Interview with the architect of Occupy, Kalle Lasn

Posted on : 2012-01-03 10:37 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Activist and editor of Adbusters magazine speaks on the planet’s uncertain future

By Kwon Tae-ho, Washington Correspondent

Hankyoreh: What made you propose the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Kalle Lasn: Global capitalism. Let’s occupy this global center of capitalism. And so we knew that.. as soon as we put out that hashtag, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, we knew that it is very exciting. We knew that there’s going to be a big explosion in Wall St., in New York. But then when it started spread to LA, Chicago, and to... across border to Canada you know, and then suddenly on Oct.15th, it was 1,000 occupations everywhere, all over the world. It was... quite frankly, it was unbelievable. You know, when the moment is ripe, all it takes is a spark. And that‘s what happened. And I think that the young people of the world, millions, maybe hundreds of millions of young people around the world, they are all waking up to this kind of crisis situation in the world, where they look at the ecological crisis, climate change, tipping points hovering over the horizon, maybe goes above 2 degrees, maybe the next 100 years, maybe next 1000 years, is going to be some sort of ecological down-slope. So there’s ecological crisis, and they‘re looking at the political situation, and the politicians at the center of the... their nations are corrupt, they just take money from the corporations, it’s a huge political crisis because of corruption. And on top of it, they look at the financial crisis, and they see they will never get a decent job, they are not able to pay off their student loans in America and in Canada, and they will never be able to kind of live the life their parents lived, they will never be able to own a house. So in a way the young people today in the world, they are looking at the very...dark future.. future that does not confute, and I think they... deep down in their guts they know if they don‘t stand up and start fighting for their future, they’re not going to have a future. So this is a very, very deep apocalyptic feeling in the guts of many young people. And that, I think, is the core impulse behind why this movement suddenly started exploding like that all over the world. It‘s a movement of young people who grew up in the culture of the Internet, and who... kind of want their regime to change. They want to create different kind of future.

H: I visited the Park several times to cover the movement. They shouted out ‘revolution’, which might be different from in Arabic countries, where you might be willing to sacrifice your life to achieve abrupt change. In the U.S., however, what they want could be slower, happen at a slow rate.

L: I think what you have said is absolutely right. You can’t compare the regime change in Egypt with the regime change in America. But, in Egypt, Mubarak was torturing his people in police stations all around the country every day. There was torture going on. So that revolution that happened in Egypt was a hard regime change. When we were brainstorming about regime change in America, we said ‘of course it’s different.’

But, nonetheless, in America you also need kind of a soft regime change. A soft regime change, but you still need a regime change. You still have a kind of regime. You have Wall Street people who are controlling so much of how the economy goes. You have corporations with their lobbyists in Washington, feeding the money to the Congress and Senators, so there’s money corruption at the heart of the American democracy. And then if you look at people‘s ordinary everyday lives, then the food you eat comes from the 2 or 3 big corporations, the shoes you wear come from Nike or Adidas, the music and information you get from CNN or from Fox, and every part of my life is controlled by 2 or 3 corporations. So if you add up the Wall St, corruption in D.C. and my everyday life, then I am living in some kind of regime. And I don’t like it. I want to change the regime. I want to regime to change.

H: The media is controlled by 5 or 6 companies in the U.S.

L: Yeah, that’s right. It doesn’t matter. The information you get, the media, the music, the shoes, the food, the drink, whatever, it‘s all mega-corporations. So you know, in the brainstorming session here, you know, America is like a corporate state. It’s like a top-down corporate state, where the corporations are controlling everything. And the bottom-up democracy is a faded dream. That’s how America started 200 years ago, but it doesn’t work anymore. Bottom-up democracy. People have no say anymore. They have lost control of their own country. So in a way, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that in the guts of the occupiers, what they really want is the soft regime change, even though it‘s completely different from Egypt or Tunisia or Syria.

H: Some say this movement will do Obama some good for the election, no matter whether you intended or not. What do you think?

L: Well, most of the occupiers don’t like him, Obama. He disappointed us terribly. He has backtracked all the [promises he made].

H: Are you disappointed as well?

