America’s Taking Over the World?

While I lived in South Korea I made friends with many English speaking Koreans. I spoke to them a great deal about Korean society, history, and views and attitudes. One thing that was of particular interest to me was how they perceived America and why. Here is what I was told.

Many Koreans viewed America as an overly powerful nation with an attitude problem. They were of the opinion that their country was just as great as the US, and that the US did not recognize it. In my opinion, Korea is actually greater than the US in some ways, and lesser than the US in other ways. I will not go into why I say that here because that is not the topic of this post.

What this is about was the way they said the US was taking over the world, and their justification for saying it. This will surprise most liberals, but it has nothing at all to do with our military.

They said the US was conquering the world through commerce.

They outlined for me how every country in the world relied on either American imports (like food in particular) or on American money through their own exports. In this way the entire world is heavily reliant on the US for it’s prosperity, making the US a nation that is resented because it is indispensable.

They spoke about how English is becoming the international language of trade and commerce. Any business that wants to do business on a global scale MUST have English speaking executives or interpreters. It doesn’t matter which country they do business with, if they have English capability they can communicate with any other global business, and many smaller local ones due to the necessity of knowing at least some rudimentary English in order to accommodate tourists.

The US is also exporting a portion of its culture through Hollywood. Our movies go everywhere in the world, and they bring with them Hollywood’s ideas of what the US should be. People worldwide watch this stuff and get the impression that that is how the US is, and more than a few people start emulating it. The same goes for our music, but to a lesser degree since local tastes in music vary more widely than the taste in movies seems to. Actually, there was a lot of truly excellent music in Korea from around the globe that I wish we got here in the US. A lot was much better than the repetitious fare we are being fed by the record companies today.

As they received an ever increasing amount of American influence, their valued traditions began to erode. For example, many Koreans in particular HATE the fact that some of their women are adopting American sexual attitudes. They want their women to be sexually pure before they marry them, and many men have an attitude of no woman who has sex before marriage is fit to marry. It is one reason why a Korean woman who has a relationship with an American man is almost relegated to the status of untouchable. It is assumed that the American man would not have stuck with her at all if he wasn’t having sex with her. There are stories of Korean women committing suicide after their American refused to marry her and left the country because she was counting on him to marry her because no Korean ever would after her relationship with him. And there are further stories of women being disowned by their families for getting involved with an American. All over sex.

So it would seem we are exporting Hollywood culture all around the world, much to the chagrin of many people in many nations who blame it for what they perceive as negative changes in their society. It seems they resent needing to learn English to do business because most Americans are “too proud” to learn the languages of our business partners around the world. And the world is uncomfortably dependent of doing business with the US just to survive.

So, in a way, I can see how many people might perceive the US as taking over the world through culture and commerce. And I definitely see why many Koreans, at least, resent the US for it.