File:Fort MacArthur Park, San Pedro, Los Angeles - 8502070381.jpg

English: Having a quick photo session on a lovely day at a very photogenic place - Fort MacArthur Park, in San Pedro, at the southernmost tip of Los Angeles, known for the Korean Friendship Bell.

Visiting the Korean Friendship Bell is also timely, as it was the gift of South Korea's Park Chung-hee military dictatorship to the US, and in two days, Park's daughter becomes South Korea's newest President. Proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The tree on the right was planted on 28 January 1981, by President Chun Doo-hwan on what is described as "Chun's first State Visit to the US." General Chun had seized power via a coup on 12 December 1979 (only 1 1/2 month after Park Chung-hee's assassination on 26 October had created a power vacuum), and his government was involved in a deadly crackdown of a pro-democracy revolt on 18 May 1980; for a dose of legitimacy, Chun needed help from new US President Ronald Reagan, and Chun's goal was to attend Reagan's inauguration and be the first official guest of the Reagan White House. Given Chun's rise to power, the US treated Chun's visit as a working visit rather than a state visit (and actually refused Chun's request to attend the inauguration, since diplomatic protocol calls for the foreign minister to attend, rather than a head of state), but South Korea considers it to be a state visit.

Reagan's support for Chun during the Cold War years paralleled his support for other anti-Communist dictators around the world, and it made for a lot of anti-American feelings in South Korea. Chun's supporters countered by claiming that all anti-American protests were masterminded by North Korea to break up US-South Korea alliance. When Chun's government eventually gave way to a democratic revolution in 1987, many Chun supporters ran into Reagan's welcoming arms, peaking Korean immigration to the US, and ensuring that Korean-Americans would become a far-right special interest demographic like the Cuban-Americans and the Vietnamese-Americans.

Let's see what kinds of snarky comments my Seoul-based Flickr contact, moreska, can add. He and I love to discuss South Korea's dictators and their Republican benefactors.