With Mass Protests, South Koreans Wield a Familiar Weapon in a New Era - The New York T... - 0 views
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Then as now, mass protest was a powerful weapon deployed by enraged citizens who felt they had nowhere else to turn but the streets. Thirty years later, it’s clear how far Korean democracy has advanced. Then, South Korea was a dictatorship, protests were outlawed and the threat of torture, imprisonment and martial law ever-present.
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Students have long been at the vanguard of South Korea’s robust history of protest, drawing on deep-rooted Confucian traditions that elevated scholars as guardians of morality.
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Yonsei produced its own martyr, 21-year-old Lee Han-yol, who died after a tear-gas canister hit him in the head.
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I saw an older woman, hair neatly coifed, beat a policeman with her handbag. A young father hoisted his little girl on his shoulder, carefully affixing a surgical mask to her face, an imperfect shield from the gas. A student in Kwangju bit his finger and wrote protest slogans in his own blood.
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At the trial, his father lunged at the three policemen, small and scared now, protected by more than 50 guards. Screams broke out and a purse flew through the air at the judges as the light sentence was read. Women whose sons were still in jail stormed the bus carrying the policemen, throwing bottles against the windows. Plainclothes police shoved the four of them onto the concrete, where they lay unconscious.
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Laws are still on the books that can be used as tools to stifle dissent. South Korea remains shadowed by legitimate fears of North Korean aggression and espionage, but those were and are exploited by the government.
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This is not a tame society, for all the comforts its public has won in the years since. This may be the land of Psy and Gangnam style, a country so wired that some of its children are sent to boot camps to wean them from internet addiction.
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This article talks about the protests in South Korea. I found that there are deep conflict between the police and the the people. It makes me think of the police brutality we talked about recently. I think the police should protect the people but now they are using martial arts and tear-gas canisters. To what extent should the police yield the protest from the people? I also found it interesting that students are often more eager to attend those protest than adults. They are usually more radical than adults. Is it a good thing to always let out all their complaints? --Sissi (12/11/2016)