Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!!!!
Leftist groups, some very hardcore rightists and the Korean riot police spent Sunday afternoon engaging in some recreational violence in front of Incheon’s statue of General Douglas MacArthur — see the JoongAng Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo for English-language reports.
For Korean-speakers, OhMyNews and the Dongnip Shinmun are the places to look for very different takes on the big dance in Freedom Park. The OhMyNews report, of course, comes with the added bonus of Kwon Woo-sung’s outstanding war photography.
As far as I can tell, it seems like everyone involved in this bit of clean, Sunday afternoon fun came prepared — the leftists came with their bamboo sticks and a burning desire to get within striking distance of Dougie Mac, the rightists brought their metal pipes and apparently a large supply of eggs that they threw at the leftists as they made their way into Freedom Park (some also reportedly tried to block ambulances carrying away the “commie” wounded), and the police had their hands full trying to keep the rightists from making things interesting and blocking the leftists from coming near the statue. According to the Chosun Ilbo report, the Order of Battle was:
Leftists: 4,000
Rightists: 1,000
Riot Police: 3,800
Jesus, I lay off the boobie pics for a while, and this is what happens.
As right-wing group members throw stones, eggs and garbage at demostrators, a civic group member who had brought his children hurries past the danger area and enter Freedom Park./OhMyNews, Kwon W.S.
I can’t decide what’s more reprehensible — that someone would throw eggs and stones at demonstrators when kids are present, or that someone would consider it a good idea to bring his children to such an event.
Protestors with paper flower petals with various slogans written on them enter Freedom Park/OhMyNews, Kwon W.S.
Oh, the humanity…
Update [by dda]
Check out Don Park’s excellent post on the matter.
38 Comments
4,000 isn’t a very good turn out for the anti groups given the amount of effort they put into promoting it….
This is just a start. There are more to come. Korean commies are losing ground as more youths drink coffee and listen to Western music. Their support base is growing smaller each day.
They are desperate!
So all Commies in Korea gathered at Incheon to start trouble. This is reminiscent of Kwangju Uprising. As I wrote before, all Commies in Korea moved to Kwangju right before the Kwangju uprising. This is why I still consider that uprising to be a Commie-led stupidity.
One battle cry coming from the conservative camp is correct; “When the McArthur statue goes down, it will be replaced by the Kim IlSung statue.” I think this projection is correct one; no Commie can deny that eventuality.
As the country has to choose between the Western style democracy and the Chinese style slavery, there will be more frequent clashes in Korea. The majority of Korean people should wake up to the fact that these things happend before, in late 1940s, right before the Korean War.
it only takes a quick glance at OhMyNews title to get a feel of what their political persuasion is like.
“Let’s Get Rid of the MacArthur Statue” - “Let’s Kill the Reds” Violence-Insult A Dirty Inchon Freedom Park Sunday.
Oh ok. So the leftists are moderates and the rightists are sociopaths. We hear you loud and clear OhMy. The leftists are do-gooders and use “peaceful” demonstrations tools like bamboo sticks and rightists use murder weapons like iron pipes.
Sometimes I wonder if OhMy “journalists” coach the kids on how to look good in front of camera.
I wonder how many of the 4,000 hate group members at Inchon were children. Judging by the pictures it appears many of the hate group members brought their children to bolster their numbers. That is pretty sad and pathetic.
If you’ve seen my site, you’ve probably noticed I spend a good bit of time with the promotion using children. That was something I don’t remember from when I was teaching. That seems to be a new push by the groups since the 2001-2002 period. It is perhaps the one that makes me most bitter.
My initial reaction to the Inchon 9/11 protest is that the civic groups probably made a tactical error putting such an emphasis on it.
Maybe they thought it was a place and a symbol they could rally more Koreans with than the Pyongtaek base expansion.
I lean more toward the idea that — when they saw the foreign media pay attention to the issue a few weeks ago — they calculated that if they pressed real hard and turned out a good crowd to fight to tear down the MacArthur statute on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, CNN would cover it, and Americans would be upset, and they would have a better chance of seeing their goal of getting USFK out more and more realized better than just focusing on the Koreans and getting them to Pyongtaek.
It isn’t a bad idea — if they could get CNN and the others to cover it, but that is more of a gamble than I think they would have realized. Especially after the hurricane’s hit, and NFL season kicking off, the chances of them caring about South Koreans demonstrating in Inchon was small. But, then again, I was suprised when the US media covered it a few weeks ago.
