A classy KTEWU cartoon equating the threat to Koreans of Mad Cow Disease from imported American beef to the then-recent earthquake in Sichuan, China and Cyclone Nargis in Burma.
The Korea Times reports that the Ministry of Unification is now refusing to permit members of the Korean Teachers' and Educational Workers' Union to visit North Korea. Too bad, I'm sure they'd like it there. From their "Founding Manifesto":
Meanwhile our dictatorial regime and its selfish educational profiteers, such as MoonGyoBu [the former Ministry of Education], DaeHanKyoReon [the former Korea Federation of Teachers' Association] etc. have distorted our intentions and trampled on us remorselessly. With their irrational behavior, they are on a wild rampage, intent on impeding the advance of history.
BUT HEAR THIS!
400,000 teachers, firmly united in accordance with conscience and truth, would make this wicked regime and these selfish profiteers' attempts futile. We act not out of fear of their threats or lies, but for our students' smiling faces and shining eyes.
Comrades! Let's unite and fight for our students' smiling faces!
Comrades! Let's work together for the democratization of education, the democratization of society, and reunification under the banner of the KTU!
For Korean education! For democratic education! For humane education! For solidarity with the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union!
We've read about the union before on this blog (here and here), in relation to their enthusiastic participation in this spring's demonstrations, and we've seen other examples of their activities elsewhere in the papers and on the blogs. An excerpt from that last link to One Free Korea:
Take a gander, for example, at this paper on the KTU’s “Peace Model of Reuinification Education", and take stock of the KTU’s associations* with obvious North Korean stooge and provocateur So Kyong Won, who in 2003 teamed up with some student radicals to provoke a fight with three American soldiers on the Seoul Subway, kidnap one of them, Private John Murphy, transport him to an anti-American rally on a South Korean campus, and force him to make a videotaped “confession.” So and the former chairman of the KTU traveled to Pyongyang together for a “solidarity” trip in 2003.
At the time, Roh’s government did next to nothing about this or other contemporanous acts of violence against American service members, which may explain why violence has continued to gain acceptance as a means of political expression in South Korea (but I digress).
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