DP Lawmaker Song Young-kil reveals a picture that shows then Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak holding up a candle at a demonstration held in 2005. The demonstration was held in protest of then President Roh Moo-hyun’s education policies.
This confirms my skepticism about Jon Huer's claim of a fascist-like atmosphere under Noh that threatened chaos and repression, one step away from an anti-democratic abandonment of social order and discipline. If Lee had been photographed at a rally supporting Noh's educational policies, it would be different, but consider that we see here the Mayor of Seoul participating in a peaceful candlelight vigil against Noh's policies. Were he and his fellow agents of Kim Jong-il harassed by water cannons, beaten with clubs, sprayed with tear gas, knocked down by police shields? It doesn't appear so. If anyone seems to be trying to stir up a chaotic eruption, a mad stampede of overwrought rhetoric, it's Jon Huer and the other Lee Myung-bak supporters who panicked at the sight of schoolgirls and young families with candles. (Yeah, but how do you know those candles weren't loaded? Huh?) Maybe he'd be happier in a country like this one, which does a better job of policing social order and discipline.
... we have this reminder that President Lee Myung-bak knows all about rioting in the streets and undermining the lawful government:The Hankyoreh reports.DP Lawmaker Song Young-kil reveals a picture that shows then Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak holding up a candle at a demonstration held in 2005. The demonstration was held in protest of then President Roh Moo-hyun’s education policies.This confirms
... we have this reminder that President Lee Myung-bak knows all about rioting in the streets and undermining the lawful government:The Hankyoreh reports.DP Lawmaker Song Young-kil reveals a picture that shows then Seoul Mayor Lee Myung-bak holding up a candle at a demonstration held in 2005. The demonstration was held in protest of then President Roh Moo-hyun’s education policies.This confirms
I saw bits of this video clip last night on a TV in the restaurant/bar my friends and I had gone to. I couldn't understand the newscasters' commentary, of course, but what was going on was clear enough. I could reasonably guess that it had happened on June 10, when 100,000 people had gathered in Seoul to celebrate the 22th anniversary of the June 10 Democracy Movement, which toppled the dictatorship that had ruled South Korea since 1945. I knew that the rally was going to happen despite the efforts of President Lee Myung-bak's administration to stop it; I'd seen police gathering around Seoul Plaza on Wednesday afternoon. The same TV showed us former President Kim Dae-jung criticizing President Lee, and encouraging the Korean people to reclaim their democracy. (Kim is not just an armchair critic: he's an almost lifelong dissident who put his life on the line against the Park dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s. He was jailed for long periods, kidnapped by the Korean secret police, and would have been killed by them if the US hadn't intervened. [Bad form, boys, mustn't be too obviously repressive.] He won the Nobel Peace Prize, and became the first dissident to be elected President of the newly democratic Republic. He's also a devout Catholic and strong anti-Communist.) Kim had endorsed last summer's candlelight vigils, too. Of course conservatives attacked him, in terms that will be familiar from American political controversy.
Besides, I knew that I could find out what was going on once I got home. The news is always there on the English-language sites of various Korean newspapers. It took only a couple of minutes to track down the video clip.
There's no doubt what's happening here: the police aren't just accidentally bumping people with their shields, they're deliberately hitting them in the head and neck to knock them down. As you can see, it works very well, and it looks like a move that has been practiced. The people are running, not fighting back. If any of the protestors were armed, the police ignored them in favor of unarmed people.
President Lee issued a statement on June 10, charging that "ideologies that prioritize violence and group self-interest were perverting democracy." Exhibiting the charming lack of self-awareness that often characterizes politicians, Lee evidently didn't realize that he was describing his own government much better than he was describing the protestors. The Korean National Police Agency initially denied allegations that their men had used excessive force, but then,
when the video sources were revealed it said the culprits within its ranks would be punished.
A spokesman said hitting an individual with armor is a violation of police regulations and that the use of sticks had not been authorized.