And that CNN coverage is one key element the groups should have thought more about in terms of getting average Koreans to join in. Getting better US media coverage serves the purposes of the dedicated groups, but the average Korean doesn’t want USFK out any time soon.
So, changing the focus from Pyongtaek to Inchon might have helped them if they could get the US coverage, but their chances of getting US coverage could likely have been hurt by average Koreans also understanding that potential and staying home.
Maybe that explains the only 4,000.
It’s my initial working thought on it.
Next, I’ll want to see what kind of action they can get going back down at Pyongtaek.
This could have been the big kick off for a Pyongtaek push…
but, 4,000 doesn’t seem like a sign that the kick off was accomplished….
And it seems clear the dedicated groups wanted it to be…
it seems like a failure.
The question is if it will continue like that or not…
“average Koreans”….
This is ain’t no somekind of conspiracy. I’m getting tired of reading what average Koreans are doing to stay up all night to think up on ways to fuck the Americans.
Korea is in a midst a ideological war between the left and the right, between the young and the old. And no doubt S.Korea is thoroughly infiltrated by North Korean agents here to direct traffic. It will be South’s test to see how well ‘democracy’ will hold up without being swallowed up by the North. We shall see.
But the “average Korean” probably don’t give a shit about politics, as they have better things to do like worrying about putting food on the table and passing exams rather than fight with metal pipes over a statue.
That woman with the flower that says ‘fucking usa”, I recognize her. She was in the news couple of years back when she broke into the US military training camp and chanted few slogans before she was arrested. She belongs to the Hanchongryon. She’s hardcore, probably a will remain a life long activist.
One thing about OhMyNews, they have money and they have spent much attempting to be portrayed as the “voice” of Korea. I remember that back on the 24th of June, they had a big conference at the Co-ex facilities and one such event takes money. I can only wonder *where* this money comes from.
Read Joongang, it’s totally different story over there.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com.....09011.html
I can??t decide what??s more reprehensible ?? that someone would throw eggs and stones at demonstrators when kids are present, or that someone would consider it a good idea to bring his children to such an event.
Seems like they’re all a bunch of kids…some are just older than the others.
seems the warriors for justice have pushed the anti-japanese issue about as far as they think they safely can, so its either back to the anti-US tactics, or find a new country to be oppressed by, and as much as they have tried those dam canadian esl teachers just aren’t oppressing enough to bring out the big crowds.
Kimbob’s right, the “average” Korean is more concerned with Roh f-ing up the housing market than f-ing USA. And that young woman with the flower headgear, think I’ll send a copy of that to FOX News
When I write about the “average” Korean, I am usually meaning the well or bulk of Korean society.
And I think what Kimbob says is correct but misleading, and explaining why will help show how I usually use the phrase “average” Korean.
No, the average Korean does not sit around thinking about how to fuck America or how much they hate the US or USFK. Yes, the average Korean spends most of their time thinking about having fun or paying bills or problems at work — the things that normal people around the world think about day in and day out.
But, year on year in Korea, the average Korean is also a part of the anti-US / US-SK Alliance dynamic.
The Korean press would not spend as much time on the issue if the Korean public did not want to hear it.
That is just one point I think shows this to be true.
The average Korean, I am firmly confident in saying given what I got from teaching Korean adults for a long time, and by adult, I don’t mean university aged kids, —- the average Korean also wants to hear the din of the civic groups too. They want the civic groups out there fighting the good fight week to week, and every once in awhile, the average Korean enjoys it when some special time pops up, and they either spend much more time, either around the office water cooler or sitting at home watching the KBS evening news, bitching about what a f-ed up relationship Korea has with America and how bad a cancer the US is on Korean society and what an evil
Re-reading my last comment — which I do to cringe at the typeos and glaring mispellings…..
It dawned on me something I should have been saying long ago…..
What I write on the internet again and again about Korea and the US relationship would have been radically different…….
