"The Ugly American" needs to be re-read with a focus on Korea

The visuals of pudgy whiteys and sinister-looking Japanese coming to Seoul to dictate policy is a public diplomacy nightmare!

The Ugly American (1958) by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick is a novel, which exposed the failings of U.S. foreign policy through a series of fictionalized stories about American diplomats and their interactions abroad. Though the novel was set in the context of Southeast Asia during the Cold War, its insights into the importance of humility, cultural understanding, and the dangers of arrogance remain relevant today.

The themes in The Ugly American have a particularly striking resonance when considering the U.S. approach to the Korean Peninsula. If the book were written ten years earlier, it would definitely have fitted U.S. policy on Korea. As it is, the lessons of the book seemed to have skipped over generations of diplomats working on Korean affairs. Maybe it’s time for it to be re-read?

The novel tells the story of American officials stationed in the fictional country of Sarkhan, where they engage with the local population ineffectively, failing to grasp the cultural nuances n…