[KS] FW: South Korea's Rollback of Democratic Rights

[J.Scott Burgeson]

--- On Tue, 5/12/09, Jim Thomas <jimpthomas at hotmail.com> wrote:
>    Through my experience in Korea and elsewhere (including
> in political actions I have been involved with in Berkeley
> and elsewhere), I have come to expect little or no allowance
> for "autonomous" voices in such debates and
> political struggles. In political engagements in Korea,
> those who are conspicuously non-Korean are generally lumped
> together as "Americans" or "foreigners,"
> and not taken very seriously--unless they reiterate the
> nationalist cause.  


I appreciate Jim's comments for adding much context and complexity to this discussion, and would just like to clarify the original point I made myself. I was referring mainly to academics, specifically Western academics, passing judgement on who is or isn't an "authentic" local voice in such debates. In fact, I was approached by both the JoongAng Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo last summer after my protest reports came to their attention, and asked to offer my opinion on the protests, specifically on the issue of alleged "police brutality," so yes some "locals" (quite powerful ones, in fact) were indeed interested in having me participate in the local debate. I declined, however, because at the time the "reign of terror" unleashed by this "democratic movement" was quite extreme and frightening. At the time I was working on a book and did not want my Korean publisher to become a target of the protesters if I published critical views on the protests in the hated
 "ChoJoongDong." As I mentioned before, death threats were regularly made against companies advertising in any of these papers, and in fact I was physically attacked myself after I took pictures of the protesters attacking ordinary citizens in Chongno-3-ga when Bush was here. The climate at the time was so extreme that I actually removed my protest reports from my site for 7 or 8 months, just because I was so worried that my observations might impact my publisher, and have only readded them now that the situation has cooled down significantly.

As to the point that most protesters were supporters of "non-violence," it's probably true that a majority were. However, those who engaged in direct conflict with the police were more than just a "tiny" majority. Dozens of police buses were dragged off barricades, and each time at least two ropes were used, sometimes 100 meters long, meaning hundreds of people were mobilized at a time, while at the same time dozens more were attacking the police to make sure they didn't cut the ropes and whatnot. The larger point is that the movement as a whole certainly "benefited" in a propaganda sense from the use of protester violence (because portraying the police as "brutal suppressors of the people" was an effective way of delegitimizing the LMB administration), even if they were personally against the use of violence at the demonstrations. And the liberal/progressive media certainly exploited the issue to the hilt as well.

--J. Scott Burgeson, Chongno