G20 In Gwanghwamun

F  rom the Nanoomi Party: I liked the bathroom.

There's a lot happening because of the G20.  I haven't been down to COEX, but my favorite iteration of the G20 so far is this one:

The cute older folks holding up signs are cute...

 but I LOVED the stuffed creatures:

Finally, I don't know what this guy's deal was, but I'm sure glad he drove by while I had my camera out.

In other news: ATEK sent out an e-mail recently:

Recently, some of you have received messages from your countries’ embassies regarding the approaching G20 Seoul Summit (November 11-12). These bulletins have cautioned that often, G20 meetings are accompanied by demonstrations, and extra police security, in different parts of the city. Previous G20 Summits have been met with demonstrations in their host cities, including outbreaks of violence.

To begin with, in Seoul, please be prepared for restrictions on pedestrian and driving traffic around the COEX complex around the time of the summit, from November 11-12, and before and after. Also, prepare for transportation delays if you live or work in that area.

Also, at the last major demonstrations in Seoul, the 2008 U.S. Beef/FTA protests, an English teacher was injured during a demonstration, not for provoking the police, but for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, during an outbreak of violence. ATEK would like to alert English teachers in Seoul to use common sense in the COEX area, where the conference will be held, as well as around City Hall and downtown Seoul. Please exercise caution and around large gatherings, or areas of increased police presence.

ATEK has sent communications to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency expressing our confidence that police officers will do their utmost to ensure the safety of English teachers caught up in protest sites, whether out of curiosity or intent to demonstrate.

However, we would also like to inform ATEK’s non-Korean members of parts 2 and 3 of Article 17 in The Immigration Control Act (see source here) which states,

(2) No foreigner sojourning in the Republic of Korea shall engage in any political activity with the exception of cases as provided by this Act or other statutes[1]

(3) If a foreigner sojourning in the Republic of Korea is engaged in any political activity, the Minister of Justice may order him in writing to suspend such activity or may take other necessary measures.

Please exercise prudence in the type and level of involvement you choose, if you attend demonstrations. Do this for your own physical safety, and also because the Immigration Control Act indicates the possibility of consequences for political action: this could put your working visa in jeopardy. Please make informed decisions about participating in demonstrations, and be aware of the situation at demonstrations, even if you are only there out of curiosity, to observe or take pictures.

For more information about your rights, and how to act during an assembly or demonstration, the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) MINBYUN, or “Lawyers for a Democratic Society,” has published two document, titled the “G20 Summit Manuals for Foreign Activists,” and "Demonstrating the G20 in Seoul this November?" which provides information about Korean laws and codes regarding assemblies and demonstrations. If you plan on attending demonstrations, either for observation or participation, we recommend looking through these two documents. First point: do not participate in violence.

If you are not a Korean, please also consider registering with your embassy, to be updated on important news or alerts concerning citizens of your country.

Following are some embassy websites (if your embassy is not listed below, you will likely find it here:

Australia: http://www.southkorea.embassy.gov.au/seol/home.html

Canada: http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/korea-coree/index.aspx

Ireland: http://www.dfa.ie/home/index.aspx?id=44447

India: http://www.indembassy.or.kr/

Indonesia: http://www.indonesiaseoul.org/indexs.php

Nepal: http://www.nepembseoul.gov.np/en/

New Zealand: http://www.nzembassy.com/korea

Philippines: http://www.philembassy-seoul.com/

South Africa: http://www.southafrica-embassy.or.kr/eng/index_eng.php

United Kingdom: http://ukinrok.fco.gov.uk/en/

USA: http://seoul.usembassy.gov/

Other embassy websites: http://korea4expats.com/Embassies-service.html

Finally, just in case you were wondering:

Wifeoseyo's dogs like me.  And I like them.

Dance the Candlegirl! (Anticlimax. . . or I left too early)

Well, I went, and there were lots of people, but nothing too out of sorts, compared to other days. The counter-protest fizzled (relatively speaking), however, I did spot a few dance troupes (or maybe the same one in two places) out starting what I think will explode into the next dance craze.

Ladies and gentlemen, after an intense editing session, I present to you:

The Candlegirl! Get busy learning those steps: it's gonna be tearing all the clubs in Hongdae a new one in no time!


