The whole world is mourning those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks in New York, but some in our society are idealizing and supporting these acts of terror, and this is reason for concern. Writings idealizing terrorism have appeared mostly in non-Internet network discussion rooms and on progressive websites, and they usually claim that the US had it coming, that it was just from the Arab point of view, or that terrorism is the only method available to those who are desperate and weak. You can even sense some horrifying madness in some of these novel-like claims, such as that the incident was a conspiracy or self-inflicted act by a US government out to sell arms. More than at least 5,000 innocent civilians have been killed; how is it that some people can use dead bodies for their jokes?

It is of no coincidence that one sees many similarities between these claims filling cyber space and the radical tendencies that have dominated the Korean university community over the past ten years or so. It is in this sense that a reader's letter was published in Saturday’s Chosun Ilbo. The reader was in class one day at university when the lecturer praised the courage of the terrorists for giving their lives because "this act of terrorism was a just method chosen by those who are weak." The student could not listen to the end, and wrote to the Chosun Ilbo saying that terrorism can never be justified.

The fact that there are a wide number of people in our society who support or idealize terrorism is by itself not frightening. But if the likes of these people are teaching our children in universities and middle and high schools, then it is not a matter that can be overlooked. Perhaps there is a connection between the tendency to think terrorism is okay, the kind of thinking in the eighties that said the end justifies the means, and with anti-Americanism. It is worth considering whether the radical students of the eighties are now professors and lecturers teaching that 'terror is just.'

Terrorism targeted at innocent citizens is by itself a serious criminal act, and those who engage in such terrorism must be thoroughly punished. The reason terrorism cannot be tolerated is because it incites more terrorism. Maybe the terrorism in New York can justify the punishment of the Afghan people who supported it. Those who idealize the terrorism in New York need to know that they and their families can become the objects of terror, regardless of their location or ideology.

(September 17, 2001)