[KS] Egypt and Gwangju 1980

J.Scott Burgeson jsburgeson at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 17 20:55:30 EST 2011


--- On Wed, 2/16/11, Frank Hoffmann <hoffmann at koreaweb.ws> wrote:

> The term "mob" has a specifically negative and outdated taste 
> to it ... being a term for mafia as well as being mafia slang
> itself on the one hand, and in its older British usage, I
> think, reflects a rather elitist view, but was then also
> picked up by late 19th and early 20th century communists to
> refer to masses in a negative way, masses that are being
> manipulated, dehumanized -- non-legitimized masses so to
> say. That is at least my understanding. You used it in that
> same way, as I read it, and it was irritating to see that in
> your report dealing with Korean protests against U.S.
> imports etc.

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:

mob |mäb|
noun
a large crowd of people, esp. one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence : a mob of protesters.

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.

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?

--Scott Bug


      




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