(Update: For the sake of giving credit where it's due, Scott Burgeson, whom I met at the protest, was the one who had the conversations with the "V For Vendetta" masqueraders, and discovered that they didn't know the meaning of their symbolism.)


Update: ROKDrop (thanks for the link love) has more info about the creators of the candlegirl -- move over, JYP! The activists are breathing down your neck! GIKorea also reports that there were no clashes or violence last night, and a pretty unimpressive turnout, compared to June's protests, so I don't feel bad about leaving at about 12:00.

Thanks also, Zenkimchi, and Seoul Eats for the link love.

Update: There's an interesting discussion going on between Gord Sellar and Scott Burgeson, the long-time expat with whom I walked around the protests, and who talked to the "V for Vendetta" protestors, over the actual and intended meaning of their symbolism, and whether we should give them a break for misunderstanding the real (anarchist) meaning of the "V for Vendetta" symbolism, or hold them to account for running so far with a ball like "V for Vendetta" when they didn't realize it was actually a pineapple. Scott suggests that this pulling of random issues and symbols into the fray, when they don't belong there, is crass and distasteful, while Gord (coming into his own in his new position as the K-Blogosphere's top protester apologist) defends their symbolism, saying that they're transmitting the symbols basically in the same context that they were received. See here and here and the comment board on this post for more.

If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen tonight.

And I'm bringing my camera.

The protests in Gwanghwamun are still (STILL!) running almost nightly, as the numbers dwindle, the extremists have gotten more violent in order to keep people's attention, newspaper buildings have been attacked, police buses have been destroyed, hundreds have been injured, and Korea has a whacked out protest culture (seriously, follow this link: it'll blow your mind), and while things have been less bat-shit insane this time than previously, if it's going to go overboard, tonight's the night it will.

There are counter-protests to go along with the protests, involving beef supporters, North Korea-supporters (as in, "People are dying, and you're mad about BEEF IMPORTS? Get a phunking GRIP!"), and the protest groups are hoping tonight will be another peak, for some reason or another (maybe because their support is flagging, and they're in the process of showing their colours as primadonnas and attention whores?)

Anyway, gonna be an interesting night, and I'm bringin' my camera!

Here's how I imagine the players (anti-protesters, pro-protesters, police, ring-leaders, etc..) are getting ready for the big throw-down:



Here are the very worth-reading thoughts of Scott Burgeson, or King Baeksu, a fellow who lives right next to the epicenter of the protests, and has attended almost every night.

Let's not get TOO down on Korea.

Before we get too down on Korea's media for this mad beef mess. . .

Yeah, PD Diary's staring down the barrel of a legal investigation for its arguably slanderous reporting on American Beef. . .

but they got nothing on this guy.

Journalist in Macedonia charged with committing murders he wrote about

from the International Herald Tribune

"A Macedonian journalist has been charged with murdering two elderly women — crimes he wrote about for his newspaper — and police said Sunday they were investigating his possible involvement in a third death.
. . .Police began to suspect Taneski, 56, after reading his articles about the crimes in the national daily Utrinski Vesnik and noticing details that had not been released to the public"

This is where I'd put some flip comment or wisecrack, but what an awful story! I don't think I can bring myself to make light of it.

Now go watch some silly commercials (next post) to cheer yourself up.

More mad cow. Cripes I'm tired of this.

Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. From Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim: West Side Story: The Prologue - Korea's taken to the streets!


OK. There are a few things:

1. for background, Ask A Korean has a pretty good summary of how this mess began, and what Koreans are saying and reading about the Mad Cow Scare, which has blown way out of proportion here, as opportunist rabble-rousers use it as a hook to hang their anti-americanism/anti-president-lee-ism upon.

There's a good article about it in the Asia Sentinel, and another one in Reuters that calls out Korean netizens for being irrational and spreading misinformation/believing lies. NYT has also tried to put it into some historical perspective, though perspective seems to be something lacking right now among netizens and protesters. Whether netizens start to open their eyes and investigate other sources of information, or respond the way Chinese netizens did to CNN's critical reports on China's handling of Tibetan protests (counterattack, rather than pause, listen, and have a moment of self-reflection that might lead to a teachable moment) remains to be seen. (most of these links courtesy of either ROK Drop or The Marmot's Hole - see sidebar for links)



This is the best article I've read so far about the way the internet can spread misinformation in Korea (because it's exciting, and makes good copy) more easily than sober-minded information -- the better story gets forwarded more often than the more rigorously researched article, because stories are more fun than statistics. This is why, as I wrote here before, the internet, as it is now, will not reach its full potential for social change.

