Also in today's paper is a story of a woman who used her baby buggy---and her baby---to stand in the way of the police and their water canons (sic, lol).
At around 1:40 p.m. June 26, police stationed two water canon vehicles in front of Saemoonan Church, downtown Seoul. It was to dismiss the protestors overcrowding the road.The article talks about messages of support posted on a website 유모차부대, for example the one that provides this post's title. A Naver search turns up tons of photos of group members strolling through protests with . . . strollers. Here are a few.
As the police prepared for a second spurt after spouting water for 10 minutes, a housewife suddenly approached the water canon vehicles pushing forth a baby buggy with her child in it.
The police requested the mother to move aside to the footpath, but she stayed right there saying, “I’ll only move aside after the water canon vehicles move away.”
The protesters began to give her a hand. When the combat policemen came toward her, they immediately surrounded the baby buggy blocking access. Police persuaded the mother without using force so as not to provoke the protesters, but she did not yield. Police withdrew the water canon vehicles from the site after a 30-minute-long fuss.
About 40 protesters with baby buggies who took part in the rally on June 25 and were near the Sejong intersection were also faced with a dangerous situation as the rally turned violent.
When the police forced the protesters toward Taepyeong Street, about 100 of them were driven to the rear where baby-buggy members were sitting with their children. Fortunately the protesters and policemen caught sight of them and refrained from physical collision, preventing any casualty.
Korean babies are absolutely adorable and provide hours of entertainment. I want one. They also make great accessories and are the perfect complement to a lonely and frustrated life, so if you have a vagina you really ought to put it to use, what with Korea's declining birth rate and all. I posted a little something about these mothers at the protests a while back, pointing out the hypocracy of this "살고 싶다!" ("I want to live") crap when a recent study found that only 12% of Korean parents used car seats for their kids and that, LMFAO, Koreans actually fought against car seat legislation. But as any Jeollanam-do resident will point out, traffic safety and beef protests are not related, and complete indifference to well-being in one sector of life does not preclude one for clamoring for it in another. *cough*
Going on over to the Hankyoreh I found the cartoon "Another Gwangju" that puts it all in perspective. I noted back around the anniversary of the Gwangju Massacre that the protestors, amidst their wall-to-wall anti-beef stuff, were trying to cast these latest demonstrations in the same spirit of the democratization movement. I see their point, and maybe if they weren't so batshit insane I'd be more sympathetic. But anyway, the Hankyoreh article goes on to talk about all the police brutality going on nowadays. Pardon my boldness, but I just have to say that police brutality sucks. It's, like, fucked up. But, um, you can't beat the shit out of riot cops and then expect them to sit there and take it.
Ooooh, bad timing, sorry. Incidentally, just as my coworkers vehemently deny there were any anti-American displays at the 5/18 commemoration or that "PD Diary" lied, they also deny that protestors are attacking police. It's worth repeating that understanding Korea's long and unique culture *cough*, as people like me are often implored to do, becomes so much easier when you can completely ignore huge chunks of it. And like I've said before, and like was reiterated on the latest Seoul Podcast, I'm all for being anti-establishment and raging against this machine or that, but the rub is that here all the quote-unquote liberal papers are so off the fucking wall that it's pretty much impossible to get behind their causes. Staggering.
9 comments:
Brian, I double-dare you to come up to Seoul on the 5th of July for the next big rally and do your own one-man anti-anti-US beef protest at City Hall. Heck, it would even be the 4th Stateside time, so you could have a proper US steak BBQ and "accidently" fling the drippings at passersby. That would be fun, and great blog fodder to boot!
I do agree that The Hankyoreh is pathetic and shameless and has the mentality of a hormone-addled high school student. Comparing the current protests to Kwangju as they do is absolutely disgusting.
Shootin' that water canon sure looks like fun!
Don't get all wound up in the politics of the moment. There is no significance to be found in any of this. In time Koreans will basically forget about it, and you'll be left holding a grudge.
Just sit back and watch the movement of Being. Or you could be like me and focus on Steelers' upcoming training camp!
