Troops guarding the base site are forced to sleep in fours and fives in temporary tents with only a raincoat and blanket between them and the ground. A water shortage barely allows them to wash once a day, and there is no electricity either. Officials are considering plans to rotate the troops guarding the perimeter frequently to reduce hardship.

I got off track at the start of writing this post, so I came back up here and will write the main point followed by a second on.

I.

The position these Korean troops have been put in is the type of thing I dislike.

These are young men.
They are not trained for this kind of duty.
They don't have experience handling this kind of situation.
(There are thousands of riot police man around the nation who are specifically drilled and practiced in situations exactly like this!!!)

And, besides the riots and protesters they have not been taught to deal with ---- during the regular part of their day --- they have to live in caveman type conditions.

It sucks.

It is also a recipie for disaster. Well, not disaster since in the Korean context that would pull up something like Kwangju 1980 where bayonets and bullets were used against protesters (some of who used bullets of their own).

But, what I mean is ----- they are putting inexperienced young men into a pressure cooker situation and have made it worse with the living conditions.

It will be hard enough to maintain discipline in the ranks during the heat of the protests, because they are not experienced or trained to do it.

With the riot police, and the protesters who are out all the time, the violence of Korean protests is like a dance. It is a matter of routine.

That is why I call it "semi-violence" and Korea's national sport.

Now, you are putting amateurs in the ring for the cage match. It probably won't be pretty. It probably won't follow the script either.

And to go along with the possible (likely) breaks in discipline that will come with inexperience and lack of training, you can add the mounting frustration of the men who have just been battle tested when unprepared - when the protesters came back unannounced and breached the fence line ----- where these soldiers had to tape together sticks and use other make-shift weapons to defend themselves.

If I had been one of them, I would have cussed my leaders and the government for putting me in such a shitty situation.

Now, they will have had a week to mull over what happened - and a week to live like they are on an expedition in the Congo - sleeping and working in the mud pits that are rice fileds after a rain - with no electricity and little water.

I bet the food is crap too.

And now, they are going to have to face possibly ten thousand strong militant labor forces and their university student union counter-parts.

---two groups that know how to stage the different types of protests. Who have discipline. Who have trained through experience how to irritate the riot police and how to attack them and work them.

This is not good.

Part II

This article was about the plans for a large protest in Pyongtaek. The groups claim it will be 10,000 strong, and I have long said on this site, if the university students and especially organized labor want to put together such a demonstration, they can with a few phone calls.

That will be put to the test this weekend.

Much of everything else is against a protest of this size: The media has been out several times since January calling for pressure against the groups who have moved the anti-US struggle to Pyongtaek. And, public support is not behind them.

Now, a new element has been added: they have good reason to believe this time law and order will be applied against them -- they can face arrest, followed by trial and a stiff fine and maybe some jail time. That rarely, rarely happens in this usual voilent protests in Korean society.

But, I believe the number of 10,000 will be met or fall maybe 1 or 2 thousand short. If the labor unions are involved - which I am assuming they are given the estimated size - those guys will follow orders and show up and use however much or little violence they are told.