Gwangju Mayor Now Knows How the Rest of Us Feel
The mayor of Gwangju Park Gwang-tae is upset that he got the extra security check at the San Francisco airport and had this to say in retaliation:
In a statement on Thursday, Gwangju City said Park and an 18-member group now in the U.S. to drum up investment were put through a thorough security check at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday morning that lasted an hour and 45 minutes.
After everyone in the mayor’s entourage was subjected to an hour-long search, they were asked to walk through an ion trap mobility spectrometry test machine, while fellow American and Japanese passengers cleared security in about 10 minutes, the statement said.
“When even travelers carrying official passports are insulted like this, it is possible to imagine what kind of treatment ordinary Koreans get,†it quoted Park as saying. He vowed to demand that the U.S. withdraws patriot missiles deployed near Gwangju airport and apologizes for the incident.
The mayor blamed the Korean government’s “submissive attitude†toward the U.S. for the incident. “According to the diplomatic principle of reciprocity, Korea should carry out more thorough security inspections of Americans who come and go in Korea,†he added.
I often hear from Koreans that many people from Gwangju are idiots and commies and these kind of remarks from the mayor only reinforces that stereotype. The San Francisco airport says they were randomly selected for the security check, just like I have been randomly selected for the same security check at that same airport the last time I flew through San Francisco and I am an American citizen. I didn’t complain and moan like this guy. I actually liked the fact they were checking people. Also the fact that it took an hour and forty five minutes to get 18 people inspected is actually pretty good. That is a 6 minutes per person average if one person was checking all of the passengers.
As far as withdrawing the American forces from Gwangju, he would actually be doing them a favor because I’m sure the PATRIOT soldiers would love to go back to Osan and out of the land of the idiot mayor.