Then I found this op-ed column at the Korea Times. It's an impressive performance in its way. John Huer, the writer, argues that the problem in Korea is not too little democracy, it's too much democracy. He evidently hopes for another military coup like the one that ended a brief period of respite from dictatorship in 1960-61.
Let's recall those days. By April 1960, the [Seungman] Rhee government and his Liberal Party collapsed under student protests that raged across the country. After the collapse, the hitherto-opposition group, the Democratic (Minju) Party took power. But internally weakened by factionalism and beholden to the students for their ascendancy, the Democrats were not strong enough to maintain law and order in Korea ...
The nation was so chaotic and disorderly, politically, economically and culturally, that when the military finally took over the government in May 1961, many people in Korea felt the writing had been on the wall the whole time and welcomed the coup.
The student protests weren't all that brought down Rhee's government: his own corruption and lack of concern for the people he was ruling contributed materially to his downfall. In those days, the South was desperately poor, lagging behind the Communist North. I'm not an expert on Korean history, but I think that in listing the factors that ended the democratic interlude, Mr. Huer is overlooking US distaste for democracy in the South. This was not the first time that a democratically elected government would be left to fall by the United States, which then supported the new repressive regime with a lot more enthusiasm.
I also wonder about the "many people [who] welcomed the coup." I have no doubt that many did, mainly those who'd been comfortable under the dictatorship and profited from it. No change in a society is ever welcomed by everyone, including the success of the 1987 Democracy Movement, and those who preferred the old order will not stop working to turn back the clock.
My skepticism about Mr. Huer is supported by his characterization of the 2008 candlelight protests against US beef imports.
The famed mad-cow protests had nothing to do with democracy. Neither against government tyranny (as the government had not been set up yet), nor against real health hazards (as there was no scientific proof of any kind available), the mad-cow candlelight protests, which once physically threatened the Blue House, proved to be sheer emotional outbursts and extreme mass paranoia. Thoughtful observers might say that the current Lee government was so crippled then, mentally and systematically, from this trauma that it has actually never recovered into a fully functioning government. As a belated reaction to the threat to its own survival, and under pressure from the electorate to toughen up, the Lee administration finally began to show some measure of face-saving, by bringing charges against those disorderly destructions and civil disorders.
Lee's government had indeed been set up when the candlelight vigils began, and there was already an Internet petition attacking him that had gained a million signatures for his autocratic style -- as a former CEO, he viewed citizens as employees, to be ordered around rather than served -- and his programs, which included unpopular projects like building a canal across the Korean peninsula (a windfall for land speculators), and privatizing healthcare and the water supply. There was already evidence of corruption in his administration. As for US beef imports, it's true that there was no clear evidence of danger from them; but the US refused to meet safety standards that other beef producers, such as Australia, had not objected to, and a massive recall of hamburger in the US at the time confirmed that our safety procedures were laxer than they should be. As for scientific evidence, I wrote last summer, "Would you trust a Bush official’s claims about what is scientific and what isn’t?" As for the allegation that Lee began to "toughen up" only "finally," "under pressure from the electorate", the police violence began early on during the vigils, with beatings and water cannons. "The electorate" must refer to corporate elites and US business interests, since Lee was and remained unpopular among most Korean citizens.
Lee, quite different from Roh,[*] is a timid political soul with little or no charisma and can command neither the ability nor personality to rally the country around him. His government drifts and floats, reacting to one crisis after another, but without energy or creativity. And his ruling party is merely squandering its majority in the National Assembly amid factionalism and a lack of direction.
It is wholly unlike the picture that threatens democracy with repression and tyranny, as the SNU professors declare.
I don't see how anyone who's watched the Korean scene for the past couple of years can say that Lee is "a timid political soul." His reaction to last year's protests was swift and decisive, directing the police to respond to the vigils with violence, fuming that the protesters were doing Kim Jong-il's work, and acting to hunt down his critics and prosecute them; even if many of the prosecutions were thrown out of court, Lee meant to intimidate those who might criticize him publicly in the future. It seems he hasn't succeeded, if only because real repression at this stage would create an uproar that might bring down his regime immediately, but "timid" is certainly the wrong word for Lee Myung-bak. Since he can't "rally the country around him," which would entail abandoning his unpopular and regressive policies, he really has no alternative but to try to intimidate it instead.
