Thomas Friedman in Seoul.

New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman was in Seoul yesterday to give a talk at the Global Korea 2009 forum. Maybe he's still in Seoul, who knows, but anyway the Joongang Ilbo says that in his talk Friedman

emphasized green industry, which has the biggest potential for growth, adding that Korea has already secured advantages in the green revolution with talented human resources and industrial competitiveness. He said the major challenges today are climate change, energy poverty, reducing biodiversity and demand for resources.

The forum also had President Lee Myung-bak, the World Trade Organization head, and a former US Treasury Secreatary, all bigger names perhaps but I focused on Mr. Friedman because I happen to be a fan (sse here for example). Clips of his presentation at the forum were just on the news, and I suspect they'll be available online in the morning.

If you're unfamiliar with Thomas Friedman, Youtube is a good place to start, and on the theme of this forum I recommend some of his interviews from 2008 on America's need for energy independence and innovation. Googling around for this I found an interview with Friedman concerning his 2002 trip to South Korea during an especially prickly time for foreigners. Here's what he had to say about the relationship between the US and South Korea vis-a-vis the former's military presence there:

Well, I had a meeting with a South Korean professor one day, and I didn't really know what to expect, I asked to see a sociologist, and we sat down and he started in with the most virulent anti-American rant, and all I could think was, oh no I came here to get away from that, I've been in the Middle East for 14 months, please, no, not that! And what you find there is an anti-Americanism fed by really three sources, one is traditional old left pro Marxist Koreans who feel that we did prop up their autocratic regimes. Secondly, though, your people object to our military presence, two American soldiers were acquitted last week in a trial for running over and killing two young South Korean girls. It was an accident, but that produced a lot of anti-Americanism. And lastly there is that feeling that maybe Uncle Sam is standing in the way a little bit between our unification with our brother. So it's not the kind of vicious al-Qaida-like anti-Americanism which we've heard about here tonight. But it's there, it's underneath the surface. And just when you think you might have come to the one place where you're not going to hear it, sorry, there is no such place.

You can watch the short interview on the PBS site, an interview that touches on the North Korean nuclear program, South Korea's relative ho-hum attitude toward it, its role in the 2002 election, and the interest in the mesmerizing North Korean cheerleaders. This ROK Drop post is your best source for coverage of the tank incident, its spin in the media, and the resulting xenophobic backlash that echoed for several years and still resounds today.

Pictures above from here and here.