Authorities and American diplomats are concerned over the possibility that a recently-released movie depicting the 1997 Itaewon homicide by a Korean-American and the son of a U.S. soldier may fan the flames of anti-Americanism.

The concerns may be backed by the fact that the film has so far attracted more than 300,000 moviegoers.

Twelve years ago, a Korean American and the child of a U.S. soldier were tried for randomly killing a Korean college student in a restaurant in Itaewon, Seoul. They were eventually released from Korean prison.

The September release of a domestic film based on the incident is rekindling the anger that many Koreans felt toward the investigative authorities during and after the trial of the two suspects, who each blamed the other for the stabbing of the young Korean.

American diplomats, who have seen the movie, are worried that it may rekindle anti-American sentiment among Korean youth.

Authorities are also concerned because the murder case has been used by some progressive civic groups to stir anti-Americanism by raising issues such as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between Korea and the U.S. Prosecutors have claimed that the SOFA makes it difficult for them to collect evidence or seek witnesses.

The case has also played a role in fueling a stereotype harbored by some Koreans that Americans related to the USFK are not duly punished for crimes they commit on Korean territory.   [Korea Times]

The Itaewon Burger King murder case has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Americanism or the SOFA agreement though the article is correct that the usual suspects will try to use this movie to do so.  Just the fact this movie was made is likely because the producers are hoping to draw on latent anti-Americanism in South Korea to draw viewers. 

For those that don’t know the two teens that murdered the Korean boy Cho Chong-pil in the restroom of the old Itaewon Burger King did so because they thought it would be fun.  The teen that committed murder Eddie Lee was a Korean-American with no ties to USFK.  His accomplice Arthur Patterson was a son of a US servicemember and he watched the murder be committed.  Both were arrested and tried in Korean courts and sent to Korean jails.  So what does this have to do with the SOFA?  Nothing of course, but that won’t stop the usual suspects from trying to create the impression that it does.

If people watching this movie want to complain about anything, they should be complaining about their incompetent law enforcement and government.  Lee was convicted of the brutal murder and sentenced for 20 years, but was released after18 months after a higher court over turned the conviction.  Like I said before this has nothing to do with the SOFA.  Patterson the accomplice was also convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison and was released early due to a special pardon from Korean President Kim Dae-jung.  Th victim’s family was awarded in 2006 a settlement from the government due to their incompetence.

So basically due to Korean incompetence two murderers are now running free in America.  Aren’t we the ones that should be complaining?

Oh by the way, when is the Cho Seung-hui movie going to be coming out?

South Korean police plan to distribute a comic book this fall aimed at changing the minds of elementary and middle school students who admire North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and want the U.S. military to leave their country.The move is condemned by a leading teachers union as a return to the country’s dictatorship past.

“The police must not be a political organization,” said Eom Min-yong, a spokesman for the Korea Teachers and Education Workers Union, who claims police are misusing their authority to gain favor with President Lee Myung-bak. The union represents about 18 percent of South Korea’s teachers.

The 52-page book will say that North Korea’s nuclear program and possible reunification under Kim’s communist regime threaten the South, Korean National Police spokesman Kim Ki-tai said.

KNP decided to publish the book after observing a “shocking” trend of anti-Americanism among young bloggers, he said. The police randomly monitor blog sites, paying special attention to those that are considered a threat to national security.

“It aims to straighten out the distorted ideas about reunification and national security among young teenagers,” Kim Ki-tai said, adding that none of the students who wrote the blogs have been arrested.

About 150,000 copies of the booklet, targeting students in grades four through nine, will be distributed to classrooms across the country. The project will cost 75 million won, or about $60,000, and the money will come from the police budget.  [Stars & Stripes]

I don’t agree with police passing out these comic books, but I find it humorous that the KTEW is saying that police should not be used for political purposes and are misusing their authority.  That is exactly what the KTEW been doing for years themselves:

The students went up on stage and told participants they had distributed anti-war badges around the nation in protest against the Iraq war and said they felt unifying the two Koreas was a way to create a world without wars.  They also joined the former communist guerrillas in the shouting of their old slogans against imperialist Yankee soldiers and the puppet regime of Syngman Rhee.  Kim, who also instructed his students to operate an online group that opposes the U.S.-led war in Iraq, now serves as an official with the KTEWU’s North Jeolla Province chapter.

Only in Korea are communist guerrillas teaching anti-Americanism considered part of a school’s cirriculum.

Let’s not forget how the KTEW union also were responsible for spreading lies about US beef in South Korean classrooms in order to mobilize their students to attend anti-US beef protests last summer.  This all shouldn’t be surprising considering the KTEW union are the same pro-North Korean stooges that consistently teach North Korean propaganda and anti-Americanism in their classrooms to include celebrating the 9/11 attacks.

The president then faced the difficult task of facilitating a successful outcome for the peace talks that began in early August 1905 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Roosevelt readily acceded to Japan’s authority over Korea, thereby violating an 1882 Korean-American treaty. He did so believing that a disgruntled Japan might strike against the American territories in Hawaii and the Philippines or American interests in China.

