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Anti-Americans Head for Seattle; Anti-Anti-Americans Fill Void on Streets of Seoul

GI Korea points to an impressive turnout for an anti-anti-American demonstration in Seoul. Although it’s not clear whether 50,000 or 200,000 showed up, it was at least comparable to the turnout at the anti-American protests of 2002. There was word that early presidential front-runner Park Geun-Hye even planned to show up. The word I often use to describe the Korean street is “mercurial.”

The America-hating left isn’t just going away, though, especially when it can count on local reinforcements … in Seattle.

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4 Responses

  1. I read that article and the first thing that crossed my mind was, who’s idea was it to have FTA talks in Seattle of all places? Hopefully the Korean protesters don’t get enboldened by the leftists there and decide to protest violently because the Seattle PD is not the Seoul PD, the Koreans will get beat down and put in jail. Not to mention the huge Korean-American community there will not be to thrilled to see these guys as well.

  2. I just skimmed the news, but even if it were 200,000 people in Seoul, the mixture of issues clouds its meaning. Any sign of support for the alliance is good, and they have managed 100,000 people for just a pro-alliance rally in the last few years, but this rally was said to have been arranged by groups opposing war time control transfer and the changes in the law on private schools….

    And speaking more broadly about the attitudes in the society as a whole, there is a difference between anti-Roh feeling and pro-alliance thinking. There is also some qualifications to pro-alliance feeling when it is based on anti-rise in taxation needed to beef up the Korean forces. There is a difference between alliance supporters and those who wish to keep using the US military but disliking it at the same time.

    It’s a complex equation, but despite 200,000 people in the street, I still firmly believe once you get below the generations that are 65 and older, you will not find a whole lot of people who are truly positive about the US-SK relationship.

    One of the contributors at Marmot’s recently looked at the FTA and statements by Roh’s people “in favor” of it by pointing out how the “positive” talk by them on the FTA was all about the pain it would cause and how Korea still needed to “endure” it.

    For the most part, that is what you get from Koreans who are anti-anti-USFK/USinKorea.

  3. In addition to what USinKorea said about support for pro US policies here in Korea; I stopped by that protest and I would put the median age of protesters at somewhere around 60. It seemed they were able to haul out every geriatric in Kyonggi province. A large proportion were also dressed in those neo-fascist, jack booted thug outfits that do so much to engender support among those who don’t have golden memories of Park Chung Hee’s dictatorship. Overall, it was not a very encouraging sight for someone hoping for any indication of a turnabout in younger South Korean’s attitudes on the alliance.

  4. The funny thing about it is, I used to train with quite a few Seattle PD and SWAT guys when I lived there, and they used to talk about how amazing South Korean riot control was from their training videos.

    Of course, they all recognized that certain South Korean riot police techniques would be impossible to use (legally) in the U.S.