korea to be under their military rule for 3 years, who do they find in power? Japanese sympathizers. They allow the Japanese sympathizers to maintain power under the name of fighting communism despite the fact that the Korean people called for purges of Pro-Japanese sympathizers like Noh Duksool who hunted that Independence Fighters and tortured activists calling for independence from Japanese rule. Noh Duksool went from a pro-Japanese sympathizer to a anti-Communist hero under the US Military rule.

Once the US left and set up a puppet government in the form of Rhee’s administration, the Korean people voted in anti-Japanese sympathizer senators who called for a committee for the punishment of anti-Korean sentiments, which arrested 480 pro-Japanese sympathizers. The US government, via Rhee’s administration, believed that the arrest of so many of their “anti-Communist fighters” would lead to the Communists of North Korea to invade, and thus had Rhee order the police to attack the committee, had the senators serving on the committee arrested, and thus lead to the Pro-Japanese sympathizer purges as a failure. 

These are the people who know form a large part of the leaders of Korean business, politics, military, and police by helping the Japanese commit atrocities and then being allowed to flourish due to US imperialism, anti-Communist sentiments, and manipulation of a puppet government.  

Speaking of puppet government, can we speak about how the US is equally at blame as the USSR for fighting a puppet war in Korea, leading to the death of an estimated 1.9 million South Koreans and 3.32 million North Koreans? 

On another level, the US, in planning to strategically “throw away” the Korean peninsula, did not allow the South Korean government to actually maintain a large army, which would later cause for the North Korean army, which was largely supported by Stalin, to be able to take over Seoul with no problem, but the US blocking of the creation and maintaining a larger South Korean army allowed for the North to make a quicker and more brutal push before the US finally turned around from their strategically “throwing away” the Korean peninsula and got involved. This means that the US not only artificially manipulated the situation so that the initial North Korean push lead to the most civilian deaths possible, they also reentered the war later, artificially prolonging the war and waiting till the North Korean soliders had went as far down as Busan meaning that the US army had to sweep south and then proceed north, causing, again, the most civilian deaths possible in said situation. 

Ever since then the US army has maintained an imperialistic presence in Korea via military bases and has used South Korea as a base of spreading imperialism in Asia. 

So when Psy says something that’s anti-American, it’s not out of bigoted hatred. It’s not out of wild, anger. It comes from a history of exploitation of the Korean people by the US and victimization of the Korean people by US imperialism. 

What Americans are angry about is the fact that while doing all of this, they erase their imperialistic and colonial history from the textbooks so they don’t know that this happened so what they see is another angry Asian yelling Fuck America as they cast themselves as the role of the victim. What they’re also angry about is the fact that Psy isn’t the silly Asian stereotype that they had in their mind, but he actually is capable of political messages and when a non-American from a country which suffers from American imperialism has built an audience as large as Psy’s, that legitimately terrifies Americans. 

So no, I’m not angry that Psy participated in an anti-American song.