As most visitors to this site should know by now, I've been attending the recent anti-US beef and anti-2MB demonstrations
almost from their start two months ago, but since I've also been working on a book and have been quite wrapped up in that,
I've been doing a lot of my commenting on the demonstrations on several other Korea-based expat blogs since it's just
easier and I've been seeing a lot of distortions and misconceptions and have been hoping to set the record straight where
I can. Indeed, I see the truth as the greatest casuality of this whole affair, as it has had the shit kicked out of it by both the
left and right here and is now lying bleeding badly in a gutter on Chongno -- barely alive and almost forgotten.
One blogger I've been having an exchange with is Gord Sellar, who wrote a post on July 1st that came out pretty strongly
against the police and in support of the protesters and their clerical allies who have recently joined the fray ("Catholics 1,
Riot Cops 0"). Most of the discussion has been focused on technical and ethical issues of violence at the protests, and
tonight I was prompted to write a 1,700-word comment in the thread after stopping by City Hall again earlier this evening.
But first, I should provide an email I wrote on Monday night to an anarchist friend presently in Canada named Jamie who
had asked me what went down on Saturday June 28th. Saturday night was pretty crazy and very rainy and wet, and
prompted him to write me the following (under the subject title "Shit Hitting the Fan"):
"What is up with the protests? Just saw the OhMyNews pictures and it looks pretty intense. Do you think the government
is going to really bring back the tear gas? As far as I know, if they do then rocks and molotovs will return with them.
Things look pretty intense."
I wrote the following in reply:
"Jamie, I don't know why but it always seems more extreme on camera than in person. Maybe I'm just getting jaded or
used to it all. The police on Taep'yongno came out on Sat. night fairly early, at around midnight, and they definitely were
trying to scare people by moving forward aggressively and getting a few rough hits in with the clubs (mainly to people
who refused to get out of the way or hit back). But to be honest, the protesters were pretty violent all night, too (using
long metal poles to attack the police in the buses and whatnot). There was no tear gas on Sat. which I expected, but
there seemed to be some light pepperspray at times in the water cannons, nothing too serious though. The police had
the water cannons going for like 3 hours straight, but then the protesters had two firehoses going for a couple of hours
as well. If you search on Daum for "violence" in Korean, a lot of video clips will come up. There's one with an aerial
shot of police pulling on a couple of long ropes on one side of a bus and the protesters doing the same on the other
side which is pretty funny. Most of the buses, however, were secured on the back side with long wires or ropes
attached to heavy-duty trucks or tow-trucks, so the protesters will almost never be able to overcome that.
"I kind of felt sorry for the police, actually, and before going home on Sat. night I gathered up about a dozen soggy police
uniforms that the protesters had gotten and thrown to the ground and gave them back to the police who were too afraid to
come out beyond their lines (I saw several police with bleeding faces and getting mobbed on by protesters when pulled
off the line). For the last two days, the dozen or so buses that were absolutely gutted by the protesters have been left on
Taep'yongno and they are definitely very sobering to look at -- no windows, flat or missing tires, covered with graffiti and
basically undrivable. Anyone who says the protesters were being attacked first or were non-violent is just bullshitting.
Fucking Hankyoreh is comparing this to Kwangju which is ridiculous in my opinion. The protesters even attacked the
buildings of Dong-A and Chosun on Friday night, leaving garbage and pissing everywhere and even beating up some
of their reporters. I'm so tired of hearing Hankyoreh complain about ChoJoongDong I want to barf, especially considering
what shameless hypocrites they were in their dealings with me. Can you imagine The Nation or The Village Voice railing
against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times everyday for two months straight? Childish, just chilish.
"I think the protesters have had two months to make their point and Lee is not going to make any further concessions. His
approval ratings are already going up and a majority of people polled want the protests to stop. The protesters should put
all this energy they have right now into building long-lasting organizations that will be able to interface with the representative
democratic system here, meaning making people more effective and informed voters in the future. Otherwise, they will just
protest all summer but I don't see much further effect coming from that, and then all that energy will have been wasted.
"I am also tired of the protesters whining about how violent the police are every time the police make the slightest move.
