Dreaming of Kwangju

Writing in the International Herald Tribune last March, Choe Sang Hun observed that both  the number of protests in South Korea and the violence of those protests is rising: “from 6,857 in 1995 to an average 11,000 a year in the past five years. The number of police officers hurt by demonstrators increased from 331 in 2,000 to 893 last year.” You would not expect this explosion of grievance under a government that pursues redistribution and appeasement all the way  to an 11% approval rating, but anarchy loves a vacuum.  Look how much anarchy we saw last week over a Free Trade Agreement that was a dead letter by last spring:

[S]ome 12,000 protestor[s] massed in front of the city government in Gwangju at 4:30 p.m. Some 300 anti-globalization activists among them, who want Korea to end free-trade negotiations with the U.S., attempted to break into the government building, brandishing bamboo and wooden sticks and hurling paving stones they had torn out of the square in front of the building. Dozens of windows shattered and riot police shields were burnt. Protestors also set fire to the city flag above the main gate. The demonstration caused an estimated W420 million (US41=W930) in losses.

Even allowing for the fact that this is, after all, the Chosun Ilbo, hurling stones and attempting to occupy a government building suggests escalation.  The same article  follows the trends Ms. Choe had tracked last March:

A total of 11,036 rallies were held between the beginning of this year and the end of October, some 30 a day on average. The total number of protestors stood at 2.92 million during the same period, or some 6,700 taking to the streets every day. Over the whole of last year, the figure was 8,023 a day. 

Violent illegal protests numbered 41, less than 0.1 percent of the total. But the problem is that they are getting more violent. Molotov cocktails, paint and stones were the weapons of choice in the 80s, but today there are homemade guns (a protest in Seoul in November 2003) and flamethrowers (Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province this July). Some blew up a barrel of liquefied petroleum gas in a protest in North Jeolla Province in November 2003. 

In fairness, the  left has no monopoly on the use of flammables and other  nasty implements  for protesting, but two groups on the far left are probably responsible for most of the violence:  Hanchongryon and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, both of which are now beyond the point of denying the substantial influence North Korea exercises over them.  If I’m right, we will soon say goodbye to an interlude in which South Korea’s protest culture, whatever its other faults, seldom got anyone seriously hurt or killed.  Things will get worse, because Korea’s radical left probably knows that  another Kwangju  is one of the few things that can reenergize it before the next election, or prevent the election of a conservative government with both the will and the means to outlast Kim Jong Il’s.  This would represent more than an ordinary electoral setback.  If the  North Korean regime  thinks it might cease to exist without South Korean aid money, there’s no telling what levers it would pull to prevent such a development. 

It’s scary to consider the circumstances:  South Korea’s Fifth Column  is  in danger of being exposed, although the government has managed to quiet down the Il Shim Hue scandal for now.  But if I were one of  its agents, I wouldn’t patiently wait another year for an election that would bring the GNP to power,  uproot  my network from its positions of hard-won influence, and very possibly land me in a jail cell.  First, I’d spend some quality time with my shredder.  Then, I’d make as much trouble as I possibly could.