My semester just went into break, so I thought I'd do an end of the year brief review.

It turns out all my dire predictions for this year on the anti-USFK front pretty much never came about.

There was a big battle down in Pyongtaek early in the year. I had predicted there would be that kind of battle whenever the government decided to move the squaters and real land holders off the land.

But, I also thought the big battle would be the first loud shot in a series of protests that the anti-US groups would milk for months. It didn't happen. After big battle that kicked the activists out of the elementary school where they were holed up, it just faded away.

Very suprising to me.

The FTA front has also seen a few large, violent demonstrations, and the momentum on that front just picked up recently, so whether that issue will be sucessfully milked by the anti-US groups is still up in the air...

but my thoughts on the FTA front before it kicked off was that it would be sucessfully rolled up into protests on several fronts:

basically, I believed with all the big ticket and hot button issues slated for this year (including SK elections) --- we would witness a year-long push on the anti-US front. I thought the anti-US groups would seize these opportunities to put together a coordinated effort on them all.

And it didn't happen.

I have no reason why that I would bet money on even with great odds.

I thought this year was going to be too good an opportunity for the anti-US groups not to make a big push. I still think it was a very fat year for them: that it was pregnant with opportunities.

But, for some reason, they decided not to seize the day....

????

Part of it could be the Korean media deciding to not report anti-US NGO activity unless it was very significant, and since I'm in the US, I have just missed some of the major events - but I doubt it.

The media would want to bury that stuff because it is afraid of losing USFK, but if the anti-US groups had the desire, they could have grabbed headlines -- even grabbed them in the US press.

But they didn't....

Why????

Apart from the one big battle at Pyongtaek, I don't think we saw any base invasions this year --- that is a usual attention grabber.

We saw protesters make a surpise attendance at a USFK practice landing craft drill, but their numbers were tiny.

Nobody scaled the walls at the US Embassy that I can remember.

It was just an average year on the protest front.

????

I'm clueless.....