This is a nasty business, and if you're going to fuck shit up, take it like a man and don't be such a pansy. If I was more
actively involved and was focused on going after the police, I certainly would not be complaining if I got cracked on the
head by the police. Indeed, they broke my digital camera because of fire-extinguisher dust fired at me at close range
(I couldn't see for 30 seconds), but I can hardly blame them, can I? Comes with the territory, I'd say."
* * * * *
OK, apologies for the long set-up, but context is important and Saturday the 28th had a rather unsettling emotional impact
on me that I still find hard to articulate precisely. Well, perhaps the following comment that I wrote to Gord tonight goes
someway towards clarifying how I really feel about all this at the moment. I do think that at least for me, it's time to move on.
* * * * *
Gord, I should clarify why I am so troubled by the exploitation of the violence meme amongst the protesters.
After talking to many protesters and observing things first-hand almost nightly, I can safely say that violence is intentionally
being used by a certain hard-core segment of the protesters in order to provoke a reaction from the police and thereby
increase sympathy amongst the greater public for the cause.
I remember on a Thursday night in late May watching several ajosshis hurling themselves at a police line in front of
Kwanghwamun Post Office for like an hour straight, and the police did nothing but absorb the blows and gently push
them back each time. I later recognized one of those ajosshis as one of the main organizers of the protests when he
helped lead the building of the giant styrofoam staircase in front of the MB Castle on the 10th of June.
So I think that on that Thursday night in front of Kwanghwamun PO, he was playing a cynical game of trying to provoke
the police, and the police were too smart to play into his hands, especially since there were quite a few media cameras
following every move up close and waiting for something "exciting" or "dramatic" to happen. In the end, nothing did happen
and after an hour, that ajosshi and the others gave up and walked away.
You and I have both discussed how the protesters seem less than fully committed to going to Ch'ongwadae, and I think
they actually don't want to go to Ch'ongwadae -- at least the hard-core element who are dictating the mood of the crowd
later at night. I think that many of them want to just provoke the police enough to have the police crack down hard and
thereby create pictures of "police brutality" to circulate in the left-leaning mediasphere, such as Hankyoreh, OhMyNews
and MBC.
Last week the police had announced that they were going to start cracking down on the organizers of the rallies through
investigations and whatnot. Things were looking desperate for their movement, so what could they do? Well, they provoked
the police repeatedly on Sat. night until the police finally came out. Sure, the police hit and kicked a few people but mainly
those were people who were throwing things at the police first. But this kind of protester instigation or provocation is often
edited out, as are any scenes of protesters beating up cops (remember I saw prostesters beating up cops myself on Sat.
night), and then videos and photos of "police brutality" are circulated and the leftist media start making comparisons to
Chun Doo-hwan and Kwangju. Since most ordinary people were not there, they believe this version and suddenly the
religious groups are outraged and lend their support to the movement -- giving it much needed wind in its flagging sails.
Again, to be perfectly clear, there are people in this movement cynically using the police violence meme as their own kind
of propganda weapon, and look how well it works -- even you were moved by what you saw on Monday night, right?
I think that the beef issue is so flimsy (especially after all US beef over 30 months was banned from importation weeks ago)
that the anti-2MB activist-organizers needed more issues to push their anti-government agenda. And the fact of the matter
is that the left have no one but themselves to blame for being asleep at the switch last year and letting an idiot like Lee waltz
into the Blue House. So violence is a crucial progaganda tool that the organizers have exploited to the hilt, in the absence of
other credible issues. I mean, the GNP won a plurality in the National Assembly just in April, so even a couple of months
ago the left was too lame to have enough voters feel that they represented them adequately. That's why they lost. So I don't
buy this whole thing about "democracy being denied," since the people's democratic will was accurately expressed just
last Dec. and again in April (just to be clear, I certainly don't like Lee, but I am blaming the left here at this point, and see
what they're doing now as a shameless power grab that is trying to mask their recent failures at the ballot box). So, basically,
violence is a crucial issue in this movement: That was the main theme of the speech you heard on Monday night, and that is
one of the main things you hear people chanting against at the demonstrations. People complain about the "violent police"
almost as much as they do about 2MB, and certainly more than they do about the need to renegotiate the beef deal.
