I wrote a comment on Marmot’s for the first time in a while, but the comment hasn’t shown up. (Perhaps the number of links in it got it caught in the filter.) So I thought I’d post it here, in case it doesn’t show up for a while yet. WangKon936 posted about popular Korean concerns regarding the changes that Lee Myung Bak’s Administration has made to the regulations on the importing of American beef in the USA, restrictions put in place in 2003, and relaxed somewhat in 2006, out of fear of mad cow disease. His comments imply that Korean …
Series: Beef Protests '08
Impeachment Petition online
UPDATE (5 May 2008): It’s over a million signatures now. Original Post: I know, I know, Korean netizens and all that, but still, you’d think Marmot’s might have posted the story before me, yet I couldn’t find it.There’s an online petition at Daum calling for the impeachment of President Lee, basically just over dumb policies and scandalous news we’ve seen in the last four months. It’s at 56,000+ signatures, at the moment, but some netizens are claiming that 10,000 signatures mysteriously disappeared sometime last night. There are also T-shirts available online with the naughty-looking rodent logo that appears on the …
Seoul Demo, 2 May 2008
UPDATE (3 May 2008): The demonstration on the 3rd sucked. As usual for 21st century Korea, when something is good, the first thing that happens is microphones and a sound system are brought in, random yahoos blab into the microphones (or, worse, sing) for hours on end, and the crowds end up becoming an audience, not participants. I wandered off, disappointed, when some teenaged boy was onstage cussing out Lee Myung Bak, and snapped a few more shots of the crowds who turned out, but nothing too special. (I’ll upload them later.) Lime and I ended up going for dinner …
Free Speech? F*ck You, Citizens!
How is a democracy supposed to work when citizens can be criminally prosecuted for disagreeing with the government? It’s too bad that there’s nobody left outside Korea who can pressure the government here to actually allow criticism, differing opinions, and so on. But hey, when the major governments of the world are convinced they have God on their side… The national prosecution and police say they are going to criminally prosecute people involved in spreading so-called “mad cow horror stories” (gwangubyeong goedam) on the Internet, in addition to prosecuting the organizers of candlelight protests against imports of American beef. A …
Mad Cow Update
As I’ve said before, it’s worth listening to what scientists say. I’m willing to listen when the Professors Kim of Hallim University say that their research findings have been wrongfully exaggerated by those who oppose US beef. Others online have pointed out how unfortunate (yes, truly) it is that Koreans aren’t (yet) up in arms about other issues that need serious attention, from traffic fatalities to avian influenza — which is true, and I really wish people were. We’ve got H5CN1 in the neighborhood now. (To that I’d add reforming police service, which right now is almost as useless as …