L: Bitterly disappointed. To me, it was one thing to have, you know, some Republican guy, like President Bush, you know, betraying my ideas. But to have a guy like Obama, who so inspired me before he got elected, in his speeches, how he‘ll change America, and he wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope and he did all the right things; he had young people all over the America all fight for him to get elected. And we got him elected. As soon as he got elected, he started thinking about the next election and gave up all the things he was going to do. He didn’t stop Guantanamo Bay, he didn’t stop Israel from attacking Palestinians, he didn’t fight for the really good health bill. Everything he did was watered down. I think Obama was gutless. You know.. when an enemy disappoints you, you can take it. But when a friend disappoints you, it’s very hard to take. And Obama, for a while, he was... he was… we loved him. And he betrayed us. So, if the young people, if you have a choice between some guy like Mitt Romney and Obama, then of course, you’ll vote for Obama, because he’s still better than Mitt Romney or some other republicans. But I don’t think there’ll be huge enthusiasm for Obama like last time. Four years ago, young people were still in love with him, they were fighting for him, they were raising money for him, and they were lobbying for him, doing everything for him. This time around, Obama may be elected again, if you are going to vote, maybe you’ll vote for Obama, but there‘s going to be no enthusiasm.

H: Could you talk more about your suggested ‘the third party’? Is it a progressive one?

L: No. What I said was the real fruit. You know, the Tea Party, they hopped in bed with Republicans. They made a lot of changes, they got a lot of Congress people elected, and they have changed some American problems. But now they are kind of finished. They’ve lost their steam and they‘ve given their best shot and now it’s over. This movement will not believe in the bad democratic party. But one of the great fruits of this movement, I think, will be this realization that you cannot keep on electing Republican, Democrat, like Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola. It‘s...you know for a long long time, you didn’t really have any real choice. You know, it doesn‘t matter, if you drink Coke or Pepsi, it tastes the same. [They have the] same policies. That has to end. This movement, when I talked to the occupiers, then we all agreed, ‘we need a new infusion of fresh new politics with fresh new ideas.’ And many of them say, ‘oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to start a third party, stronger than either, the third party stronger than the green party, wider than the green party?’ and it could be a strange new hybrid politics, which is a little bit of right, a little bit of left. You know, if you talk very deeply with any of the occupiers, they say ‘oh, I actually really like the Tea Party people because they also understand something fundamentally wrong with America, that America has lost its way, America is in decline, and something fundamental has to shift. That‘s why the Tea Party goes, ’ I want to change America, the way it works. ‘The occupiers, they say the same thing. Except, the Tea Party, they want to change the government, they want to reduce the government, and take the power away from the government, and occupiers want to take the power away from the corporations. But deep down, it is the same feeling; our country has lost its way; we have to put our country back into the rail. I think there’s a possibility that those, some people in the Tea Party, some people in the Occupy movement, we can agree on some things. Yeah, we can cut down the size of the government. But we can also cut down the size of the corporations.

And then, maybe something totally new, something totally fresh, suddenly giving birth to a third party. It could happen. Maybe it sounds like a dream, but it could happen. It could happen, if the global economy keeps on thinking, like at the moment, it’s not too bad, maybe in Europe, in Greece, maybe in Spain, maybe in Ireland, maybe even in Italy, maybe things are not so good, too bad, but in America, you know. It‘s still not too bad, people are still OK. But if, tomorrow morning, DOW Jones goes down by 3,000 points and doesn’t recover, if suddenly it brings the 1930‘s scenario, this time, it could last much longer, because in 1930s we still had forests, fish in the ocean, we didn’t have climate change, we had good soil, and the natural world was still intact. Now, what do we have? What will we have to fall back on now? We have very few forests left. The fish in the ocean are disappearing very quickly. The natural world is collapsing, hurricanes and climate change, it‘s costing more and more. This time, we don’t have the natural world to fall back on. So what are we going to fall back on? On derivatives? Are we going to fall back on credit default swaps? You know... in a way, we could be in a very long, dark period of economic pain. And when that pain comes to America, then America will be ready for the 3rd party. It could happen tomorrow morning. I turn on the business news in the morning, when I wake up. I look at some [things] go up, some go down, and it all feels so wild to me. I would be also so surprised, if tomorrow morning, you wake up and you have a coffee, and you happen to see DOW Jones go down suddenly 1,000 points and then the next day it goes up 2,000 points. It could happen. We all know it could happen.

H: Some say the movement is already in decline in terms of the power. Maybe people will still gather next Spring, but the impact they can make is not as big as in the last Fall.

