A series of posts discussing the “US Beef Protests” that took place in Seoul in the summer of 2008, and what they were really about—which goes beyond a moral panic over the importing of US beef into into Korea, and into the heart of the sociopolitical malaise that still plagues South Korean politics today.
I’ve uploaded the last of my 2MB Demo pics, from the last big night (July 5th), here. Oops! Some were from the Catholic “Emergency” Mass, and thus are now in this set. Some were from the last big night, July 5th, in this set. I found some pics from earlier on, too — the best […]
Well, I heard about this when I got home last night, and when I got up this morning, I found that Marmot’s Hole had a post up on the story. The comment thread, and a subsequent post by Andy Jackson (and its comments), were of course filled to the brim with vitriolic snark on the […]
It’s true that Koreans are not nearly so freaked-out about US beef as they were a month or two ago. The numbers are changing. ROKDrop writes that: With pictures of people lining up outside of meat markets with coolers in hand to buy US beef undoubtedly public opinion is going to shift greatly in favor […]
Some of the protesters have been using references to V for Vendetta during the demonstrations. Turns out Scott went up and talked to them, and asked whether they knew that V is an anarchist, or that the V sign is an inverted anarchy symbol. They didn’t. Scott thinks they’re “retards” who are guilty of “ethnocentric […]
A brief note: as always with blogs by foreigners in Korea, caveat emptor. I’ve done a lot of work confirming a lot of this, but there are many points of view I’ve not represented. Yes, some protesters have been badly behaved. Yes, I haven’t been at the protests daily, like Scott Burgeson. Yes, I rely […]