Asia Times: US fights dirty in Seoul jet deal


	January 9, 2002	atimes.com

The Koreas

COMMENTARY
US fights dirty in Seoul jet deal
By Tim Shorrock

WASHINGTON - South Korea's decision last week to place special weight on "political and defense considerations" in its US$3 billion acquisition of a new generation of fighter jets is widely considered to be a victory for the United States and the Boeing Corporation, which have lobbied strenuously for the contract over the past year.

But the nature of that lobbying campaign, which reached the top levels of the US government and included veiled threats by US politicians to retaliate if Seoul doesn't buy American, is an unsettling reminder of South Korea's junior partner status to the United States, and could damage ties already strained over the Bush administration's reluctance to engage with North Korea.

At stake is an enormous prize: the right to supply South Korea - the world's 10th largest arms market - with 40 new F-X fighter jets. Bidding for the $3.2 billion project are Boeing's F-15 division, based in St Louis, Missouri; the French Dassault Aviation's Rafale; the Typhoon 2000 made by the Eurofighter consortium; and Russia's Sukhoi Su-32. A final decision is expected in late March.

Despite Boeing's long history in the defense aerospace industry, Korean defense officials have been leaning toward Dassault because they consider the Rafale to be more advanced than Boeing's F-15E Eagle. Korean critics of Boeing, the New York Times reported last fall, view "Boeing's offering [as] little more than a warmed-over version of the venerable American F-15 with new avionics, and not the new-generation machine South Korea wants".

In December, Dassault offered nearly $4 billion in contracts and technology over the next 10 years as an inducement, while Boeing proposed a $2.8 billion program of industrial cooperation and technology transfers, according to Korean press reports. The Russian and Eurofighter proposals are not considered serious contenders.

The idea that South Korea, with its 50-year relationship with the United States, might select a French company for a strategic project like the F-X has irked the Pentagon and raised concerns among military analysts. Historically, South Korea has purchased 80 to 90 percent of its weapons from US manufacturers.

A Korean decision to select Dassault "would really be seen as slap in the face", particularly when US forces are at war in Afghanistan, said Philip Finnegan, an aerospace industry analyst at the Teal Group, a Virginia think tank. "The United States always stresses interoperability of Korean weapons systems with the needs of US troops." The Teal Group has predicted that, without the Korean contract, Boeing's F-15 assembly line in St Louis will close down.

For US officials, the compatibility issue has been central in their discussions with South Korea over the F-X project. At the annual Security Consultative Meeting in Washington last November, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld pushed strongly for Boeing. "We believe that Boeing's F-15K is a very good aircraft given interoperability and performance," Douglas J Feith, one of Rumsfeld's deputies, told the Korean delegation, according to a report in the Korea Times.

Those kinds of statements are understandable given the nature of the US-Korean relationship and the vast US military network in Northeast Asia. But some of the US pressure on Seoul has bordered on the arrogant, and even bullying.

It started last March, when President George W Bush pushed for a Boeing purchase in meetings with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung. Secretary of State Colin Powell followed up that message in meetings with the Korean foreign minister. In the spring, Boeing sent a delegation to Seoul that included several key members of Missouri's congressional delegation, including Senator Christopher Bond, a Republican, and Richard Gephardt, a Democrat who represents the city of St Louis.

The pressure went up a notch in October when Boeing lost a huge $200 billion contract for the US Joint Strike Fighter to its largest rival, Lockeed Martin. A few weeks later, Bond warned that "very unfortunate things could happen" to US-Korean relations if Seoul decided against buying Boeing's F-15 Eagle. After the comments were published, Bond quickly backtracked and tried to argue that he was "not making a threat" but merely an "observation" about how officials in Washington would respond. But his message to the Korean government and people was clear: if you want US support, buy American products.

Sadly, Bond's comments reflect a common attitude towards South Korea held by many Americans - that South Korea, despite its economic and political progress, is a junior partner to America.

They remind me of a visit I paid to South Korea in 1981. At the time, the country was under the grip of the authoritarian General Chun Doo-hwan. Throughout my six-week stay in Seoul, I encountered political and religious activists angry at Chun's seizure of power in 1980 and bitter at the United States for backing his government with military and economic aid.

To get another perspective on US-Korean affairs, I decided to interview the Korean representative of a consortium of US grain exporters. Because this individual had worked with American companies for decades, I expected him to be friendly towards Americans and the US government in general.

How wrong I was. The day before my visit, the Korean executive had met with an American congressional delegation from California and Louisiana. The lawmakers were furious that South Korea, which was in the midst of a serious drought, had purchased large quantities of rice from Japan. Despite the fact that Koreans prefer the short-grain rice grown in Japan, these American congressmen insisted that South Korea had an obligation to buy long-grain rice from Louisiana and California. One of the visitors, a congressman who is now the senior senator from Louisiana, John Breaux, told the Korean executive that he would push for a cutoff of US military aid if Seoul didn't start buying his state's product. The Korean was deeply offended, and refused to send that message on to his government.

It's now 20 years later, and Boeing and its supporters are acting just like those merchants of grain: old habits die hard, apparently. But if US-Korean relations are to reach equilibrium some day, the arrogance that drives Americans to see their ties with South Korea in purely dollar terms must go. Next year, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, would be a good place to start.

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