L: I don‘t agree with that. Nobody will think like that. When people say that, however, they might mean that the movement itself could age. Even though the catchphrases make sense to everyone and everyone wants a change, maybe a paced one, instead of abrupt revolution, is what people might prefer. Well, I think the people who have power, Wall Street is very happy after Bloomberg took out this Zuccotti park in a military style operation. I think a lot of corporations and existing power structures are [thinking], ‘oh, why don’t you feed into the existing power system?’ you know, and they’re very happy that it somehow looks like the first page is over. But I don’t think it‘s over. I think it’s just the beginning. I think that this first ‘occupying the parks’ phase is over, because it’s very hard to begin that again and in a way it didn’t work very well either, because it‘s very hard to maintain the discipline and keep the people in the park and hold the General Assembly meetings every morning. After a while they started dissension, people started arguing, tired of sleeping, and winter comes. And we all know sooner or later, it will come to an end. But I think, next year, starting in January, there are going to be some massive occupations on campuses, I think the next battle ground is going to be campuses, and I think next spring, when the flowers start coming out, there’ll be myriad of projects, and I think this time will be occupying like... I remember... one of the things I wrote was ... I was impressed by what Muhammad Ali said. He said ‘you have to float like butterfly and sting like a bee.’ Instead of occupying parks, you know, it’s very easy: you sit there for two months and everybody goes in there and everybody knows what they’re going to do tomorrow morning. It’s very transparent. Very hard to maintain. That’s going to stop. Now we’re going to have a quick surprise fast occupations. It’s going to be.. we’re going to occupy corporate headquarters. Like we did a couple of days ago, we occupied the K Street, where the lobbyists are. We are going to occupy some economics departments in universities. We’re going to look around like a swarm of butterflies and go like. “ah! Something rotten happening here, tomorrow we’re going to go there and we’re going to sting like a bee.” And I think that this is going to be like many little occupations happening everywhere all the time. And we’re going to disrupt the businesses as usual. It’s going to be possibly much more effective and it’s like the Pax Phase I of the movement. So I think that this feeling that I was telling you about, this feeling and guts of the young people that something fundamentally wrong with the direction of the global economy is going on, fundamentally wrong where the politics is going and fundamentally wrong with the financial situation. I think this feeling that it’s off the rail and we have to put it back on rail is a very strong feeling. And it’s not going to go away because Bloomberg attacked us in the middle of the night in military style operations. I think this movement, I hope, that the same thing doesn‘t happen as 1968 when there was a big explosion and died away. This time, I think young people have new magic, the political left has new power, and I think this movement will continue and a really interesting part will come next year.

H: Even though you yourself denied the ownership of the movement, it still seems to have begun in Vancouver with Adbusters. Your denial of ownership of the movement could be interpreted as irresponsible in some cases, as when you say you do not give out any directions and have no ownership to the movement, including the cases involving people hurt, like Mr. Olsen.

L: I’m fine with people thinking of my responsibility for those cases. We sparked it and then the movement had a life of its own. And the people who really spread this Occupy movement, they were the people who were sleeping in the parks, having their General Assemblies, and putting their magic that way, and they are the ones who really did it. In some places, it is somewhat violent like in Oakland or some other places. That’s fine by me, you know, revolutions always like that. Revolutions are messy affairs. Some people have Gandhian philosophy of non-violence and they know that the success of the whole movement depends on having this Gandhian non-violence. Other people, like Black Bloc people, got angry when Bloomberg attacked in the middle of the night, you know, in a military style operation. So they got angry and fought back and some violence came in and the movement got violent. We need all of that. If this is going to be a revolution, then we need to have a full spectrum of dissent. And it depends on how the regime reacts. If the regime reacts, it‘s fighting back. If the regime uses violence, then of course, you will expect this movement have some violence back as well. All I can say is revolutions are messy affairs. But at the moment, we do need a global revolution. Because if we don’t have a global revolution, then this 7 billion strong human experiment on our planet earth is going to hit the wall.

H: I also realize how small this world is through this movement. Young folks in Seoul feel more connected to other young folks in Vancouver than to old folks in Seoul. The division is defined by age and class more than by physical borders.

L: Yes, it‘s a borderless world.

H: In this era, what do you think progressive movements should look like?

L: That’s a good question. You know, the political left was a wonderful powerful, idealistic, cool movement when I was a young man, when I was in university. In the 1960s, it was a powerful force and it gave birth to the 1968 and the global revolution that almost happened in 1968. But then, after that, things fizzled out, and especially after 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed, then the political left lost its way. It kind of lost its way. Still doing to same thing, same placard, blah blah, somehow, it‘s not working anymore. And all of a sudden, it wasn’t cool to be lefty and then something even more terrible happened: the left became kind of whiners. They became people who say, ‘oh, look at what Fox is going here, look at the terrible things that company is doing here, oh look at what they are doing to the environment.’ The political left became people who complain all the time, complaining about everything, but never actually fixing anything, never actually doing anything. Lots of analysis, lots of learned, journals talking about analysis, analysis. Never moving analysis to action.