If this situation continues, there will be more reports like the above from international sources, each in turn more incredulous at how irrational the discourse is, and how driven it is by myths, rumors, and bald-faced lies, and maybe Korean netizens will start a site called anti-reuters.com, the way Chinese netizens started anti-cnn.com. Blog buddy Brian has been attacked personally by the same irrational netizens who still believe a single bite of US Beef will kill you, because they read it on the internet, even though it's been scientifically proven that kimchi kills mad cow prions. (More scientific evidence here.)

2. It's now the anniversary of the deaths of two girls who were run over by a U.S. Armoured vehicle near an army base north of Seoul. ROK Drop has a really amazingly excellent write-up on what happens when misinformation, lack of critical thinking, and toxic nationalism intersect (re: that 2002 armoured car incident) that shows just how far you can go on anti-american emotion here in Korea (all the way to the presidency, for Roh Moo-hyun - as mentioned also in the NYT article linked above). See here also for more on anti-americanism in general, and see here for more about the armoured vehicle incident, and how the demagogues and politicos hijacked these two little girls' lives to promote their ideology, with the media mostly complicit. Those two girls were invoked again, concerning this, as well as Lee Myung Bak being likened to Korea's last dictator - Chun Doo Hwan. Ironically, those saying Lee Myung Bak is worse than Chun Doo Hwan have done so without fear of being arrested, or having their names put on a watch list, for saying so. (also ironically, people are protesting Lee MyungBak at the head of Chunggyecheon Stream, the public park area that President Lee built, back when he was Mayor of Seoul.)

In both the 2002 incident, and this year, the thing I've come away with more than any other impression, is how shamefully the korean media has acted. The Korean left wing has proven their savvy in mobilizing young people using comment boards, internet connections, and even text messages -- that's arguably how they got Roh Moo-Hyun into the blue house as president (see NYT article linked above) -- the way the internet in Korea has been manipulated by agenda-driven yahoos blows my mind, but it's also pretty impressive -- ya gotta hand it to the activists, you know? Now, if the conservative President and his party had any wits about them, they'd get on the web too, because right now, in the war to influence the thoughts of Koreans, controlling the internet and message boards is about tantamount to having superior air power in a real war.

(generalization time:) Because of Korea's very confucian culture, the people are raised, all the way from childhood, not to question authority -- asking a question in class is bad, because you could embarrass the teacher if he doesn't know the answer. Anything that might embarrass the teacher is Wrong. It's the same with newspapers and TV's -- my students (some of them well-educated and quite intelligent) have admitted to me, point blank, that they don't usually question what they read in the newspaper -- even when it's one of the hot-button issues where biases usually come up. I had an interesting conversation with one class, where I ended up explaining to my student, a mother and substitute teacher in her forties, that critical thinking, though it includes the word "critical" does not simply mean criticizing everything, and looking for flaws in everything, but questioning the sources of information, and possible agendas those distributing the information might be hiding, at the same time as taking in the raw data. (She was the same one who came into my class two months later and regurgitated literally every myth, half-truth, and lie pertaining to American Beef that she'd heard on the internet, or on the slanted news-reports, one after the other, as I calmly answered her objections.)

This deference to seemingly authoritative sources is compounded by the collectivism prevalent in Korea, wherein people will go along with the crowd, because it's a crowd, and if they disagree with the crowd, they'll stay quiet rather than object, for the sake of the group harmony. An example of this is going out for dinner with a group of Koreans: I had an interesting talk with Matt and his wife about this cultural disconnect.

Let's say, my eight Korean buddies and I are going out for dinner. They want to eat pork cutlets, but my pet iguana died of food poisoning after eating a stale cutlet, so I hate them, because the taste reminds me of the porky-smell of poor Izzy's death rattle.

