Translations from the Maggot’s Lair Marmot’s Maggoty Comment Lair Hole

This entry is part 6 of 14 in the series Beef Protests '08

I wager most commenters over at Marmot’s don’t imagine this much attention is paid to what they say. (Then again, I can’t imagine most would care, but…) Someone out there seems to have translated the comments thread at Marmot’s Hole for the discussion on the beef import policy protests I’ve discussed in recent posts. (I guess this might explain some of the new traffic I’ve been getting from what, judging by the usernames, look like Korean users I’ve never met before. I was wondering how that happened, and thought it might be my new story that’s in the July issue …

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Seoul Demo, 2 May 2008

This entry is part 3 of 14 in the series Beef Protests '08

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 …

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On the “US Beef Scare” in Korea

This entry is part 1 of 14 in the series Beef Protests '08

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 …

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Impeachment Petition online

This entry is part 2 of 14 in the series Beef Protests '08

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 …

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