If you ask the police, the ongoing candlelight demonstrations in the Gwanghwamun area are illegal, and they say they’re going to crack down on them.
Yeah, right.
Now, if you ask Government and Home Affairs Minister Huh Sung-kwan, he’ll tell you that the demonstrations — which aren’t really demonstrations at all, you see, but “cultural events,” just as 2002’s anti-American demonstrations weren’t really anti-American demonstrations, but “religious ceremonies” — are legal.
Yeah, right.
Meanwhile, OhMyNews is apparently trying to push the idea that these little events really are cultural festivals, which goes to show you that the Chosun Ilbo’s supposed monopoly on bullshit is tenuous at best.
UPDATE: Then again, you could be like GNP whip Rep. Hong Sa-duk — the man from Yeongju — and call the protestors a bunch of jobless bums who are out there because, well, they blame him for not having jobs. Keep up the good PR work there, Hong, and the GNP might just get shut out this April.
2 Comments
Honourable Marmot,
You have been in Korea long enough to know that the law is flexible. In the case of the 2002 race riots, the law was conviently ignored because it ran counter to the Dear Leader and Comrade Roh’s interest. When the mob was no longer needed, it was ordered home.
In this case, the object of hatred is Korean and not foreign and thus demonstrations are not permitted.
So…more riots?
PING:
TITLE: Maintaining a slight discomfort: Part II
BLOG NAME: Flying Yangban
As I said on Monday, the mission for the OOP (Uridang) is to maintain a “slight discomfort” among voters over the next four weeks until election day. By that I mean they must keep what they consider to be a