Now, if my eight buddies and I were Canadian, Matt and I agreed that the thing we would do, in that case, is to say, "well, you guys have pork cutlets, but I'm gonna pick up some drive-thru on my way to the cutlet place; I'll sit with you, but not eat."

or "I'll grab a bite at my favourite burger joint, and join up with you guys when you move on to the pub where we'll drink together after dinner." This would be the most considerate thing to my Canadian sensibilities -- rather than eat cutlets and sulk, or insist all my friends ignore their cutlet jones and come with me to White Spot, I just do my thing, let them do theirs, and join up later.

but Matt's Korean wife interjected, "but that's so selfish! To go away from the group maybe the group will think you don't like them! You'll ruin the group atmosphere by putting your own needs first!" -- basically, in Korea, for the sake of group harmony, if you disagree with the crowd, you shut up and bite the bullet. Even getting out of the way to let them do their pleasure isn't good enough: you have to go along with the crowd, and pretend you're having fun. Dissent = wet blanket = killjoy = why do you hate us?

And so, you have a population where the credulous are more than ready to get demonstrative when somebody pushes the right buttons, and the more sensible are perfectly content to stay quiet until it all blows over. This gives the ones who do get excited free rein to go beyond the pale, if they so choose, because they can basically retort "why are you spoiling my fun" to anyone who questions their actions. When nationalism is mixed in, the retort is often the over-simplified, black-and-white, "why do you hate Korea?"

In such a climate, a great, great deal of responsibility is placed upon the leaders and media of Korea: in a place where people have been programmed from childhood not to question authority, it behooves those in positions of influence to use their power responsibly. So far, Korea has had the exact opposite of that, on both sides. Mike Hurt, again, on the Korean media, part of which I'll quote here:

...the American media is more responsible, and holds itself up to higher
journalistic standards than the Korean media. Has it always been? No. Are
there markedly different histories between our democratic traditions and the
government's relationship with the media? Of course.

But that doesn't change the force of my critique. One side is still markedly unprofessional, doesn't double-confirm sources, doesn't take notes or record during interviews, and even regularly engages in the making up of facts in stories as a common practice. The other side engages in such practices at great professional peril. The blacklisting of a photographer for altering a piece of foreground in a West Bank
picture, or the infamous Jayson Blair case are actually examples of overall journalistic integrity in the US, and reassuring. Because the exact practices that caused the ends of careers and huge professional embarrassment to entire organizations are common practice in Korean journalism.

And hence, one point of my argument -- that the Korean media's unprofessionalism was a huge source of the problem in this case -- should be clear, and it is a problem particular to Korea, not a function of the dismissive "well, it's the same anywhere." No, it isn't.

And if you push a Korean friend on the opposite side of the fence, as
I have started to very recently, by asking the question, "Do you mean to tell me
that you think Korean journalism has the same standards as American journalism?"
the answer will be clear. Koreans are very dissatisfied with their OWN
newspapers and journalism.

Korea has been betrayed again, by a media more interested in sensationalism than truth, following the emotion, or the narrative they want to follow, rather than exploring a topic without any pre-conceived notions they seek to confirm. A media's duty is toward the truth, not toward one political party or the other (easier said than done, but even as they take sides, America's news sources don't intentionally spread brazen lies; they just over-report some stuff and under-report other stuff.) Here in Korea, most of the papers have taken sides unashamedly: the Choson Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, and Dong-a Ilbo, Korea's three conservative papers, have actually had their reporters chased from protest sites, because the protesters don't like the way those three papers have reported the situation. The crowds took a break from chanting "Lee Myung-Bak, Get OUT!" to chant, "Choson, Joongang, Dong-a are CRAP!" in the middle of their protest.

For me, when the Choson daily reports 70 000 people came to a protest, and the Hangyoreh (the left wing paper) reports 400 000, I lose a little faith in the credibility of both papers. My student asked me if I thought the congressional political system (like the USA) or the parliamentary system (like Canada) works best, and I realized that it doesn't really matter which system is in place, if the media is doing its job, digging around, asking questions, calling out the finks, and plugging away towards true accountability and transparency, and TRUTH, and that's where most of my disgust lies in this situation, because the MEDIA should be saying that Korea deserves better leadership, more accountability, and actual statesperson-like behaviour frome their lawmakers, instead of some barely-read blogger.

