In South Korea, Protesting Is An Occupation
By Choe Sang-Hun
International Herald Tribune
March 2, 2006SEOUL Hong Jung Sik, a former airport customs inspector, likes to storm the offices of politicians embroiled in corruption scandals.
He dresses up as a mortician, wearing a surgeon's cap, plastic gloves and cotton balls stuck up his nose to block the "stench." He sprays salt - an act associated with death and considered a potent insult in Korean culture - and bellows, "I am here to dress your corpse!"
"You should see their faces when I do that," Hong says.
Park Chan Sung, an ordained Protestant pastor, is more focused in selecting his victims. In the past few years, the fire-and-brimstone pastor has probably burned more North Korean flags and more effigies of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il than any other in this nation crowded with firebrand demonstrators.
"Kim Jong Il is my arch enemy," says Park.
The minister's pyrotechnics in central Seoul have unsettled South Korean leaders seeking reconciliation with the Communist North. Still, Park says, "My dream will come true the day I go to Pyongyang and topple his statues."
Hong and Park are two of the most visible demonstrators in South Korea, staging over 200 protests a year between them. While dismissed by many Koreans as being harmless pranksters in search of action, they are also widely admired for their persistence.
They also personify the nation's penchant and tolerance for demonstrations - a tool once used by the people of South Koreans to force military strongmen to embrace democratic reforms.
Decades after military rule ended, a noisy protest is still seen as the best way to make one's voice heard in South Korea. In downtown Seoul, hardly a weekend passes without demonstrators of all stripes rallying, creating gridlock and testing the patience of drivers.
The protests can have tragic consequences; two farmers were killed and more than 330 policemen and protesters hurt in a bloody clash in November.
Government policy makers pursuing foreign investment and trade liberalization see the culture of protest as a problem that brings bad headlines - as was the case when anti-globalization activists from South Korea led violent protests in Hong Kong during the World Trade Organization talks in December.
Even the protesters find themselves the target of protests. In January hundreds of mothers with sons serving in the riot police marched through Seoul, protesting the tendency of other protesters to attack their sons.
"Don't beat my son!" the parents chanted. Lee Jung Hwa, a mother, said: "Every day it feels as if I have sent a son to war."
Statistics show that an average riot policeman is mobilized to contain 85 demonstrations a year. One in every 53 riot policemen was hurt last year while fighting protesters. Witnesses say that as many protesters get injured as do police officers.
Peaceful demonstrations are constitutionally protected. South Koreans today complain about large protests that disrupt traffic, but they abhor even more a brutal police crackdown on demonstrators, even if they break laws by breaking police lines and wielding steel pipes and throwing fire bombs.
And persistent demonstrations often compel bureaucrats to push papers faster and management to cave in to accept labor demands.
President Roh Moo Hyun apologized for the police crackdown that killed the two farmers in November, although he blamed farmers for starting the violence.
"It's time to reform our 'protest culture,'" said the national police chief, Huh June Young, while resigning in tears following the incident. "In our society, there is a widespread tendency to belittle law enforcement authority."
South Koreans' penchant for demonstrations, and the police's lenient reaction to them, may reflect rising discontent over the slumping economy but have deeper roots in Korean history, said Huh Kyoung Mi, a professor of police administration at Keimyung University.
"In old days, people justified violent protests as a means to resist brutal dictatorship," Professor Huh said. "Ordinary people today are tired of them but activists stick to the old ways."
Today, workers and farmers wield steel pipes and burn police cars demanding job security and condemning globalization. Liberals burn U.S. flags and call for reconciliation with North Korea. Conservatives burn North Korean flags and chant, "Down with Roh Moo Hyun."
Civic groups, unions and other activists help friends organize protests along their ideological lines. A typical demonstration features a neat array of colorful banners and streamers and a dance troupe romping on a temporary platform to songs blaring from batteries of loud speakers. It lasts hours and peddlers weave through protesters hawking ice cream in summer and plastic cushions in winter.
The number of public demonstrations rose 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 2000 to 893 last year.
"In the old days it was mainly volleys of stones and tear gas," said Shin Sung Shik, who served as a riot policeman in the late 1990s. "Now the fighting is of a closer range, between police shields and protesters' steel pipes.
"The riot police are all young conscripts. When they fight farmers as old as their uncles, their lines easily crumble. Senior officers beat the juniors' helmeted heads to regroup them. But once a comrade gets hurt, young officers fight back. Then we have a war," Shin said.
When clashes erupt, "vanguards" of seasoned protesters - mostly former student activists - take charge. Like on-the-scene movie directors, their leaders often regulate the fighting, and even negotiate and the release of people held by the police.
Hong and Park agree peaceful protests seldom get attention here, although they do not join violent farmers' rallies.
"Somebody has to agitate the crowd. I agitate the conservatives," says Park, 52.
Even when he takes a megaphone and rails against Kim Jong Il and his nuclear weapons program, Park dresses formally in a suit and tie and has neatly combed hair.
In contrast, Hong, 55, is a man with glowing and bloodshot eyes who taunts police officers and says he constantly thinks about what to protest - usually getting ideas from the news.
"The evening news makes my blood boil," Hong says. "People want a scary, fierce, passionate and spectacular performance."
Hong is an almost daily nuisance for police - and one with an a keen eye for publicity. He recently mailed clothespins to cabinet ministers telling them to "keep their mouths shut."
Last summer, he was in front of the Japanese Embassy here during protests against that country's wartime past.
When he found himself a prime spot before TV cameramen and prepared to slash pictures of Japanese leaders with a knife, a young man jumped in with a kitchen knife and said he wanted to slash open his own belly in protest.
Hong pushed the intruder away and snarled, "You wait for your turn!"