I guess we can see what it takes to get the attention of the American media. There have been massive anti-beef protests for the past couple of weeks, with hundreds of thousands of people, but when they finally got to be the biggest protests since the 1987 pro-democracy protests (which ended authoritarian rule here), the New York Times reports on it. Nobody ever said they were cutting edge.
The size of the protests now is really starting to signal something truly significant. The reports are that somewhere between 70,000 and 700,000 people were there, likely somewhere in the middle between those numbers. I was in Central Seoul yesterday afternoon and was really astonished by the number of riot police around. I didn't even get to see the barricades they were building out of shipping containers. According to the JoonAng Daily:
Clearly the protests are about a lot more than beef. Supposedly poisonous US beef has just been the springboard to attack the Lee administration. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that he is, in fact, Bush's lapdog. But the protestors do seem confused fundamentally about how democracy works. Many of the signs and the interviewed protestors I have heard say that President Lee is acting like a dictator because he has policies they don't like. While it may be true that Lee fasttracked the US beef deal in a politically unwise way, but the fact that he was elected in a pro-American, conservative, and free trade basis should not be lost on people. He was elected, by the biggest margins ever in a Korean presidential election, which means he does get to be president for awhile. Even if people don't like him. Just look at the US--we let guys who didn't even win elections be president. (That has worked out really well...).
One thing I have found interesting is the idea that US beef is some evil thing. My students asked me, in semi-hushed tones, what is it like? It is clear they believe that US beef is somehow different that Korean beef in look, texture, taste, or whatever. It glows, perhaps? How disappointed they will be when they see that meat is just meat.
Korean restaurants around are advertising that they only serve Korean source food, such as this sign:
The size of the protests now is really starting to signal something truly significant. The reports are that somewhere between 70,000 and 700,000 people were there, likely somewhere in the middle between those numbers. I was in Central Seoul yesterday afternoon and was really astonished by the number of riot police around. I didn't even get to see the barricades they were building out of shipping containers. According to the JoonAng Daily:
"The police used 60 shipping containers, 12 meters long, 6 meters wide and 2.7 meters high each, to build walls at three locations. Using cranes, police built a two-story, 5.2-meter-high wall by welding the containers together. This blocked roads leading to the Blue House, the U.S. Embassy compound and the central government complex.
“Barricades created with riot police buses had their limits, so we rented old containers,” said Lee Gil-beom, head of the public security bureau at the National Police Agency. Demonstrators have destroyed 47 riot buses so far during the street rallies."
Clearly the protests are about a lot more than beef. Supposedly poisonous US beef has just been the springboard to attack the Lee administration. There is a lot of dissatisfaction that he is, in fact, Bush's lapdog. But the protestors do seem confused fundamentally about how democracy works. Many of the signs and the interviewed protestors I have heard say that President Lee is acting like a dictator because he has policies they don't like. While it may be true that Lee fasttracked the US beef deal in a politically unwise way, but the fact that he was elected in a pro-American, conservative, and free trade basis should not be lost on people. He was elected, by the biggest margins ever in a Korean presidential election, which means he does get to be president for awhile. Even if people don't like him. Just look at the US--we let guys who didn't even win elections be president. (That has worked out really well...).
One thing I have found interesting is the idea that US beef is some evil thing. My students asked me, in semi-hushed tones, what is it like? It is clear they believe that US beef is somehow different that Korean beef in look, texture, taste, or whatever. It glows, perhaps? How disappointed they will be when they see that meat is just meat.
Korean restaurants around are advertising that they only serve Korean source food, such as this sign:
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