Meanwhile, Korea's leaders are leaning on authority or emotion, rabble-rousing or shouting slogans, rather than being leaders and lawmakers and statesmen and stateswomen. This is not how a nation's leaders should behave! Misinformation campaigns? What the hell! A good statesman should be digging to the truth of the matter and spreading that information as much as possible, rather than chanting slogans and twisting the words of their opponents. Korea deserves better than the grand-standing, pissing contest they have, where the minority is currently refusing to report to the national assembly before their demands concerning beef laws are met -- blackmail, basically (probably because they know they're outnumbered in the house, and will be overruled) -- preferring to mill about with the angry crowds over doing their job in the assembly.

Yeah, Korea's democracy is young (21 years), and the media is also only 21 years from being an arm of the government, and they're still figuring things out, but this kind of political brinksmanship, this kind of irresponsibility has got to stop, and Korea deserves better than the leaders and the media they have right now. How can anything get better when politicians are throwing chairs in the national assembly, refusing to show up until their demands are met, or going on hunger strikes? Cut the crap!

Soundtrack: Wallzeys dance remix: Anarchy in the UK

woo hoo.

That being said, there are three good things that have come out of this mad beef mess:

1. Ex-CEO Lee Myung-Bak is learning that you can't run a country the way a CEO runs a company. This is a good thing. His entire cabinet tendered their resignations, and this is a chance for him to become a statesman instead of a CEO, to bring in the best people instead of his old buddies and yes-men. He has the opportunity to become the pragmatic president he promised to be from the beginning. I sure hope he learns his lesson. He's gone from the biggest landslide election victory in Korea's history to the shortest time from inaguration to impeachment calls.

2. The protests have, by and large, been more peaceful and orderly than any other protests of this scale in Korea's history, and that's a really good sign. Hopefully, next time, the people will, you know, vote, and contact their representatives, rather than taking to the streets to be heard. And hopefully those representatives will be where they should be, in the National Assembly, communicating what their constituents are saying. But peaceful instead of violent protests is a good thing.

3. most exciting of all: on Tuesday, June 10th, we had what is, as far as I and my students know, a first: a counter-demonstration. While masses gathered for the anti-LMB demonstration in front of Gwanghwamun, a group of Lee Myungbak supporters mustered (surrounded by national guard police four-deep, to keep the factions from having a west-side-story-style rumble) in front of City Hall to show support for the president, American beef imports, and the KorUs Free Trade Agreement. As far as I know, this is the first time we've seen the other side sound out their voice at the same time as the protesters are shouting, rather than staying quiet during the histrionics, and then coming out of the woodworks later, during the post-riot hangover, when the rabble-rousers have been discredited and everyone feels a bit foolish, crowing, "I knew it all along"! Public discourse, instead of storms of public emotion, a true representation of both voices rather than the angriest side shouting down the other side with slogans, would be a welcome change to the way public discourse is done in Korea. Democracy's still taking root here, but this is a good sign.

The artists are in on the mad beef mess: warning. Some of these images are not for kids.

this sculpture has been up around City Hall all week. It's grotesque, disgusting.

This painting was displayed prominently at other Anti-American protests (I got it from Brian in Jeollanamdo's page) -- it was at City Hall on Saturday,But some pro-US supporters had had enough of it.Ditto for this one: the painting shows an armoured car, and the image on the right is of the two girls killed in the 2002 armoured car incident: a lurid, disgusting picture that was spread ALL around the internet and printed up on protest signs in huge, graphic, disgusting detail. I'm not linking or showing the picture here, because it's revolting: there are viscera strewn around and you can see that the girls are literally crushed. The parents actually had to beg the crass activists to stop flashing around the picture of their daughters' eviscerated bodies to promote their causes. Well, somebody'd also had enough of this one.More referencing the 2002 armoured vehicle incident: the empty schoolgirl shirt has the nametag of one of the girls killed.The good old mad cow.

This sculpture had notes posted to it.
I'm guessing it's modeled on this photo, which I think is a still-capture from the piece of yellow journalism MBC documentary that started this whole outrage.

