Something about the Inchon protest doesn't add up for me. I've got a pretty good handle of how this all works in Korea with the different groups, but I'm not sure what was up with this weekend's protest.

A check around the many anti-US sites a few days before the protest seem to reveal --- that sites which had been pretty much dead for months were active again, and a good number of sites were acitively working together by at least using a common opening page portal before navigating to their main webpages, and all, including the big sites that are active everyday -- were promoting the 9/11 Inchon protest.

In the past, these websites tended to take stuff from each other. And most would feed off of www.voiceofpeople.org which emerged in 2002 as the leading anti-US site. But, the didn't work together like this.

So, it seemed these groups wanted to accomplish something this past Sunday.

The basic idea would be they wanted to rip down MacArthur's statute. But, that ain't it.

The civic groups would have known the riot police would protect the statue, and the chances of them getting to the statute and tearing it down were about as good as them getting on base and doing something major or getting into the Embassy grounds in large number and so on. The fights we always see with the groups pushing in a scrum with the police are symbolic. They aren't really trying to go anywhere...

Like in May and July in Pyongtaek --- the goal was ripping down the fence line -- not getting on base....

I thought 9/11's protest was to get a big event up and as many average Koreans as possible to join in and then roll it over into a start of an extended push in Pyongtaek against the base expansion.

Now, I am in the dark.....

I'll cut this a little short until I get a better handle on it, but I am having trouble with the numbers.

They turned about 4,000 according to the papers.

Now, if they meant for Sunday to be a kickoff, 4,000 is a bad failure.

The university groups can turn out 4,000 easily with little effort.

The amount of effort shown leading up to 9/11 would have turned out at least 4,000 university students and should have turned out more.

But, on Friday or so, the media said the activist expected about 4,000 people. At the time, I thought that was just them being conservative....

4,000 means little to no "average" Koreans took part --- which does mean the call to arms put out fell on deaf ears. (Don't take great comfort in that --- I'll explain more later.....)

But, 4,000 also means the university groups alone did not put forward a major effort in getting out all the troops they could. 4,000 is good for them, but it isn't really a major effort.

What really sent me into confusion was the news note that the Labor Unions and Labor Party were also said to be involved in leading the 9/11 Inchon charge.

That doesn't make sense ----- if they were really trying to get a good kick off on Sunday.

The Unions are the most disciplined civil organizations going. When the Union bosses say "demonstrate" --- the members obey.

4,000 for a Union demonstration can be done at the drop of a hat. The univeristy groups have to work at that number a little, but both groups can turn out that number on their own.

So ----------- why only 4,000 when both of these groups were supposed to be two of the ones spearheading it???????????????

The rest of the many, many, many named anti-US groups might have membership roles, but they are basically only the leaders themselves, and they are incestuous. They are the guys and girls you will see in the tiny protests outside Yongsan or the Embassy or elsewhere where you see a handful of older people standing together holding a banner.

The only time these groups can turn out numbers on their own is when greater Korean society feels like venting.

These groups rely on the university students and labor if they want a big protests.

And again, if these groups including labor and students wanted a big protest Sunday, they could have done much better than 4,000 if they only got their own members out.

Something doesn't add up...........

Why put out so much leading up to the 9/11 Inchon protest encouraging everyone to come out to play when you were only going to get 4,000 of your own to show up?????

I haven't figured it out yet.....

I'm not ready to give an educated guess...............

Why was the turn out so low? Maybe the students had a mid-term. :p

I'm still trying to figure what the Korean students have against MacArthur. Don't they realize without MacArthur they would be under North Korean rule today? My only guess is they would rather live under North Korean rule than live with 32,500 American GIs. Sounds silly, but when you are brain washed since youth to believe Americans are the main problem in Korea, it makes sense.

Mike

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Buddies,

the Communist want to break the statue because they hate McArther, actually USA.
They believe they could establish their own communist country in this peninsula if there was no allied forces leading by USA at Korean war.

We're really worry about this kind of communist nowadays, including a lot of officers who was member of these communist group which has a different scale for Kim's dynasty of North Korea and democratic government of south Korea.

We're waiting for the next election to send them North Korea, and to recover the relationship with USA we achieved last 45 years after Korean war.

Once again they're not silly but they're communist!
jz

Mike,

To see vividly what the students who go to the protest to fight feel they have against MacArthur, take a look at the videos at this site --

http://www.chungchun.net/sub.html?fn...vod&category=6

These are the hardcore true believers. At least in the 1990s, they were hardcore communists like in the 1930s in the United States. I think that has changed somewhat since then --- since in 1997-98, at two different demonstrations, some of their leaders thought they spotted a police spy at two different sit in protests, and they took each of the guys to a secluded room and "interrogated" them to death.

There are still the same type of hardcore members, but more of them are more correctly just very blind to any sense of reality about the North, truly believing all the negative is US and right wing Korean propaganda. They truly believe with USFK gone, the South and North would unite instantly and the resulting government would be a free mix and the result would be a much better "true" democracy for "the people" and economic equality and "people power" would rule ---- something along the lines of what ohmy(gosh)news sometimes talks about.

The average Korean isn't as far gone as these guys. The average Korean doesn't want USFK out by any means ---- at least not yet.

But, in my opinion, below the age of 65, the "average" Korean does view the US relationship as a "necessary" evil......