So, all of a sudden now, in Zuccotti park, a couple of months ago, something happened. All of a sudden, we jump from analysis to action again. All of a sudden, it‘s a cool moment, the political left is doing something. We’re occupying the iconic center of global capitalism. We‘re going to change it. We’re going to have a Robin Hood tax, we‘re going to change the corruption. All of a sudden, it’s cool again to be a lefty. So I think there is some magic there in what they did. In almost 20 years, we have been saying that we have to jump over the dead body of old left. And this Occupy movement jumped over the dead body of the old left. And they were able to do it because there was young blood there. Young people who grew up in the culture of the Internet, young people who had kind of very tuned into their shoes, very geo-politically, very culturally, there are many ways to be tuned into what‘s happening. Very worried about climate change, very tuned in to the corruption in Washington, and in other places, very scared about the future, of getting a job, whatever, owning a house, having a life [like] their parents did. And this, this is the new left. So for me, that’s why I think this movement has long legs and will come up in the next Spring again and will keep on for many, many years, pulling off all kinds of radical transformations. Because these young people, they are [the] new left. They have new power, they have new magic. And that magic is partly coming from the Internet, partly coming from their own knowledge, partly coming from this wonderful two months we had in the past under the sun, where suddenly millions of young people over the world stood up and got politically engaged, rubbing shoulders with their friends, and living without dead time. Living for the first time in their lives, losing the cynicism, and really living suddenly, living for one, for a few weeks, really full of life. So we have a new generation. And this new generation, I think, has the power.

H: It used to be led by power elites in the past, but now it‘s by young folks on the Internet, SMS. This provides the young folks with some kind of confidence like ‘oh, we can do it.’ Still for the folks who really went out to protest together, sleep in the park, the change is not visible, which could be disappointing. The circumstances have not changed. The world has not changed.

L: No, the world has changed.

H: My point is what should the young folks do in the next step, you would say?

L: You have to be creative. Young people have to be creative. I mean in 1968 it died down because they stopped being creative. They lost their power, they started thinking like you described, and it all fizzled out and people say ‘oh, big explosion and now nothing.’ It could happen again. Of course, it could happen again. Maybe capitalism, corporate power, Wall Street, Washington, the corporate power to control the IMF and the World Bank, the corporate power to control the G20, the corporate power to decide that Korea will have to trade back with America. And they can push things through. But maybe not. See? That’s the difference. The difference is that when the stakes are really high, your future is really dark. When you are looking, like I said, [at] the ecological and psychological, political, and financial crisis, and the rest of your life looks like one horrible mess, then what alternative do you have? Especially when the economy continues to get worse? So somewhere along the line, you have to find the fight. You know, I watch a lot of Japanese television because my wife is Japanese and she always has NHK. NHK all the time. And my mother-in-law would watch NHK all the time. There‘s one guy that I really love. He came up and he said a very strange thing in English. His English is really bad. And some guys would ask ‘what are you going to do?’ and he says, ‘I am fight’, ‘I am fight’. And that’s my answer to you right now. The young people have to say ‘I am fight’, And that‘s the only option they have now. If they don’t have the guts to stand up and fight, then this human experiment on our planet earth and the people on it is going to hit the wall.

H: So fight is the only means to change the world?

L: Yes. I don‘t mean ‘fight’ with [a] stick and hitting people on the head. Fight can happen in many different ways. Fight can be Black Bloc when they start getting violent and breaking windows and breaking banks. That’s one way. And other ways could be Gandhi, maintain and have the kind of poetic power. But in between, there’s always all kinds of bodily violent actions, all the way through to powerful ideas and creative ways like Robin Hood taxes and starting a third party in America and opening eyes of people to [the] global economy which is becoming like a global casino and doesn’t work anymore. And showing how our leaders are useless in crisis management, who don’t know what to do anymore. There’s [a] million ways to fight. And the big question that hangs in the air, now that the first phase of the movement is finished. The big question that hangs in the air is ‘do the young people have the fight?’ Can enough people say ‘I am fight’?

H: Historically speaking, violent methods brought about changes, while non-violence didn‘t accomplish much.

