[KS] Egypt and Gwangju 1980

[don kirk]

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.)
Cheers,
Don





________________________________
From: J.Scott Burgeson <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>
To: Korean Studies Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Sent: Thu, February 17, 2011 8:55:30 PM
Subject: Re: [KS] Egypt and Gwangju 1980

--- 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 The term "mob" has a specifically negative and outdated taste 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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