Beef, it's what's for dinner
So these anti-U.S. beef rallies are getting huge. This weekend they ran constantly, with anywhere between 40,000 and 100,000 people (depending on whose estimates you trust), and the police used water cannons to break up the crowds.
The stridency of the whole thing is really fascinating. Certainly there was nothing comparable in the U.S. when deadly or poisonous Chinese goods (toys, medicine, etc) were revealed, and those were deliberately manufactured. I can't think of any big protests of this sort since the anti-Japanese car protests in the 1980s, and those were nothing like this in scale.
And U.S. beef is only theoretically dangerous.
But from what I have read most of the protests seem directed against the administration of President Lee and the way he did it, and less so anti-American. Though the US military is not taking any chances and is tightening things at bases.
I'd like to see these protests but also am not really interested in being identified as an agent of the American Beef Council and getting stomped.
We were on Ingwansan today, pretty high up and far from City Hall, and could actually hear the crowds chanting, which was a surprise since that is fairly far away. I had read there were going to be protests but was surprised by that intensity.
Then, when we were getting off the subway, a kid sprayed us with one of those big pump water guns. It took us by surprise (and he mostly missed Lark) and the whole thing was weird. Especially for here in Korea, which have have experienced as hassle free. (I would be much less surprised by this in the U.S., where, for example, once someone threw a greasy sandwich at us when we were out jogging in our neighborhood). It was most especially strange because he was sitting next to his father, who thought it was hilarious. The train pulled off and we didn't do anything, but it put a damper on the mood. I didn't think about it until just now, reading the paper about the size of the protests, and wondering if maybe there is some kind of heightened feeling or something against gringos. No way to know.
Just what until Koreans find out that you can also get mad cow disease from eating squirrel brains. Then the real protests will start.
By the way, here is a picture of a deep fried cow brain sandwich, from Indiana, where such things were/are eaten with great vim and vigor.
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