Ironically, that same image (if it is the same one) has been debunked: MBC erroneously posted the caption "Mad Cow" at the bottom of the screen; it's a downer cow, and slaughtering downer cows is also illegal in American slaughterhouses, but it's not mad. But then, what do facts matter? It sure is a striking image! Another partner piece:
No explanation needed there, except:

Close up of the stars on the second picture:on the first one (red white and blue), on the left side are images of American products -- coke bottle, razer blade, umbrella -- they look nice and norman rockwell.

On the right side, each of the images from the left are used in some violent way -- the coke bottle's smashed on someone's head, and let's not forget America's third favourite pasttime after baseball and football: umbrella sodomy! On the other one (the black flag) there isn't even any attempt at irony or juxtaposition. Just lurid, disgusting and shocking images of violence, which I assume are intended to be associated with the US. Who need umbrella sodomy when there's umbrella rape to be had? Note the man dressed in green on the left: presumably a soldier?
Meanwhile, every single other person who's ever had a gripe with the president has thrown their complaints on top of the pile: I bumped into this paramedics demonstration (really loud: they ALL had their sirens going, while the first one had a speaker playing patriotic songs on that managed to actually be louder than the sirens. Police were lined up to block the ambulances from entering the City Hall block.
Dog-piling the president doesn't seem like the most productive thing to me: if the trucker's union, and the teachers, and the media, and the opposition party, and the Korean farmers association, and the anti-canal people, and the democracy demonstrators, are all shouting different things, it turns into static, and decreases its chance of affecting change.

Meanwhile, Sohn Hakkyu has overplayed his hand, and (in my opinion) stands to lose the most in this mess. Once international sources notice how he's playing the masses like a violin, with slogans and rhetoric, twisting words and stirring up fears rather than leaning on hard facts and logic, he'll take the blame when Korea gets embarrassed by more reports like the Reuters "Look at this silliness" piece. He'll lose all his credibility, for playing to the home crowd so much he forgot how he looks on the outside, allowing misinformation to be the basis of his platform.

This is bad, because he has some legitimate gripes about the president's headstrong ways in his first 100 days, but by lumping that together with the FTA, and the mad cow stuff, he runs the risk of having ALL his points disregarded, once people really realize how stupid and unscientific the mad-cow junk is. He comes across like the irrational one in a lover's argument, who starts hauling up junk from the past when he/she realizes s/he's losing the current argument: "What about when you forgot my birthday last year?"

The president has a lot to lose, too, but in the end, he still controls the national assembly, and he's still the president, so he stands to lose less than the minority leader.

Every time I write about this, I hope it's the last.

Saturday's protests were smaller and more sedate than last weekend. I'd be really happy if this fustercluck finally blows over.

Update: It does look like it's blowing over; sunday night the roads in front of Gyungbok palace were open for the first weekend night in a while. Finally.

Joshing Gnome: duly noted, sir. I, too, hope this is the last time I write about it.

for all the alienated weiguks living in Korea: Hail Nathan, defender of English Teachers!

I found this on Foreign/er, a random find from the Korean blog list, and found it very interesting to watch.



them cultural lines just keep blurring everywhere.

I really liked the part where, even though you can still hear the hurt in her voice when she talks about the discrimination she experienced when she came to America, she still explains how she doesn't see a racist in the old man shouting at immigrants in his neighbourhood; she sees a man having an identity crisis as the America he knew for sixty years suddenly changes completely. What an amazingly compassionate way to think of these people, kicking powerlessly against a changing world that just won't stop rolling, no matter what they do, and all that remains for them is to slowly watch themselves become irrelevant in the new society that sprouts up around them.

They must feel kind of like this guy:


Also: (cackle of glee) JoongAng Daily gets theirs:
Hail to Nathan Van, who stuck it to them for their sloppy write-up of the American pedophiles, which I mentioned in my rant here.

[LETTERS to the editor]Wrong example
May 12, 2008
Ser Myo-ja's May 9 front page article, "American pedophiles banned by authorities," should raise concerns among Americans, fact-checkers, and anyone else at all concerned with the truth. Ser Myo-ja reports on the Ministry of Justice's ban on convicted American pedophiles from entering Korea.
Ser Myo-ja goes on to mention Christopher Paul Neil [who was arrested in Thailand as a suspected pedophile who preyed on young Asian victims] as if he were American. He's not. He's Canadian. Why wouldn't the article mention that?
The Ministry's ban doesn't affect Canadians.
You should get your facts straight lest you add to the miseducation of Korean citizens, poisoning the minds of a society already tainted by isolationist ignorance and prejudgment.
Your misleading article poorly informs Koreans.