L: Even like Egypt - it was a hard regime change - and it was largely non-violent. but you know, hundreds of people died, so there was violence there. It wasn’t as violent as [the] French revolution, American or Russian revolution. It was largely non-violent, but it had kind of a violent age. If the global economy keeps on tanking, this Occupy movement is a global revolutionary force, then there’ll be some violence. I think the heart of the movement has to be Gandhian non-violence. If you don’t, you become violent, then it doesn’t work. Ultimately it’s not going to succeed, but I think it’s going to have a violent frenzy. I think there’ll be some black blockers, some of the people who are attacked by Bloomberg in the middle of the night. You know, somebody attacks you, you’re going to attack back. As long as the authorities still use the police and use them in a violent way, then there’ll be violence back. So I don‘t know what your question is, but that is the messy side of the revolution, all kinds of revolution. Revolutions have violent sides, and I hope that it is 99% non-violent and these crazy guys don’t take it completely over. But there’ll be part of the full spectrum.

H: In your interview, the mixed capitalism of Northern European countries is preferable to the American casino capitalism. However, this type of capitalism including free markets is the backbone of this diverse society. In this immigrant country, you have a choice not to immigrate to the U.S. if you do not like this system. In small Northern European countries, that system might work better, but not necessarily in the U.S.

L: You know, a long time ago, I used to think that maybe some sort of European capitalism with a nice face could work. I don’t think so anymore. I think I have changed my mind now. I don‘t know the interview you’re talking about... when I gave that. But right now I feel that not only the U.S.A. is a corporate state that is controlled by mega corporations and finance people on Wall St., but the whole world is like a corporate entity. Capitalism has evolved, not only in individual countries, but globally. Capitalism has evolved into this kind of top-down affair of hundreds [of] very large mega-corporations basically controlling the show. It’s a top-down corporate driven system. And the original, wonderful side of the system when I was really young, where people start businesses and the energy, power, and creativity came out from the bottom. That has somehow disappeared now and now we have top-down corporate system and so I believe in capitalism, but it has to be bottom-up kind of capitalism. So I do believe the top-down kind of system and especially the neo-classical economic paradigm that has been taught in universities and in schools about what economics is all about, I think that needs to be fundamentally overhauled. I don’t know if I have told you but the current economic system we‘re in needs to be radically overhauled. I don’t know if you want to still call it capitalism after that. Maybe you want to call it something else.

H: You oppose the winner-take-all system.

L: It‘s not the winner-take-all system. It’s where corporations slowly manage to get bigger and bigger and bigger and start more and more influences on how things are done, became more financially oriented rather than product oriented. And it found a way to change the country bit by bit, and now corporations even have personhood. And they‘ve been able to deprive and corrupt the leaders and reelect them in such a way and it’s no longer that we the people control the country bottom-up. It‘s some sort of business top-down corporate system. And that has to be dismantled. The whole system has to be dismantled.

H: opposes consumerism. Do you think capitalism can be achieved without consumerism?

L: Of course not. There’s certain level of consumerism. But you have to remember that after the Second World War, the average American and Canadian citizen consumed so much and now 50 years later, we consume 300% more. So the consumerism has increased by 300%. Of course, you cannot live without consumerism, some kind of consumerism. But it doesn‘t have to be kind of five planet consumerism that is happening now that the average American and Canadian citizen, the consumerism is so high and each person is living like a five planet lifestyle. And if we keep on doing that, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Indians, they all come up as the same level as we are now, America and Canada, we’ll need five planets to keep the whole system going. There‘s something apocalyptic, something fundamentally destructive of our current system. This is unsustainable. It can go on maybe for another year, for another five years, and if we like it, maybe 10 years. It could well be self-destructed tomorrow morning.

H: I visited Zuccotti park several times to cover the story. On the way, a cynical cab driver said, ‘they are 99% who wanted to be 1%.’ I think he has a point in that the system is created by people, who are greedy by nature.