……if in my adult classes over the years —- and again by adults I mean about 75%+ of the students being older than college aged with the bulk between 25-35 but not infrequntly 35-45 and older
Daily linklets 12th September
China’s most popular forum post ever. The untold history of the Chinese Exclusion Act from new blog UV Garden. China Telecom has banned voice over IP services such as Skype. Will notes that Skype calls are encrypted. The geopolitics of China’s oil s…
USinKorea, you’re wordier than Hank Kissinger
In your last comment about teaching adult Koreans, I thought it was interesting that you never heard anything besides what you imply is groupthink, but I’ve had several total strangers tell me when they found out I was American that they were very happy indeed that the U.S. intervened here to stop China and Russia from absorbing the peninsula. Maybe it’s the classroom environment? At any rate, it’s odd that your 45-plus-year-olds wouldn’t have anything positive to say about the U.S. role here.
I like how they try and pin MacArthur for the division of Korea.
Was that ‘China’ you mentioned, foreigner? Hmmmmmmmm….
Korea would be a client state of China today, after being a Soviet satellite handed over by Russia with the collapse of the Soviet Union, if it hadn’t been for the f-ing USA. Not the fourth-biggest blah blah blah or 11th-largest yadda yadda.
“I can??t decide what??s more reprehensible ?? that someone would throw eggs and stones at demonstrators when kids are present, or that someone would consider it a good idea to bring his children to such an event”
It is illegal. They made a law against this a couple of years ago.
iwshim, just to be clear, are you saying that bringing children to a demonstration is in violation of the law? Much as I dislike that practice, I’m surprised to learn that it’s against the law. Perhaps, do you mean that kids are not legally allowed to participate in demonstrations?
“. They want the civic groups out there fighting the good fight week to week, and every once in awhile, the average Korean enjoys it when some special time pops up, and they either spend much more time, either around the office water cooler or sitting at home watching the KBS evening news, bitching about what a f-ed up relationship Korea has with America and how bad a cancer the US is on Korean society and what an evil ????- albeit a necessary one”
You are wrong here. Of course most people will have some kind of opinion (for or against the USFK) - you can’t possibly hold that against them. But look around Korea, Korea is a land of protests. There’s more fighting every week over other issues than just the USFK. It doesn’t mean that people enjoy doing and seeing it. Talking to other Koreans, I sense a deep sigh and helplessness that you can’t do anything about it, mixed in with frustration of why Korea can’t get its shit together. A lot of people get tired, get fed up, then tune out. Nobody enjoys seeing this kind of stuff.
I type too fast. I’ll cut back.
My free talk session teaching method — Students pick the topic. I write 1-2 questions on the board. Ask each student’s opinion to give at least one chance to talk. Then open the floor. I didn’t give my opinion until the end if asked, because I quickly found they would parrot my English and opinion.
When I taught adults, I had a very good idea what was in the Korean press and what Koerans were thinking. Poll numbers haven’t convinced me I’m wrong.
I didn’t say all Koreans think the same. I noted areas of significant difference.
I also wrote “healthy” and “significant” debate. For example, things we have heard out of at least the English language press in editorials over the past year in relation to things like MacArthur or when Roh says in Turkey he can’t take the educated Korean who are more American than Americans, is a sign of a healthy debate in the society. There should be more.
In my classes, there was not a healthy mix of thoughts on the US. Yes, the definately didn’t want to be united under Kim Il Sung either by the NK along or with Chinese help.
Again, I did not say everyone was the same. I did not say I never heard someone say something positive about the US role.
I did find a significant difference between the generations who would be about 65 years old now which would have put them around 55 to 50 when I started. From teaching and talking to Koreans, the closer you get to those who have a memory of the war and the immediate situation after it do tend to fall into a category I would call pro-American. But, as the years have passed, it seems to me the divide has gotten sharper between those generations and the ones immediately after it, when the drop off in thought used to be more general and especially pronounced below 30.
If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
But, given how long I taught in Korean and how many adults I listened to and how much time I spent focusing on these issues, you will be hard pressed to change my mind. I’ll need a lot of evidence to the contrary….
And again, I think if you read what I write, at least over time, you should see I don’t say all Koreans think the same or are uniform anti-US like the radical university students.
Navel-Gazing On 9/11 Blues
Four years ago, my fiancee and I had a bitter argument, and then the World Trade Center collapsed. Well, not exactly, but thats how it seems now. The specacle of of such a diabolically conceived terrorist act humbled whatever it…
kimbob,
I agree on the MacArthur protest. I disagree about the typical Yongsan or Embassy protest.