This is why I retained my skepticism as Huer worked himself into a fine lather:
In my 15 years in Korea, the only time I have really felt threatened by repression and chaos was during the Roh era. Roh was a man of enormous charisma. The power of his words and actions was quite capable of causing powerful reactions in Korea's emotional and tribal reservoir of energy.
During the five years of his tenure, the underlying tension for chaotic eruption, incendiary for its populist and mass appeal, was quite palpable everywhere, for both Koreans and foreigners alike.
It was as if Korea under Roh was just one step away from an anti-democratic illiberal abandonment of social order and discipline. Even in death, Roh is quite capable of creating these fascist-like reactions from Koreans who would hit the streets under any pretext. Just now, Korea reminds me of the buffalo herd that is gathering into a huge mass, and its amassed energy is ready to explode in a mad stampede. All it needs is just one well-placed emotional spark to trigger it.
I have to tip my hat to a man who can create fascist-like conditions from the grave. Though I can't disprove Heur's impressions (which by definition are subjective -- if he says he felt it, then that is what he felt, but it doesn't mean he's right), I have my own impressions (ditto). I was in Korea for extended periods during Noh Mu-hyun's administration, and never had any sense of an "underlying tension for chaotic eruption." Even during the great candlelight vigils of last summer, I didn't see any chaos in the center of Seoul -- though that was just my impression. What I heard from the Noh supporters I knew was not support for his fascist-like, populist, tribal agenda, but frustration that he had backed down from his initial stance and become more conciliatory to the Korean right and to US pressure. He got onto Bush's bad side almost immediately, but gained some favor by contributing Korean troops to Bush's invasion of Iraq (very unpopular among Koreans), privatizing banks and other public institutions (also unpopular), clamping down on the labor movement (ditto), and ultimately negotiating a "free trade agreement" with the US (double ditto). All this selling out didn't save Noh from being impeached by his right-wing opponents, barely escaping removal from office, or from a politically-motivated corruption investigation, now abandoned, that hounded him to suicide. It's hard to see him as the all-powerful undead figure threatening Korean democracy from the tomb. While Jon Huer is entitled to his impressions, I think there's good reason to distrust them. In fact, it's my impression that Huer is busily insisting that black is white, up is down, and democracy is fascism, in defiance of Korean reality.
One very good piece of evidence that democracy is imperiled in Korea is Saturday's pronouncement by the Prime Minister:
Prime Minister Han Seung-soo ... reaffirmed that South Korea is a democratic country in his response to growing public criticism that the country's democracy is backpedaling under the Lee Myung-bak administration.
"Our country is not an autocratic country but a democratic nation," Yonhap News Agency reported citing Han as saying.
You could call this the "I am not a crook" strategem: when a high government official troubles himself to deny that something is the case, it probably is the case.
(* "Roh" is an alternate spelling of "Noh.")
P.S. 7 December 2009: The original copy of the video clip was removed from Youtube by the user who posted it sometime after I embedded it here. As far as I can tell, the clip above contains the same content. I suppose it is still online because it was posted from the US. The Lee administration has been trying to control what gets onto the Internet from Korea, to discourage if not suppress criticism of its policies. See the "Minerva" scandal for a notorious example, though the prosecution ultimately failed. I posted about it, with links, here, here, and here.
