<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:14pt">Thank you, Scott, for adding the voice of another witness to those crazy events and for offering that useful definition of "mob." (In fact, I think you spent more time down there than I did.)<br>Cheers,<br>Don<br><div><br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> J.Scott Burgeson <jsburgeson@yahoo.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies@koreaweb.ws><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Thu, February 17, 2011 8:55:30 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [KS] Egypt
and Gwangju 1980<br></font><br>
--- On Wed, 2/16/11, Frank Hoffmann <<a ymailto="mailto:hoffmann@koreaweb.ws" href="mailto:hoffmann@koreaweb.ws">hoffmann@koreaweb.ws</a>> wrote:<br><br>> The term "mob" has a specifically negative and outdated taste <br>> to it ... being a term for mafia as well as being mafia slang<br>> itself on the one hand, and in its older British usage, I<br>> think, reflects a rather elitist view, but was then also<br>> picked up by late 19th and early 20th century communists to<br>> refer to masses in a negative way, masses that are being<br>> manipulated, dehumanized -- non-legitimized masses so to<br>> say. That is at least my understanding. You used it in that<br>> same way, as I read it, and it was irritating to see that in<br>> your report dealing with Korean protests against U.S.<br>> imports etc.<br><br>I can't speak to earlier protest movements in South Korea, but certainly there were moments during the Mad Cow
Protests of 2008 in Seoul when the supposedly peaceful "vigils" degenerated into outright mob-like behavior. Whether the widespread, unprovoked violence displayed by many protesters on many nights was calculated (to provoke reactions from the riot police, and thereby generate propaganda imagery in support of the movement) or "spontaneous" is moot, since to outside observers, the impression was the same, and in line with the following dictionary definition:<br><br>mob |mäb|<br>noun<br>a large crowd of people, esp. one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence : a mob of protesters.<br><br>The pattern of reckless violence and provocation continued well into 2009, such as when protesters "celebrating" the one-year anniversary of the Mad Cow Protests stormed the Hi! Seoul Festival performance stage at Seoul Plaza, forcing its cancellation, and continuing to run amok in Myong-dong on many other nights. I was there on most nights and
witnessed all of this first-hand myself, and on one occasion when attempting to photograph some of the more egregious transgressions of the protesters, was physically assaulted by no less than half a dozen different protesters at once.<br><br>Surely it is the task of historians to view and write history with eyes wide open, rather than willfully whitewashing it (whether with fancy verbiage and semantics or otherwise), given that the evidence is easily accessible to anyone looking for it?<br><br>--Scott Bug<br><br><br><br><br></div></div>
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