L: I do understand your point. But you have to look at the large view to understand what is going on. I think societies evolve in some strange ways. And I think in Korea, I don’t know too much [about the] history of Korea, but there are times when some people, you know, who are very rich, owning some big companies and have some influences in [the] political system and whatever. And then suddenly there comes a moment in Korean history, in American history, and in Canadian history, when ‘this system is so rotten.’ You know, it’s just too much power from the top, some guys are too strong, or something is wrong. And then it takes young people to rise up and do what happened many times in Korea, and do what people in Zuccotti park [did] a couple of months ago. When a nation loses its way, and takes a wrong path and bad people get too much power, then it takes the bottom people to rise up and take some of the power back. And that is what this movement is all about. That is what the revolution is all about when we have a change of the power structure. Suddenly the power comes away from Wall St, comes back to the people. Suddenly the power comes away from corporations and goes back into some different ways. And I think this is one of the ways we are living through now. Suddenly, given what happened in the Arab Spring, because of the global recession, because of what happened in 2008, when all those economists, ‘we know how to run the global economy.’ Well they didn‘t. They made big mistakes. Not even 1% of them predicted what could happen. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a crisis situation, ecologically, politically, and financially. And young people of the world say something has to change. And this occupation movement attempts to begin this change. As I said earlier, we’ve done a fantastic job in two months, we launched a national conversation in America, we launched a national conversation in Canada, we launched a little bit of conversation in Korea, there were thousands of occupations over the world. International conversations, now about the power of G20 and what‘s going to happen in Europe. Somehow we have started a fantastic debate, a fantastic conversation about the future of countries, the future of global economy, and now, it’s the big question mark, you know. Does this movement still have some power to do more? Or is it just a movement to be remembered to have started an interesting conversation? Or is it a movement of millions of young people really here to say ‘I am fight’? That’s the way I see it.

H: Thank you for your accepting this interview. Have you been to Korea?

L: Yes. I made a film about global economy 20 years ago. I shot this film about the global economy all over the world. And I stayed a couple of weeks in Korea. This would have been… early 1980’s. Yes. Or late 1970‘s. I forget now. No no no, it was mid 1980’s. I remember I finished the film in 1987, so I think I was in Korea in 1985 or 1986.

H: What did you think about Korea at that time?

L: You know, at that time, I was much younger, much more sort of wild and crazy. I didn‘t really… I could see the energy, I could feel it, because in Seoul ... I went to Japan in 1964, oh in 1965, one year after the Tokyo Olympics. And I could feel, living in Japan for 5 years, I could see how Japan’s miracle, you know, Japan suddenly becoming the second most powerful economy in the world. When I went to Korea, I said ‘oh, it‘s happening all over again, but this time in Korea.’ So the Koreans, I could feel, suddenly having power, they were going to educate their young kids, putting huge pressure on young kids, and lots of respect for the business leaders, and the government was trying to steer the economy in the right direction, you know, playing the kind of, similar kind of, it’s like Korea Inc., the whole country is run by one corporation. So I could feel the power there.

H: The current administration of Korea has pushed through an FTA with the U.S. assuming that Korea, an export-oriented economy should have a huge market like the U.S. However, I don‘t think it will bear so many good fruits because the U.S. system could possibly not work in Korea.

L: Here’s my take on this. I think we‘re living in a very interesting global situation where, for the very first time, it’s becoming obvious that America is in decline and China and India [are] going up, and of course, Brazil too. So we‘re living in a moment where things are really changing. And if you look at what’s happening, then some countries, like, I don’t know, maybe Singapore, and a few other countries, they sort of go into Chinese side, they’re betting that China is going to be the big dominant powerful player in the future, they want to stay on the Chinese side. But some other countries, like Japan and South Korea and a few other countries, they are still in the American camp. And if I was Korean, I would hedge my bet a bit more. I wouldn’t put all my money in America. I would play a much more subtle game where I wouldn’t do this free trade thing. If I was Korean, I would be against the kind of close relationship with America. At this time, it’s declining. When you look, it’s really in big trouble. I think Japan is going to be in big trouble. Japan already is in big trouble, because their economy is so closely integrated with [the] American economy. So that‘s not a very smart thing to do at the time when America is in decline. So I think it’s a smart move for Korea not to make the mistake Japan made, which is jump to, hop into a bed with America.

H: The FTA is rectified at least.

L: They pushed it through.

H: Another big issue in Korea at the moment is the cross-ownership of big media companies.

L: Too much power for them.

H: We have 10 newspapers, all covering international stories. In a small country like Korea, we do not have many local papers. Three biggest companies have 70% market share. And they are conservative.

L: Yeah, doesn‘t make sense. It is like Italy. You can get into a big trouble if you have too much of the media power all in Berlusconi. They can brainwash you.

H: The three newspaper companies launched a TV station.

L: That could be a fatal error. And maybe that is the reason you lost the fight. On the free trade. Once you have a media, too much controlled, then you can push through something like that because you have the media power.

H: They say the cross-ownership is a global trend and it works in the U.S., even though in real, it’s different.

L:Yes, it’s different. It’ll be a big trouble in Korea.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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