I saw bits of this video clip last night on a TV in the restaurant/bar my friends and I had gone to. I couldn't understand the newscasters' commentary, of course, but what was going on was clear enough. I could reasonably guess that it had happened on June 10, when 100,000 people had gathered in Seoul to celebrate the 22th anniversary of the June 10 Democracy Movement, which toppled the
I saw bits of this video clip last night on a TV in the restaurant/bar my friends and I had gone to. I couldn't understand the newscasters' commentary, of course, but what was going on was clear enough. I could reasonably guess that it had happened on June 10, when 100,000 people had gathered in Seoul to celebrate the 22th anniversary of the June 10 Democracy Movement, which toppled the
According to the results of a study by the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs reported in the Korea Times,
The age for being sexually active is steadily decreasing, which some suggest is due to youngsters easy access to Internet porn sites.
Of course! The "some" turns out to be one Chung In-myung, secretary general of the Korean Youth Pure Love Movement, whom the Times dubs a "sex education expert." In a marvel of circular reasoning that would do any American abstinence-only advocate proud, Chung declared,
"The Internet should be blamed most for making youngsters more sexually active ... We have found nine out of ten youngsters begin watching pornography when they are junior high school students through the Internet. For those with a strong curiosity for sex, such films may motivate them to follow what they see.''
Probably more relevant are the "video rooms", which can be rented for about $10 to watch a movie (of any kind) in relative privacy; that beats a love motel, which costs a lot more. According to the survey, video rooms and karaoke rooms are " the most sought-after spot[s] among students for sex."
Maybe the Internet's sexually exciting images were also responsible for the protest of 22-year-old Kang Ui-seok, a law student at the elite Seoul National University. Kang appeared naked during an Army Day parade on October 1, waving a fake gun he'd made from snack food, which he then ate. Says The Hankyoreh (the source for the photo above):
According to police, Kang said that If Korea were to dissolve its army, it could help underdeveloped countries by saving the lives of starving children. In explaining his demonstration, Kang said that he had appeared in the nude to symbolize the condition of being unarmed and was meant to evoke peace and nonviolence.
The police booked him on charges of obscenity later that day.
According to the results of a study by the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs reported in the Korea Times,The age for being sexually active is steadily decreasing, which some suggest is due to youngsters easy access to Internet porn sites.Of course! The "some" turns out to be one Chung In-myung, secretary general of the Korean Youth Pure Love Movement, whom the Times
According to the results of a study by the South Korean Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs reported in the Korea Times,The age for being sexually active is steadily decreasing, which some suggest is due to youngsters easy access to Internet porn sites.Of course! The "some" turns out to be one Chung In-myung, secretary general of the Korean Youth Pure Love Movement, whom the Times
The Hankyoreh has a good, if too brief, article on the state of the candlelight vigils after a hundred days. Based on meetings with 28 participants of various ages and degrees of involvement, it doesn't try to treat the protestors as a monolithic group.
At OhMyNews International, two rather foolish defenses of China, both of them apparently by Westerners. "Apparently, China must improve its human rights record, but it should do so on its own terms," says the first writer. Fine with me; but I'll listen to Chinese human rights activists on their terms, not to their government. The second is entitled "Hating China." Like, omighod, like the Western media is like so anti-Chinese! I don't take accusations of anti-Americanism seriously, so accusations of anti-Chinese-ism seem to me more of the same. It's possible to be critical of the U.S. and of China (or of any other country) at the same time, difficult as that may be for some to grasp. The second writer gushes,
As a traveler to China in 2001, I had no doubt that China would easily be able to build the infrastructure for the Olympics. It was already my second visit to that country and I saw how fast the landscape had changed in two years. Not for a minute did I doubt the efficiency of China.
I had no doubt either that China would easily be able to build the infrastructure for the Olympics. But at what human cost? As it is in the West, the cost was considerable. To those who worship power, glitz, and spectacle, the human cost is of no interest.