Nathan Van, Seoul

Once again, I raise my glass to Nathan Van from Seoul.

We'll see if my letter to the Korea Herald gets printed. . . it was a little longer than his, and used words like "shame" "racist" "irresponsible" and "duty to the truth". . . even if it doesn't get in the paper, they read it, and it'll go up on this blog, regardless.

Olympic Torch Relay in Seoul, April 2008: The Olympic Spirit is Dead

Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons.
Take that.And that. (feeling a bit cowed yet?)
Well, their intimidation tactics worked. Here's my new official line:

Soundtrack courtesy of Monty Python. Don't want to piss anybody off, eh?

Saw history today right out in my face, waving flags, noisy feet forward. Sure, it wasn't Ground Zero, Archduke Ferdinand-level history -- I won't get a book deal just for surviving it, but dear readers, I saw history nonetheless.

It started innocently enough -- I went to a Seoul Writer's club meeting near City Hall. . . but on my way over there, I noticed what looked like a new trend in fashion accessories: red capes with yellow stars on them.


On second glance, I realized what they were: Chinese flags. The Olympic Torch came through downtown Seoul on Sunday afternoon, starting at Olympic Park (where I lived in 2003) and ending in Jongno, by City Hall (where I live now.) You may have heard some rumours about protestors hectoring the Chinese Olympic Torch Relay -- over in Paris and London they caused a fair bit of embarrassment, and San Francisco bent so far backwards to avoid turmoil and embarrassment (and a pissed off exporter of cheap plastic toys, clothing, and shoes), that it wasn't so much a relay as a game of hide-and-seek.

Starting a fifteen minute walk from City Hall, the boosters came out in Red.
And the riot police buses came out, too.
I don't know where they got so many, huuuuuge flags (I know I took my wall-sized flag out of the suitcase when my luggage was overweight at the airport), but they were literally everywhere.

Recently, Chinese news sources and netizens have responded to protests and criticism with hurt outrage: the Western Media wants to sabotage our party; like ants at our Olym-picnic, those biased Western journalists want to ruin our fun! And meanwhile, back home, the propaganderthals in charge of the media are playing up the us-vs.-them narrative to stoke nationalistic rage.

(One of my students saw this picture and said, "Are we in Korea?")
Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that this kind of hurt-pride defensiveness is less than the best possible way to respond to the attack, is thrown, nay, hurled up against the wall, gored on the spike of nationalistic pride, slaughtered as a scapegoat: a Chinese student at Duke University had her picture and her parents' address in China published on the internet (scroll down after the link to see a youtube clip, and read the poison on the Chinese comment board, too). She was attacked on the net (and her parents house was vandalized) for stepping between a group of Chinese boosters and Tibetan protesters having a holler at each other, and trying to suggest that, in the spirit of free speech, the Chinese boosters ought to stop shouting down their pro-Tibetters. (She should have sided unthinkingly with her fellow Chinese and found something heavy to use as a weapon -- anything short of that proves she hates China and might be a spy, it seems).

Giant flag. Big as my classroom. And blurry. Moving quickly as they shook it.
Things are ugly back in the mainland, too, and even paralympic athlete Jin Jing, who protected the torch from protesters in Paris and became a hero to the Chinese nationalists, couldn't talk them out of their "Boycott Carrefour" fervour -- instead, they turned on her, too. It must feel pretty lonely to be ostracized by a 1.3 billion strong nation -- the most I've ever been ostracized by is an elementary school class of twenty-six.

(metal detector to enter the main seating area)

There's a new strategy in play with this [debacle] torch relay: it started in Australia, and will rear its head, no doubt, through the rest of the torch relay.

