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Thursday, June 12, 2008

New age, tech-savvy Korean protesters bewilder authorities

SEOUL — The new conservative, pro-U.S. president of South Korea, who was elected by an landslide earlier this year, now finds his ratings at 16 percent. How could this be?

No one knows for sure, but a lot of the blame goes to the latest variant of an annual tradition — spring riots by students.

South Korean protesters perform during a candlelight vigil against U.S. beef imports in Seoul, on June 11. AP/Ahn Young-joon

In this Christian and Buddhist country, Confucian traditions run deep. Thus, scholars are at the top of the cultural hierarchy, and the spring/summer rioters are accorded a measure of respect, even if they are also a nuisance.

Korean riot police are second to none in their expertise at dealing with passionate protesters. They learned from confronting anti-government demonstrators in 1980s.

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Twenty years ago, during protests against the military government of Chun Doo-Hwan, demonstrators threw Molotov cocktails and used steel sticks and bricks against riot police, who countered with tear-gas. "Grabbers," martial-art police troopers in plain clothes, chased and arrested the protesters. Police photographers took pictures of front-line attackers and apprehended them later.

However, both demonstrators and the police played by certain rules and usually called off the shenanigans at midnight to go home and sleep.

Over the past month, there have been candlelight rallies without a single day’s rest. The rallying cries concern U.S. beef.

Youthful demonstrators are demanding renegotiation of a deal restoring U.S. beef imports agreed to by President Lee Myong-Bak on the eve of his meeting with President Bush at Camp David. Middle school and high school students began the protests fearing that they would be exposed to mad cow disease.

Others see the hand of ousted leftists, whose accommodation policies toward North Korea proved ultimately unpopular with the public.

The current protest movement is being driven by the Internet-savvy generation of youngsters, most of whom are not even of voting age.

Lee was elected last December in a landslide election that some younger voters ignored in defiance of politics.

The government and the riot police are bewildered to the point of frustration at the appearance of this new generation of protesters. Unlike their seniors, who were armed with Molotov cocktails and sticks and charged at the riot police chanting angry slogans, the new generations protesters have a candle in one hand and a digital camera phone in the other.

These camera phones prove to be much more dangerous than Molotov cocktails. They have recorded and posted police brutality on the Internet.

The demonstrators are beating the police at their own game.

Rather than countering the riot police with violence, they fire toy water pistols at them. They sing and dance. They tire the police with their mobility and unpredictability as they continuously communicate with each other and coordinate the action through Internet.

Also bewildered are the nation’s three most influential newspapers of Chosun, Joong Ang and Dong-A, collectively called Chojoongdong by the demonstrators as a pejorative for their support for the president. Despite the three major papers’ efforts, Lee's popularity now stands at 16 percent.

“It’s like you meet a relative kid after many years and realize how tall he has grown,” said an editor at a mainstream newspaper. “The new generation kids are too advanced and unpredictable for us oldsters to catch up.”

Shin Gwang-Young, a sociology professor at Joong Ang University sees it in differently.

“We are witnessing the newest form of participatory democracy in the making and for the first time in the history,” he said.


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