I was remarking on a blog that I have been badly mistaken in my predictions about anti-US protests this year in South Korea.

I have been great at forseeing what steps North Korea was going to take, even if I did give myself a long window of opportunity in my predictions, but all I thought I was going to see out of the South Korean protest groups has been way off.

I don't get it.

We have had several BIG ticket items overlapping this year: Pyongtaek base expansion, movie quota, FTA talks, and US pressure on North Korea all coming at the same time.

With the US looking for a way out of Korea, I had expected these groups would have been fired up and pulling out all the stops in trying to convince Uncle Sam to leave ------ but they have been quieter than usual.

Maybe they just don't understand how things work in American society and in Washington enough to understand their goal of pushing USFK out can be achieved if they just push hard enough right now.

???

It seems to me they have been trying to win over support from the Korean masses ---- by using more quiet, much more peaceful means of protest, because they could see Korean society was already against them.

That is the norm in Korean protest culture: every time things get too hot, and it looks like real damage has been done to the US-SK alliance --- the media starts pumping out "shut the protest groups up" messages, and the average Korean agrees. Big pressure is put on these groups, and the duck for cover ------ and they wait until the society is ready for some good ol anti-US/USFK spewing as a way to stoke Korean pride and nationalism again.

And Korean society has been greatly concerned with losing USFK since well into last year.

But, I thought the anti-US groups would finally decide they had no hope of winning South Korean soiety over ----- and ------ they COULD achieve their goal by the "convince the US to leave" route through very aggressive moves like storming US bases and the US Embassy and a lot of other tactics they have used in the past.

And I was about as wrong as you can be......