This is something that we do agree on:
“I did find a significant difference between the generations who would be about 65 years old now which would have put them around 55 to 50 when I started. From teaching and talking to Koreans, the closer you get to those who have a memory of the war and the immediate situation after it do tend to fall into a category I would call pro-American. But, as the years have passed, it seems to me the divide has gotten sharper between those generations and the ones immediately after it, when the drop off in thought used to be more general and especially pronounced below 30.”
I haven’t been able to wade through all the posts, as I’m really trying to catch up on my downloaded soaps but:
given how long I taught in Korean and how many adults I listened to and how much time I spent focusing on these issues, you will be hard pressed to change my mind. I??ll need a lot of evidence to the contrary??.
I’m not going to deny the prevalence of irrational anti-americanism here in Korea (though I don’t think it really merits being turned into such an id??e fixe). However you’ve continually cited hakwon teaching experience as your source and this raises some questions:
When was the last time you taught in Korea? I gather you haven’t actually taught here in some time and this is necessarily going to make your anecdotes less credible in depicting the current situation.
Why should a small number of students in a hakwon necessarily be considered as representative of Korea?
You don’t appear to be able to speak Korean. How does one then actually have a good idea what Koreans are thinking ?
Ultimately, you keep referring to anecdotal evidence, and while anecdotal evidence is evidence, it’s still not any good. People would rightly object if I started talking about my personal experiences growing up, going to school, etc. in America, and then insisting that this is somehow representative of all of America, especially America now. There is plenty of good evidence for Korean anti-americanism that doesn’t rely on strictly personal observations from years ago. If you want to demonstrate that anti-Americanism is on the mind of the majority of Koreans, why not just instead use polls, the statements of the leaders that they voted for, or at the very least, editorials in the most popular and widely circulated newspapers?
Maybe one last note on this because I haven’t said this before online and it fits here.
From my classes, one very key difference between American society and Korean society, and especially key considering this discussion, is that it seemed to me Korean society was MUCH MORE in tune with what the press was saying.
The US is so big and divers and spread out and with such a smaller population density, and perhaps having had a pretty much stable democratic system for much longer, even college educated Americans very often don’t pay attention to the news much at all beyond the fashion or sports page.
But, unless the non-college educated Koreans are a whole heck of a lot different from the impression I got from the ones I knew or met, Koreans society pays attention to what goes on in the news and that includes on the websites like Ohmynews and such non-traditional outlets.
Don’t Koreans vote in a much higher percentage than Americans too?
Korean society is tighter in other ways too. Korean is a “circle” society and a group society more than we are in American.
So, I do agree pretty much that the “average” Korean is more concerned about work, career, money, family, friends, his/her circle, entertainment and so on……
……compared to American society……..I think the average Korean very much has more of his/her ear tuned into the news and what is being said and done in Korean society than Americans.
When we say Americans care more about their job and such, I would tend to mean they are vastly, and blistfully, ignorant of what is going on not only in the world but in the nation and their state and even perhaps not too infrequently their own city.
But, in Korea, I have never gotten the sense that a lot of Koreans are blistfully ignorant about what is floating around thought in Korean society………….
There is a big debate going on among Koreans about this issue. Anyway, please don’t be surprised if you found your names in this article.
Well, I didn’t expect this huge response from Korean netizens.
Anyway, I mostly agree with usinkorea’s view on Korean left and right. Many college-educated young Korean adults tend to lean on left over right (although it doesn’t mean that they all support left). They are in the middle groud but slightly toward left. They admit that left is going too extreme but still better than right. The problem of right is that it doesn’t have any good people. Many leaders in right (ie. ‘Lee Chul Seung’) were ass-kissers, Christian fundamental freaks (who often defined natural disaster as God’s punishment), the war vets, and former military personalities. Left, at least, has intellectual support.
My point overall is pretty much like this one (#21):
“And again, I think if you read what I write, at least over time, you should see I don??t say all Koreans think the same or are uniform anti-US like the radical university students.”
All fair questions.
I stopped teaching in Korea for the most part in early 2000, and I was back in Korea for 2002. I’ve also spent a good bit more time concentrating on Korea and studying about it. My Korean language skills remain my biggest handicap. I just don’t learn languages as well as the average person. I can’t use it well enough to do research. I have been using more Korean language media articles the last 6 months.
On the site http://www.usinkorea.org, the majority of my information offered to prove my points come from the mainstream Korean media and the kinds of quotes from politicians and others you mean.