David,
Reflecting on the politics of the time gives you the wisdom to navigate them the next time.
In regards to the post:
The image of those innocent and wide-eyed children in front of the riot police is disturbing. The typical protesting Korean operates this way in public for the sole purpose of the picture and the right to brag about its "significance" later.
It's a history that works not in fluid connectiveness, but individual clips that serve only to evoke false emotions later. This is a perfect example.
With these beef protests it's really easy to take stuff out of context. To go through Naver, find a few pictures of babies at the rally and say "see, parents are using their kids as props!" Or to go through the union website, find a few cartoons or pictures, and say "see, teachers are brainwashing their children!" Or to find videos of people destroying vehicles and say "see, these protests are violent!" Or to find anti-American posters and say "see, these protests are all about anti-Americanism." I think that does a lot of damage to people quote-unquote covering these rallies because it looks like we're intentionally oversimplifying things or intentionally taking things out of context. My coworker, for example, believes my whole problem with the beef protests is because I consider them anti-American . . . that because I pointed out anti-American elements in Gwangju I now consider all these candle-waving children to be anti-American. That's extremely wrong and a gross misunderstanding of what I've been trying to write. But it hits upon something The Morning Clam just brought up, namely that it seems like a lot of these photos and galleries are staged for dramatic effect, and so it's only natural that people like me---and the countless Korean media outlets---pick up on them and pick up on their dramatic effects. But rather than look for simple explanations for these protests, if anything the "coverage" on blogs reveal the multitude of issues that are being put into play at these demonstrations. (But, I still maintain the Mad Cow scare whipped the public into a frenzy that wouldn't have been possible if we were just talking about LMB, the canal, or education). I need to learn how to use paragraphs.
Scott: You brought up a good point on an earlier post that I removed and modified. When you spend time trying to refute nationalism or trying to argue against emotional arguments, it's pretty easy to become equally as off-the-wall as your opponents. For example, have you ever had a rational discussion of Dokdo/Takeshima? It's hard. Paying attention to the news and the blogs does add a little more stress, and to be honest if I didn't follow the news at all my life'd be a lot more blissful. But, I don't know if it's a good idea to go through life that way. It's definitely good to have some friends that are completely outside the world of teaching and writing, and I've thankfully met a few recently.
Oh, and I forgot it was America's birthday this week. I'm so used to being on vacation during that time that I didn't even notice it was summer.
it's also canada day today.
if you want, on the fifth, you can walk around the protests with me; maybe baeksu will join us. Personally, i'm not up for a counterprotest, but maybe we could try to start a "Don't Taze Me, Bro!" chant.
the atmosphere at the protests have been totally surreal (and Baeksu's right that I, though I look like an American, haven't felt in the least threatened by the crowd); i'm interested in what's going to happen next, now that the Catholic Church has jumped into the fray -- what a very curious development (see Gord Sellar's latest post)
I might have to head down to the protests again on Saturday night to see what's up, regardless. . .keeping a safe distance from truncheons and water cannons, of course.
maybe baeksu can let me know the best vantage point to see everything go down.
morning clam: "Reflecting on the politics of the time gives you the wisdom to navigate them the next time."
Thanks, for that. I guess I haven't learned single thing in 13 years in Korea -- through all the Super 301 crap in 1996 and 97, through GM's takeover of Daewoo in 2000, through the tank incident in 2002, and now through this.
I am speechless. These mothers should be arrested for child endangerment and neglect and the children sent to protective custody.
"maybe baeksu can let me know the best vantage point to see everything go down."
Roboseyo, the best place to be is where all the babes are. Korea may never have a Summer of Love but this is definitely its Summer of Hate.
Personally, I think all this S&M is a huge turn-on!
Human Shields: It's one thing to choose to put yourself in harms way for whatever ideological values you choose to believe and weigh against the value of your own life. It's another thing to put the life of your child in harm's way . . . I'm all for contextualizing issues, but this is one time that I think I'd have to say my opinion is that using babies as human shields is 100% wrong.
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