On Sunday, 6000 mostly young Chinese, probably overseas exchange students, descended upon the torch trail in force, wielding huge flags (big enough indeed to block a Tibetan flag from view), waving them, and chanting pro-China, pro-Beijing Olympic slogans loudly (loud enough to drown out any protesters, in fact).
This kind of a preemptive napalm-strike strategy works, insofar as it drowns out any voice of dissent in an ocean of unison, marching in lockstep, chanting in time, and they might have needed it: South Korea has its own grudges with China, including a historical grudge about the kingdom of Goguryeo, and (the big one) the Chinese policy of sending captured North Korean refugees back to North Korea (to near-certain torture and incarceration in a death camp). In fact, a North Korean protestor tried to jump in front of the relay route and set himself on fire in protest.

Here are some pictures I took, making a strong case for my need for a better camera.
I wasn't getting closer to the scrum than that. Robert "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa I ain't.


What you can't see is the torch actually moving along the column of gray-shirted police officers.

More pictures better than mine are here. (like this one: highly recommended link)

So many flags.
As far as I could tell, the basic goal of the Red Army Escorts was to haul any protester to the ground as fast as possible, hopefully before any media outlets pointed their cameras.

This Tibet protester was beaten down in the lobby of four-star Seoul Plaza Hotel -- I'm told the crowd is chanting, among other things, "Apologize" and "beat him to death," as the police surround him.


Bullying and intimidation, friends. When you don't want to listen to criticism, making a fist and snarling "shut the hell up" will do. It was kind of disgusting.

The Olympic spirit is dead to me.

(begin sarcasm) But you don't have to believe my account: take it from the Chinese media! (end sarcasm)

I mean, with this extra Nazi-twist, the western media IS piling it on pretty thick, but you're not winning any sympathy from me when stuff like this happens:

More video. Watch them fast, before the Chinese government demands they be taken down, and the news agencies (naturally) comply.

More pictures, courtesy of Stafford, and Smokehard via the Marmot's hole -- the downtown area where I was. . . with a better camera than mine. From Stafford: the biggest Tibetan flag scrum I personally witnessed (video here) was about ten meters over from where this picture of loyalists was taken.
Also from Stafford:-- just repeat the party line, louder than the dissenters. Effective strategy for their purpose.

See what the Chinese media are saying. And a letter written by Chinese students from M.I.T. -- worth reading (summary: give us a break; we're still a developing country. If you're still developing, why are you hosting the Olympics? Why jump onstage if you don't know your lines yet?)

8000 Seoul police came out to keep order.
The lump of red in the middle of the picture are Chinese flags thrown up to mask a bunch of Tibetan flags that had just appeared. Before the police got there, all the Tibet protesters had been hauled to the ground, overwhelmed by rabid China-boosters.

Vehicle escorts: a big bus gives protesters another obstacle to get around, and increases the chance they'll be intercepted before they can reach the torch.Coke led the procession in a shiny float. Write a letter to Coke and tell them you won't buy more Coke products until they withdraw their sponsorship of the Olympics.
Ditto for Samsung.
In the hotel lobby again.
The ugly, disrespectful (to Korea, to Korea's police force, and to Korea's laws about freedom of expression), disruptive behaviour of China's own citizens in Seoul and other cities is more embarrassing to China than any protest could be.


Some of the facts in this video montage are off base -- it's not a policeman stabbed, but a journalist hit by a projectile in the picture of the guy in green bleeding from the head, and I can't vouch for the text that goes with the footage in the other countries. . . but just look at the footage!

The Propaganda Olympics will go on -- really, whether they go smoothly or tank doesn't even matter to China anymore. Either they go badly, and China can use the embarrassment to stoke the "West hates us" resentment for their propaganda purposes -- a powerful, angry country full of rabid nationalists is just perfect if China decides to go expansionist, or the Olympics go well, and China can use it to strut and preen, declaring they're "arrived" as a major world player, and fuel the nationalism that way.

Last word goes to this kid: a sign held by a college-age student with big old glasses, standing quietly (but confidently: he has 1.3 billion brothers and sisters standing behind him).
It reads: "Respect the Olympic Spirit,
All men -- are brothers!
Interfere with China's internal affairs,
Annihilate -- in the far distance."

Somehow the first and last two lines don't quite match, eh? And how does the threat of annihilation fit with the proclaimed wish for a peaceful torch relay? Dunno.

Not that I was going to ask him: don't care to be wrestled to the ground and sat upon by 6000 angry China-boosters. Yup. The intimidation worked.