Oppression Continues   2008-06-21 09:28

As if the President's apology this Thursday was nothing but empty talk, the Korean government has quickly reinvigorated its inexorable suppression of dissenting voices. Again the police installed a barricade across Sejong Street to block the path of peaceful demonstrators. During the early morning hours the police attempted several times to disperse the protesters, and each attempt resulted in a number of injuries and arrests. Citizens backed up to the sidewalk when necessary, but reclaimed the street whenever the police relaxed its guard. Of the roughly 10,000 who gathered in Seoul Plaza yesterday evening, about 1,000 stayed through the night and wore out the bitter confrontation with "law enforcement".

Demonstrators march in front of Seoul City Hall.

Below: An artist stages a fiery performance, symbolizing the People's desire for democracy.

There are a number of curious things about the tactic that the police has been using almost every night since May 24. The police is always stationed across Sejong Street, halfway between Seoul Plaza and the Blue House (the President's home). While the police is generally permissive of demonstrators who head elsewhere, it has taken drastic measures to prevent anyone from getting within a kilometer of the Blue House. The police even installed a massive wall of cargo containers at one time. Why? Does Police Chief Uh Cheong-Soo seriously think that candlelight protesters will storm the Blue House and burn the President alive? Now that's a highly unlikely scenario, judging from the fact that the protesters proved themselves pretty civilized. Is the police, then, simply trying to spare the President the troubling experience of actually having to listen to our voices? Because, as we all know by now, President Lee Myung-Bak doesn't like to listen?

Another strange aspect of the police tactic is the timing of their attempts at crowd dispersal. When the police stops simply trying to keep protesters at bay and actually begins to crack down at them, there doesn't seem to be any provocation from the demonstrators' side which might "justify" or at least "explain" the sudden burst of violence from the police's side. From time to time, yes, some of the more passionate demonstrators try to pull apart the barricade. That might be enough to provoke the police to use violence. But at other times, candlelight protesters had been just doing what they've been doing and the police suddenly went violent against them. Last night, a few hundred people had been watching the performance of teenager dancers for about half an hour on Sejong Street near the barricade when the police, which had seemed relatively indifferent until then, suddenly began to push the crowd away. It's as if some grumpy high official called up the officers on site and yelled, "We're not gonna take this anymore!" Actually, that's a very realistic scenario, if you know anything about how "law enforcement" in Korea works.

Police shoves protesters out of Sejong Street. A number of protesters were injured by this.

The official explanation, of course, is that the protesters are blocking traffic on Sejong Street. The police, it is said, tries to disperse the crowd simply because it wants traffic to resume. But c'mon, the police blocks more traffic with its massive barricade than the protesters do with their bodies! Our NGO's, if allowed to march towards the Blue House and requested to keep order, could easily persuade citizens to occupy no more than a couple of lanes. We're not talking about 1,000,000 anymore; last night there were only a few thousand of us. Besides, Sejong Street has sixteen lanes, most of which are empty in the early morning hours. Now, who's blocking more traffic? Humorous citizens have been sticking fake parking tickets all over the police buses that make up the bulk of the barricade, saying it's the police, not the citizens, that's breaking laws and blocking traffic.

The only real explanation we have so far, therefore, is that the police is just trying to shut us up and keep our voices away from the President. There goes the human right to free speech and association.

Meanwhile, the government's attempt to control the media and interfere with free speech has also been notched up a bit. The government sued MBC -- a more or less anti-government TV station -- yesterday for libel and other obscure "crimes", arguing that MBC misled the public and caused the People to distrust the government by means of its news reports. This lawsuit comes only a week after the government began an untimely audit of KBS, another major TV station. Just in time, pro-government groups (mostly affiliated with the New Right Coalition) has begun to stage sizable demonstrations against KBS and MBC, which they say misreport the facts, are heavily biased towards socialism, and have connections with North Korea. As thousands of anti-government protesters have also been surrounding KBS and MBC as an expression of support, arguments erupted between the two groups at a number of occasions. Thankfully, no violence was witnessed.

pro-government demonstrators (right) argue with anti-government demonstrators (right) in Yeouido Island where both KBS and MBC are located.

If you're right-wing, fine. There's freedom of opinion in this country (or at least there's suppsed to be), so anyone is free to be either left, right, red, blue, front, back, top, bottom... or whatever else you might be. For this reason, most reasonable citizens have refrained from trying to shut up pro-government folks. As long as they don't beat up up or otherwise interfere with our peaceful demonstrations, we don't have any problem with them. Likewise, the more civilized among the pro-government groups (that is, non-military-related groups) have largely refrained from using violence against us. But the Korean government is trying to silence all dissenting opinion. It's trying to shut down news stations that are critical of its policies. Now, who's more civilized?

Here's an even more ridiculous case. Some citizens -- most of them women who are members of 82cook.com -- have started to boycott companies which run advertisements in the three major pro-government newspapers: Chosun, Joong-Ang, and Dong-A. Every morning, they would make a list of companies with ads in these three newspapers that day. They would then call and/or e-mail those companies and ask them to take down the ads or else suffer the wrath of Korean women (who usually have a lot of control over their family's spending). This little trick has been working remarkably well. Many large corporations decided not to run ads in pro-government newspapers; and as a result, a few days ago, Chosun Ilbo failed to sell its first-page ad space for the first time in decades. The government, of course, was quick to step in. Yesterday, at the order of Attorney General Kim Kyung-Han, the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation against the women of 82cook.com. According to the government, the recent boycott is more than consumer activism and has an element of criminality in it. What on earth...? Aren't we even free to boycott companies which we think engage in unethical behavior, or which support other companies which we think are unethical? This is just plain dumb.

News: We forgot to mention this in yesterday's post, but the Cargo Union has reached an agreement with some of the major shipping companies. Both sides agreed upon a 19% increase in shipping fees, and they also agreed to work towards some sort of standardization. The strike is over and the shipping industry is back in order -- at least for now.

News: The government says that it has worked out an additional agreement with the U.S. with regard to beef trade. Official sources have yet to say anything about the actual content of the agreement, but most onlookers are suspecting that it's nothing more than a temporary agreement not to trade beef produced from animals over 30 months old, relying on nothing more than the voluntary participation of the beef industry. After all, President Lee himself said on Thursday that the agreement would be take just that form. Now, if this is what the agreement is really about, the Korean People will continue to protest. As we reported in yesterday's post, we just don't trust the greedy industry to care about our health and safety; and that's why we began to protest in the first place. We want there to be laws to ensure food safety, not some obscure agreement among corporations.