The funny thing, however, is that it is almost taboo amongst many protesters to suggest that the protesters are cynically
exploiting the violence meme by intentionally trying to provoke the police. Last Friday night, I had a young woman in front
of the Dong-A Building get extremely upset when I suggested that some of the protesters had started the violence first. She
insisted that the police had started all the violence so far and that the protesters were simply innocent victims. I told her that
one of my Korean friends was actively involved at the protests and had told me himself that he thought it was necessary to
use violence as a tool at the demonstrations. She refused to believe it, although it was absolutely true. I then told her that
one of the main organizers had told me last Thursday night that it was good news that someone had had their finger seriously
cut that night because it would mean more people would turn out to demonstrate the following night (as far as I recall, I think it
turned out to actually be a self-inflicted wound). He at least was honest about the media game that he was playing, but that
woman again refused to believe me because I had violated the ultimate taboo by mentioning one of the dirty unspoken secrets
of this movement: Many protesters are cynically exploiting the violence issue and are not as innocent as they like to claim.
No doubt, if she only read Hankyoreh and OhMyNews, she probably would not have an objective view of what's been going
on at the protests in terms of violence on both sides. She was a conservatively dressed office worker and I had never seen
her before after dark at the demonstrations. Anyway, there were other people there who had gathered around me in a circle,
and some of them admitted that what I was saying was true -- that some of the protesters had initiated the violence as well --
but there were others there who were also upset and rather worked up that I had transgressed one of the key taboos of this
movement. I had wounded one of their most sacred cows: That the police have started all the violence, and the protesters
are but innocent victims of a heartless, authoritarian regime.
Well, fuck that shit. It is pure hypocrisy to twist and distort reality while at the same time attacking the government for "not
being honest" and "not being trustworthy." And the fact of the matter is that if you take away the whole violence issue, this
movement would have probably died already. Certainly the religous groups would not have turned out this week and given
new life to this thing.
Tonight I walked to City Hall at around 7:30pm and was disgusted by what I saw. A group at Ch'onggye Plaza was protesting
human rights abuses in China, but all of 5 people were stopping to listen to a speech that was being made. Nearby, on the
corner by Seoul Finance Center, another group was protesting against global warming and advocating green living and
vegetarianism, but again nobody was even listening. Then I went to City Hall, and it was flooded by people listening to a
monk give a speech about the need to renegotiate the beef deal. I'm sorry, but why is a vegetarian monk promoting eating
beef at all? Shouldn't he be calling for outright cancellation?
I left after a few minutes and spoke with the anti-global warming people once again. They had a large-screen TV showing
how cows produce methane gas which in turn increases global warming. I spoke with the nice halmoni there for a while
and asked her what she thought of the beef issue. At first she said she didn't care because she was a vegetarian, but then
after some prodding, she said, "Those people have low consciousness" and went on to talk about how traditionally Koreans
didn't even eat much meat, and that the cattle industry in both the US and Korea was harming the environment in serious
ways. I agree with her completely. She ended by saying, "Those people don't seem to really understand what's going on
in the world we live in. All I want to do is give some information about the Earth." Too bad nobody really cared about what
she had to say, because they were all too busy protesting their right to cram their faces with "safe" beef at City Hall.
Well, if they are really as radical as they fancy themselves to be, they should simply announce that they will stop eating
beef entirely and start actually giving a fuck about the environment for a change. I mean, I cannot even begin to imagine
how much trash has been generated by two months of daily protests comprising millions of people.
I must say that while 2MB certainly sucks, this movement is starting to seem more and more morally bankrupt the closer I
look at it.
Perhaps the strangest thing is that as I was walking home and going past the Seoul Finance Center, one of the police captains
who was sitting there with some other police called out to me in English with a smile and a friendly wave, "Hello!" I've been a
borderline participant at these demos almost every night and wondered if he recongized me and was simply trying to say,
"No hard feelings."
I'll never know for sure, but for now I like to think that he was. |
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A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to City Hall Tonight 
[re] Coda 