The Hankyoreh has a good, if too brief, article on the state of the candlelight vigils after a hundred days. Based on meetings with 28 participants of various ages and degrees of involvement, it doesn't try to treat the protestors as a monolithic group.At OhMyNews International, two rather foolish defenses of China, both of them apparently by Westerners. "Apparently, China must improve its
The Hankyoreh has a good, if too brief, article on the state of the candlelight vigils after a hundred days. Based on meetings with 28 participants of various ages and degrees of involvement, it doesn't try to treat the protestors as a monolithic group.At OhMyNews International, two rather foolish defenses of China, both of them apparently by Westerners. "Apparently, China must improve its
One reason I enjoy reading Hankyoreh is that they generally agree with me. Yesterday, for example, I wrote here that President Lee Myeong-bak thinks he's really former President Chun Doo-hwan. And today, Hankyoreh runs an editorial cartoon morphing Lee with Chun.
Cynthia Yoo has another review of the week's events at English OhMyNews, and there's another interesting article, translated by Yoo from another staffer's blog, on the protest against Lee's appointment of his crony Gu Bon-heung as CEO of the Yonhap cable news network (YTN). I'm gratified to hear that the major Korean web portals are resisting Lee's attempts to control political debate on the Internet, and that media organizations have condemned the government's punishment of MBC for airing segments (back in April and mid-May) skeptical of the safety of US beef.
The Korea Heraldhas run another American op-ed piece, "Where Did It All Go Wrong For Lee?", which begins by casually referring to "the ongoing violent protests in South Korea over imported beef from the United States." If it also referred to, say, the violent regime of Lee Myeong-bak, it would be a bit more balanced. But I looked again at Cynthia Yoo's article, and golly gee, there are violent protests going on in Korea now, as you can see in the photo below. The corporate media aren't denouncing them, though, because they're protests against Japan's claim of Dokdo Island as Japanese territory. President Lee has been making tough noises about Korean pride, and no doubt he hopes to boost his abysmal approval ratings by doing so.
One reason I enjoy reading Hankyoreh is that they generally agree with me. Yesterday, for example, I wrote here that President Lee Myeong-bak thinks he's really former President Chun Doo-hwan. And today, Hankyoreh runs an editorial cartoon morphing Lee with Chun.Cynthia Yoo has another review of the week's events at English OhMyNews, and there's another interesting article, translated by Yoo
One reason I enjoy reading Hankyoreh is that they generally agree with me. Yesterday, for example, I wrote here that President Lee Myeong-bak thinks he's really former President Chun Doo-hwan. And today, Hankyoreh runs an editorial cartoon morphing Lee with Chun.Cynthia Yoo has another review of the week's events at English OhMyNews, and there's another interesting article, translated by Yoo
Cynthia Yoo has a good summary of the week's news in Korea at OhMyNews International. She has links to articles (in Korean, but with photos, including the one above) on police attacks on demonstrators, which she mistakenly calls "crackdowns." The attacks are part of the general government crackdown on dissent, which isn't limited to police violence but extends to prosecuting the media for carrying stories President Lee doesn't like, or boycotters of the right-wing media, and attempting to intimidate the religious leaders who spoke out against government violence a couple of weeks ago.
Yoo reports that the police hurriedly retreated when they learned "that an Amnesty International official was coming to investigate." Several commenters attacked Yoo's article, including one who asked what Amnesty International "got to do with 'imported U.S. beef'? For what? Go to BURMA, CAMBODIA, LAOS, & MOST OF ALL, NORTH KOREA!!! don't waste your time...in Seoul, think you're 'barking' on a wrong tree!" Of course, AI wasn't there because of U.S. beef, but because of the Korean government's efforts to stifle dissent; of course, AI does deal with Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and North Korea. I think it's safe to say that someone who exhibits such agenda-driven igorance doesn't really care about those countries either.
Even better, Yoo links to a report that JoongAng Ilbo, a "conservative" newspaper, couldn't find anyone willing to be photographed eating U.S. beef, so they just staged a photo with their two reporters.
From our Ted Haggard Department, the Korea Times reported recently on the arrest of numerous Korean minor and adult males for allegedly engaging in "same-sex prostitution", which the article says (without evidence) "seems to be increasing at a fast pace."
Park Eun-jung, a director general of the [Central Inspection Bureau of the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs], did not specify the exact change in the number of the illicit same-sex encounters, but said it had increased as had those who were apprehended.
