No-Show Mo Miffs Koreans : O’Connor’s Slight of Sister City Becomes Family Feud

So who said sisters always love each other anyway?

In a baffling display of something less than sisterly love, a delegation of South Koreans from San Diego’s sister city of Chonju went to City Hall on Wednesday for a meeting that quickly turned into a clash of cultures.

The 17 visitors, including the mayor of the southern city of 370,000, were apparently chagrined at not being able to meet Mayor Maureen O’Connor in person, and even further offended that O’Connor did not see fit to send her second-in-command in her place.

Instead, they were greeted by the mayor’s head of protocol, Cheryl Ayers, who dutifully read a scripted welcome to the delegation and offered them cookies, coffee and punch.

Ignored the Cookies

“They were so upset that they didn’t even want to drink the coffee, and they didn’t touch the cookies,” said Dr. Byong Mok Kim, a physician at Scripps Memorial Hospital who accompanied the visitors to City Hall.

“I had a lot of explaining to do,” said Kim, who immigrated from Korea 40 years ago. “I had to calm them down and say it is not really important who is going to be here, in terms of bureaucratic hierarchy. I explained it is not that strange in this type of free society where things can happen, and anyone can represent the mayor ad lib.”

The mayor’s office, however, was blissfully ignorant of any misunderstanding. O’Connor spokesman Paul Downey said United States International University Professor Leon Sinder, who organized the Koreans’ visit, had been informed that the mayor would be in Boston attending a League of Cities meeting during their scheduled visit. However, the mayor never did go to Boston.

She was at home with a bad case of strep throat Wednesday, and therefore still unavailable, Downey said--except for the fact that, even while the Koreans visited, she was in a meeting with other San Diego County mayors discussing the San Diego Gas & Electric merger.

“We told them we would simply have a reception here in the mayor’s office,” Downey said, adding that they never promised Sinder that either the mayor or the deputy mayor would show. “From our standpoint, he got what he had asked for: a nice little reception.”

Skepticism Increased

But, according to Kim, the Koreans were under the impression that Mayor O’Connor was in New York. When told she was to have been in Boston, but was in fact in San Diego, they became ever more skeptical, Kim said.

The perceived insult was intensified, he said, when Ayers innocently referred to the delegation as “tourists” in her welcoming address.

“The mayor’s statement thanked them for coming here to visit in the course of their tourism itinerary, which is wrong,” Kim said. “They came here specifically to pay an official visit to San Diego.”

After many explanations that no harm was intended, the Korean delegation was mollified, and the Koreans presented their sister-city representatives with a painting for the mayor’s office. The San Diegans gave each delegate a lapel pin in return. The visitors agreed to partake in coffee and left on good terms with their hosts, Kim said.

Not Everyone Mollified

One man, however, remained distraught over the encounter.

Sinder, head of the Asian-Pacific Institute at USIU and dean of the university’s school of international relations, said he was “personally offended” by the treatment afforded the Koreans.

“They had come 12,000 miles, and they felt it was beneath their dignity to talk to a protocol head,” Sinder said. “They were all livid.

“I said, ‘This is a very bad way for us to behave in terms of international relations,’ at which point the mayor’s representative came over to me and said I was misbehaving.”

Sinder claims a security guard was summoned and he was unceremoniously bounced out of City Hall. “I wasn’t being obnoxious, besides the fact that I was voicing my opinion.”

Downey, on the other hand, said Sinder was more than obnoxious.

“He was told by our chief of staff that he was being very belligerent and very obnoxious, and was told if he didn’t settle down, maybe it would be best if he left.”

Security officers were summoned, but Sinder left on his own a few minutes later, Downey said.

A Little Lesson Learned

At any rate, the visitors apparently did gain a better understanding of some of the idiosyncrasies of American behavior.

One member of the delegation tried to light up a cigarette and was surprised to learn that smoking is not allowed in City Hall. Kim, a lung-disease specialist, explained to the group that Americans are very serious about maintaining their nonsmoking areas. The surprised would-be smoker asked Kim, “Is tobacco that bad?”

“I said you can do anything--have alcohol, have women--but no smoking because you are committing a slow suicide,” Kim said. “They told me, ‘Well, this is one thing we have truly learned at this meeting.’ ”