Deja Vu, Another Summer   2009-05-12 18:06

On May 2 of last year, several hundred high-school students and other young folks gathered in Cheonggyecheon Plaza for a candlelight vigil. What started as a protest against a seemingly parochial issue (food safety, particularly beef) soon became a full-blown series of anti-government demonstrations, drawing nearly half a million protesters at one point in during the summer.

Do you remember these magnificent scenes? We haven't seen those since early June.

On May 24 of last year, those candlelight protesters clashed with the police for the first time. Well, the "clash" mostly consisted of a unilateral beating of the people by the police. The same was true on May 31, the events of which prompted me to start this blog. Oh my, I can't believe it's already been almost a year. What a depressing year it has been!

Do you remember these pictures, also from last year?

This weekend marks the 29th anniversary of Gwangju Democratization Movement, when countless demonstrators were brutally murdered by Chun Doo-Hwan's military junta. The massacre started on May 17, 1980 and lasted until May 27. Nobody knows exactly how many people lost their lives at the time; estimates vary from just under 200 to well over 1,000 according to some sources. We might never learn the whole truth; but the people in Gwangju still remember every little detail of those horrible ten days that took away so many of their loved ones. May is a difficult month, a time for mourning, for all of them.

Photographs from Gwangju, May 1980.

Such somber memories inevitably remind us of the general direction in which Lee Myung-Bak's "civilian" regime also seems to be headed. Army officers with assault rifles have been replaced with police officers with shields and batons; and blunt attempts to deceive the public have been superceded by subtler maneuvers. But the rest of the story is not too different. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly exist only in name. Few of the mainstream news agencies have the guts to report any fault of the current administration. And the rest of the Korean people -- fifty million of us, give or take a few -- are too preoccupied with our daily lives to care about political matters. So often, constitutional rights take a back seat to survival in a troubled economy.

Pictures tell a thousand words. Here are some from Seoul, May 2, 2009. Yes, that's last week. It was also the anniversary of our first candlelight protests. The government seemed to have recognized the symbolic importance of this date better than anyone else. Before anybody could light a candle, every open space in downtown Seoul was filled with riot police, a.k.a. the most unfortunate of all conscripts.

They do this, and they still have the face to arrest innocent people for "obstruction of traffic".

Our Constitution says that everyone has a right to hold an assembly without having to apply for a permit. (Yes, the Constitution explicitly mentions the permit.) Nevertheless, Lee Myung-Bak's government requires every gathering to be reported beforehand, and gives police chiefs the authority to disallow certain gatherings at their discretion. As a result, whether or not a gathering is allowed often depends on the police chief's whim, and in recent days, also on the perceived political purpose of the gathering.

Not surprisingly, pro-government rallies tend to be a lot more successful in obtaining the police's "approval". Several left-leaning NGO's tried to obtain similar "approvals" for May 2, but none succeeded. As a result, all anti-government demonstrations on May 2 were to be deemed illegal. Again, not at all surprising. In South Korea these days, the law is what the President says it is.

A child cries as both of her parents get carried away by the police.

But the government wanted an even better excuse to trample on our freedom of expression. Rows upon rows of riot police were deployed and carefully orchestrated to drive and chase groups of protesters into Seoul Plaza. A government-sponsored festival was being held there, seemingly oblivious to other things that were going on around it. As expected, some of the protesters tried to occupy the festival grounds -- as Seoul Plaza was the only open space left for them to gather. Great! The police could now charge everyone with trespass in addition to illegal assembly.

So the rabbit hunt began. The arrest spree lasted all night, as policemen chased both actual and suspected protesters into every street in downtown Seoul. Soon, it was summer 2008 all over again. Absolutely nothing had changed; it had only gotten worse.

Policemen swarm Myungdong Shopping District, trying to chase protesters.

Another bad evening for shopowners -- as if the economy wasn't already giving them enough trouble!

Startled shoppers gather in a corner. "Are they making a movie?" Somebody asked.

How could the police tell apart "real protesters" from weekend shoppers in this bustling neighborhood? Quick answer: they couldn't, and they knew that they couldn't. A better answer: they simply didn't care. The policemen, like lawless thugs, arrested and carried away anyone they came across.

Reporters were no exception. Mr. Yi Jae-Won from Reuters was wearing a blue helmet with large letters in order to identify himself as a member of the well-known international news agency. The police didn't care. They tried to haul him away anyway. They didn't even seem to mind the cameras. Only when dozens of other reporters complained bitterly did the officer in charge reluctantly let go of Mr. Yi.

Yi Jae-Won, reporter for Reuters, tries to struggle free from the police.

According to several other sources, a Japanese tourist was also arrested by the reckless police. The poor man couldn't speak Korean at all, but the officer in charge thought that he was just pretending to be a foreigner. By the time Mr. Yoshiiri managed to produce his passport, he was already being transported on board a police bus. Upon seeing the Japansese passport, the officer in charge dumped him in front of a department store. There were no apologies. Mr. Yoshiiri suffered two cracked ribs, and nobody knows where his possessions ended up. (The Japanese Embassy has yet to comment on this incident.)

Another man, Mr. Paik, was taken into custody for the sole reason that he was seen in the vicinity of anti-government protesters. He stayed in jail for 46 hours before the police determined that no charges could be laid against him. And this is just one case that got some degree of publicity. Dozens of others suffered from the reckless, indiscriminate behavior of police officers on the night of May 2. Again, nobody is taking responsibility for what happened. No inquiry is around the corner; not even a half-hearted statement. As if what they did was perfectly legitimate!

Finally, here's a sickening example of those "perfectly legitimate acts of law enforcement". These scenes were shot on May 2 in a subway station, into which a particularly passionate squad of policemen had chased a group of people whom they thought were anti-government protesters.

Believe it or not, that crazy guy with his long baton is a police captain. 'Nuff said.

By the way, back in the online forum Daum Agora, all posts related to this incident in the subway station is promptly being censored. The excuse is that the captain himself, whose name and position are now well-known in the Agora community, has personally accused every such post to be defamatory. Yeah, I guess it's defamatory to discuss the actions of a public servant in the exercise of his "duties". Don't even mention accountability, it just doesn't exist in this place.

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