I think the experience teaching adults of different ages was a great source for understanding what was going on in Korea. Just teaching each day cleared up a lot of questions I would have from personal contacts and from reading and from the press. To me, it was like having a finger on the pulse of Korean society. The fact that what I was hearing in class didn’t jar drastically with what I was getting from the media seemed to give validity to what I was picking up in classes.
And if you came to the US and spent a few years teaching or working with a lot of different adults, and you watched the network news and read the major newspapers, I don’t think you would have little ground for giving a general idea of what American society was about on big ticket issues.
And one big point — America is a much bigger country with a much more diverse community and geographical spread.
I think what I got to see teaching Koreans matched well with what I’ve read or seen elsewhere about it. It might be something more to dig into and explain if my opinions were incredibly different from what the quotes, media, polls, and other such evidence were pointing to.
USinKorea, it sounds like you and I are about the same when it comes to learning Korean…. Now I understand a little better when you talk about the 50-year-olds and older. They definitely will tell you they appreciate America’s role in liberating Korea…then the 40-somethings, they’re usually preoccupied with business and family and just think Roh is a pain in the ass and have little use for politics (how’s that for sweeping generalization?). People in their 30s, kind of muddled, default “lefty” thinking, but usually doesn’t go beyond “Bushie is a bad man.” But then, I don’t know any hard-core activists here–my friends just want to succeed in life, they’ve told me essentially that politics is bullshit. Sure there’s anti-Americanism here, but mainly the polls reflect anxiety about what the U.S. plans to do with N. Korea, which obviously affects the South, and sentiments of caution or distrust toward the U.S. by Koreans sometimes gets construed as “anti-American” simply because of the way the poll is worded, when the background is more complex. I hope that makes sense….
There is a big debate going on among Koreans about this issue. Anyway, please don??t be surprised if you found your names in this article.
LOL…I’m there. I’ve asked a few Korean native speakers, but no one has yet to tell me what a ??????? is. I’m guessing that’s what we keep hearing as “netizen”.
I’m taking a break from the to and fro of the Marmot’s hole, but I was intrigued by Dogbert’s question, so here’s the answer. According to this Naver Q A page, ??????? is an attempt to use a native Korean word in place of ???????. ?????? is a native word for “world” (the Sino-Korean ?????); -? means a doer or craftsperson (??????: woodcutter; ?????: gambler; ???????: storyteller). …So I guess a kind of “world citizen,” I suppose.
Before anyone passes judgment on this, there is a long history of attempts not only in Korean but in other languages to replace borrowed words from other languages with native words (not always successful, of course). There have been attempts over the years to replace Sino-Korean (hanja-derived) words with words of native Korean derivation. That said, why not just stick with ???????? (Is “netizen” itself from Korean? I never encountered the word until it got publicized after Roh’s election win in 2002. Or maybe I just wasn’t hip to the term….)
Thanks very much Curious. That was quite interesting. Like you, I have always thought that “netizen” itself was a Korean neologism in the first place.
Definition of “netizen” in Wikipedia, for what that’s worth: “The term was formed by Michael Hauben (circa 1992) from the description of the Net.news user [ed. net.citizen]. The term has been used most frequently recently in Korea and China where there are vigorous netizens movements. The election of President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea in 2002 is widely attributed to the support for him among South Korean netizens.”
june, thanx for the link!
new things i learned today. Brenden Carr is a lawyer and Kushibo=95.
Foreigner:
Ah, okay, I stand corrected. Although evidently, the term got a lot of play in Korea. I wasn’t sure if June wrote that article or not, but evidently she did (?). I guess it’s her choice whether to use ??????? or not…if the term is gaining currency in Korea these days, then perhaps it’s the right word to use.
In Naver, under the ??????? category, ??????? is getting 34,811 hits, versus ???????’s 1,957,212. So it’s still got a way to go….
I wrote the piece, but I didn’t use the word ???????, which I don’t know what it is. I used ??????? in my original draft. #29 explains very well to me (thanks Curious!).
Since my Korean isn’t perfect either, the editor always polishs it for the final draft. There’s also the editorial direction that they have to follow. It seems to me that the editors prefer Korean word to foreign originated words.
I also thought that netizen is a Korean neologism, but according to foreigner’s reference it may not be.
Personally, I prefer the word ???????!
Hmmm, interesting that they would change your choice of words….hopefully, they didn’t edit your article in any more substantial ways?