Park said that most of the men appeared to do sex out of curiosity. "While juvenile females have sex to get money to cope with financial difficulties after running away from home, the money or goods traded between males were more like a kind of gimmick.''
She added that the cases do not necessarily mean that the persons involved were homosexual. "Many offenders were married and had families. The only difference we could trace was that they were relatively old but had a sexual appetite they could not control,'' she said.
Despite all one hears about cultural differences, it appears that Korea and the West share some crucial traits, from the excuses men make for having sex with each other to clueless bureaucrats who believe those excuses.
Cynthia Yoo has a good summary of the week's news in Korea at OhMyNews International. She has links to articles (in Korean, but with photos, including the one above) on police attacks on demonstrators, which she mistakenly calls "crackdowns." The attacks are part of the general government crackdown on dissent, which isn't limited to police violence but extends to prosecuting the media for
Cynthia Yoo has a good summary of the week's news in Korea at OhMyNews International. She has links to articles (in Korean, but with photos, including the one above) on police attacks on demonstrators, which she mistakenly calls "crackdowns." The attacks are part of the general government crackdown on dissent, which isn't limited to police violence but extends to prosecuting the media for
In the eyes of many foreigners, Korea is a place full of mysteries. South Korea, for example, is currently divided between the East and West, left and right, and the haves and have-nots, who ruthlessly antagonize each other. Workers' strikes and candlelight demonstrations constantly erode the vitality of the nation. Yet, South Korea seems to be thriving, not faltering.
Yes indeed, how mysterious that those "have-nots ... ruthlessly antagonize" the "haves"; have they nothing better to do? Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? And how unique that there should be divisions between left and right; you won't find that in the scrutable Occident! The writer doesn't even pretend to balance those "workers' strikes and candlelight demonstrations" with the malfeasance of the other side, as responsible corporate journalism normally requires; perhaps he can't think of anything their opponents have done wrong.
Then there's the predictable hand-wringing about Korean "anti-Americanism." True, as the writer and his correspondent say, "it was the United States that liberated Korea from Japanese rule in 1945", but then the United States also callously handed Korea over to Japan in 1910, forgetting its own friendship treaty with Korea (after having invaded Korea ourselves in 1871). "It was also the United States that saved South Korea from the North Korean invasion during the Korean War," says our writer. It was also the US that, in collaboration with the USSR, imposed the division between the north and south and thereby brought about the Korean War in the first place. "The leftists believe that the United States has always been a main obstacle that has hampered the merging of the two nations," the writer says. Perhaps not the main obstacle, but a very material one at times. But as a very great American once said, "Facts are stupid things."
Perhaps most revealing is "For example, South Korea is no longer under a dictatorial regime, and yet the Korean people continue to demonstrate on the streets." I've seen this plaint in numerous defenses of Lee during the past months. Um, people demonstrate on the streets even in non-dictatorial countries, often defying attempts by their elected governments to stop them. One could even say that such demonstrations are part of what democracy is all about, as Lee Jae-young points out in the piece I linked above.
Anyway, there's an interesting article at the Korea Times website too, which says that beef consumption is down in Korea. I thought that Korean consumers were flocking to the stores to buy US beef by the ton? Or maybe the figures that indicate "stagnant" beef sales refer only to the bad old days; the article is vague on this.
(Top photo, "Civil Rights March on Washington, D. C.", 08/28/1963; NWDNS-306-SSM-4D(86)3; Records of the United States Information Agency; Record Group 306; National Archives, via; second photo of the June 10 vigil from OhMyNews.)
There's nothing special about this opinion piece by Lee Jae-young, except for its calm good sense, which Korean President Lee Myeong-bak and his supporters would do well to heed. Not that they will, of course -- the Korea Herald prefers to spotlight stuff like this anonymous Ignorance Is Strength rant, full of historical distortions and hysteria. Headed "Perplexed by inscrutable South Korea"
The Hankyoreh reports.
