This Saturday 4,000 protestors from the union representing USFK workers rallied near Yongsan Garrison in Seoul to protest the planned job cuts due to base consolidation and a budget short fall due to the Korean government cutting the amount of money it pays to up keep the alliance.

Almost 90 percent of the 13,000-member Korean Employees Union (KEU) voted a month ago to stage protests in response to a U.S. Forces Korea announcement that it would cut as many as 1,000 jobs because South Korea reduced the amount of money it pays to help base U.S. troops on the peninsula. Officials from the two countries signed a two-year agreement in late April that requires South Korea to pay 680.4 billion won (about $680 million) annually, an 8.9 percent drop from last year’s 746.9 billion won payment.

Let’s see, this protest is more against the Korean government than USFK since they are the one’s that cut the budget and it drew 4,000 protestors which is more people than the 3,000 Hanchongnyun protestors from last week, yet the Hanchongnyun protestors made international headlines. Could it be because the USFK union workers conducted a civilized protests and didn’t resort to bashing policemens heads and destroying property which the news only likes to report? I would be surprised if any newspaper or the news gives you the statistic I just gave you that the base workers drew more people than Hanchongnyun.

I bet the union could of swelled their numbers even more if they put out they were going to beat the riot police and fire bomb Yongsan. All the knucleheads from the universities would of come out even though they probably don’t give a damn if a base worker loses their job or not; they only want to bash in some heads and destroy property to brag about it at the bar that night. These violent protestors have no fear of being arrested so the protests are more for their own entertainment purposes than being a civic endeavor.

Hanchongnyun wouldn’t even have the amount of protestors that got last weekend if asaulting police officers and destroying property was punished with stiff jail sentences. I applaud the union for not resorting to what should be illegal behavior.