I saw where the Lee administration has stuck with its investigation of, and legally holding to account, PD Diary for its unethical manipulation of facts concerning the potential threat of Mad Cow Disease from imported American beef.  It was a highly inflammatory special report on American beef that started the months-long and sometimes massive anti-US protests last year.

If this were America, I’d probably not want to see the government taking a news show to court.  I’d think it’d be better to just have the government put out a PR campaign to rightfully discredit the show. — But it is good to see Lee sticking with this, even as the issue has remained out of the public eye, because too often in the past, the anti-US groups and leadership were let off the hook for violations of the law.  It is good to see Lee showing that acts have consequences.

What made me want to post here, however, is that I started thinking this week, “When are we going to see another spike in activity?”

My long stated rule of thumb, one I came up with in the late 1990s-2000, is that — a spike in anti-US activity comes about every 8 to 14 months – or roughly once a year.

And spikes can come in roughly two forms:  one with significant street protest activity – the other with just a lot of news coverage that generates a lot of office watercooler talk across the society.

I think it is getting far enough past the Cows Gone Wild!! Hysteria period to start wondering if/when the next event will happen…

The Mad Cow Disease spike proved to me that I was right in my guess as to why things had been so unusually quiet for several years.   Spikes in activity were not coming every 8 to 14 months after the abnormally large protests over the death of the two middle school girls came to an end in the Summer of 2003 — at least from what I could tell from outside Korea and not teaching Korean adults anymore.

My guess was that the amount of damage done to the US-SK alliance in 2002-2003 still scared them – especially with an anti-US president now in control of foreign policy and the US making signs it wanted off the DMZ and eventually out of the country.  I’d long argued that one of two ways that an anti-US spike in activity comes to an end is the “Turtle Effect” — where Korean society believes it has gone to0 far and fears a backlash.

I knew the key test of my theory would be the last presidential election, because it was obvious the conservatives were going to win the Blue House back.  Would the people then feel like it was safe to come out of their shell?

— Yes.  Boy did they ever…….The spike in anti-US activity they unleashed was even a good bit bigger and longer lasting than anything I’d witnessed in the 1990s.

But, that came to an end roughly less than a year ago, right?  We’re in my 8 to 14 month period…

If we go another 6 months without a noticable spike in anti-US activity, I’ll have to start to believe that Korean society has moved away from the norm of the 1990s.  There have been signs that this is the case:

The anti-US college groups are not as popular as they were in the 1990s.  They never really overcame their collapse when they beat 2 people to death while “interrogating” them as possible police spies in the late 1990s.  They resurged in the mammoth protests of 2002-2003, but then quickly faded when that came to an end.

Even more encouraging, conservative groups have made some headway on campus.  And it does seem other conservative groups are more engaged in counter-protests more often when anti-US groups try to get a spike in activity going.  In the 1990s, you might have seen the Veterans groups out in a pro-US counter-protests, but their numbers were few.  Cows Gone Wild!! Hysteria saw more counter protests and with larger numbers than in the 1990s and this was a trend going back several years.  For example, the MacArthur Statue Protest had about as many pro-US counter demonstrators as anti-US ones while Roh was still in office.

More broadly speaking, South Korea’s democracy has matured since the 1990s.   They have witnessed several normal changes in administration through free elections.  They have witnessed power change from one side of the political spectrum to the other and then back again.   And as might be expected, as the people have gotten used to the common flow of democracy, they seem to have become somewhat less politically minded.   For example, one reason the media often cites for the demise of the radical groups at university is — students are simply more worried about getting a job and a career and a family than about national politics.

So, how much has the society changed since the 1990s on the anti-US front?

I don’t know.   I do think I’ll get something of a clue by watching what happens – or doesn’t happen – between now and December….