See, it must be true…

Teddy Roosevelt not only sacrificed Korea for the Philippines – but Hawaii too — and throw in trade relations with China to boot…

I also found this next quote rather historically misleading:

On January 2, 1905, the Russian commander at Port Arthur, without consulting his officers, ended the nearly year-long siege by surrendering to the Japanese, even though the Russians had sufficient provisions and ammunition to last three more months.

Uh…From my reading of the NY Times archives of the war period – and from reading here and there in a couple of books about the war – written shortly after it – the Russian troops at Port Arthur were a broken lot after a very long siege and were on their last leg.   This guy reviewing this for the NY Times today makes it sound like a blundering surrender…

I did a little digging on the author of this.  He is listed as

Robert C. Kennedy
Independet Scholar
Norfolk, Virginia

on a website listing scholars of the Gilded and Progressive Age.

From the first three pages of the Google search, he seems to have done much work for Harper’s on their archive of political cartoons…

With the Fourth of July coming up and bases getting ready to celebrate our Independence Day, I am beginning to have second thoughts: Maybe it was a mistake, a costly one, for the colonies to have fought and won the War of Independence against Great Britain. Maybe we should have stayed with England and we would be much happier and more peaceful. Before anybody gets mad at me, let me give my reasons.  [Korea Times]

If you are wondering Jon Huer is a Californian that got his Ph.D in sociology from UCLA and is just another example of a California liberal hating his country.  He could definitely “talk about interesting things at dinner” with Gwyneth Paltrow.  Anyway he goes on to explain his dislike for his country.

His first complaint is that he wishes the US lost the Revolutionary War to Britain so the US could be happy nations like Australia and Canada. For countries that are allegedly so much more happier than Americans, how come both Canada and Australia have nearly the same suicide rates as the US?  Huer goes on to say that everything in Canada and Australia are better then the US mentioning things such as crime rates.  First of all statistics in different countries are gathered in different ways.  So if the statistics are not collected in the same way then they are useless.  However, just to further shoot down Jon Huer here is an exerpt from the 2008 Australian Crime & Safety Report:

Australia’s urban crime rate is on par with most large cities in the United States that have medium crime rates.

As far as Canada they allegedly have a violent crime rate twice that of the US:

Gottlieb cites an article by Canada’s National Post columnist David Frum where he revealed that “Canada’s overall crime rate is now 50 percent higher than the crime rate in the United States.” Moreover, “Since the early 1990s, crime rates have dropped in 48 of the 50 states and 80 percent of American cities. Over that same period, crime rates have risen in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and in seven of Canada’s 10 biggest cities.”

He also cites the most recent complete data available from both countries that shows that in 2003, the violent crime rate in the United States was 475 per 100,000 people; while up north, there were 963 violent crimes per 100,000 people. The figure for sexual assault in Canada per 100,000 people was more than double that of the United States: 74 as opposed to 32.1; and the assault rate in Canada was also more than twice that of the states: 746 to America’s 295 for the people.

Moreover, he cites research that showed the figure for sexual assault in Canada per 100,000 people was more than double that of the United States: 74 as opposed to 32.1; and the assault rate in Canada was more than twice that of the United States: 746 to America’s 295. Also, in 2005, Toronto had 78 murders; that’s a 28 percent increase in homicides since 1995.

Remember what I said before about statistics, but obviously both Australia and Canada are not the low crime paradises that Huer makes them out to be.  Huer makes a huge leap in logic by claiming the US would become free and independent in time like Australia and Canada if the colonists did not launch the Revolutionary War.  For having a doctorate degree in sociology Huer definitely doesn’t know his history considering that the British learned from their experience fighting in the Revolutionary War to better manage their colonies so they would not have to fight another expensivie revolution.  There is absolutely no guarantee that Canada and Australia would have evolved the way they did if it was not for the American Revolution.

Next Huer goes on to complain that Americans do not pay enough tax like the Canadians and Australians.  Well if you look at the income tax rates for the three countries they are all nearly similar overall:

Huer then claims that American tax payers are not paying enough taxes for public schools.  I paid $2,800 in property taxes last year for the public schools in my area and Huer doesn’t think I am paying enough?  I don’t even have any kids in school to get anything out of that tax money.  In fact when I have kids that are of school age my wife and I will put them in private scholl instead of the substandard schools my $2,800 tax bill go to pay.  I have to wonder if Huer owns in property in the US since he is living in Seoul?  If he doesn’t he has some nerve claiming people like myself are not paying enough in taxes for schools. Plus if you look at the graphs in this report provided the UN, the US is one of the world’s leaders in education spending that tops both Canada and Australia.

Huer then goes on to complain about massives deficits but earlier in the article he complaining about the lack of universal health care in the US and more funding for schools that would only further increase the deficit.  Probably the most outrageous claim by Huer is that it was a “national humiliation” to have assistance from the French during the Revolutionary War.  He tries to tie the French help to the US-ROK SOFA agreement being a humilation for South Korea.  What is especially ironic about this statement is that Jon Huer is dependent on the US-ROK SOFA considering he teaches at the University of Maryland extended campus on Yongsan Garrison in Seoul.

The article is filled with plenty of more crap, but I think everyone gets the point by now because Jon Huer isn’t worth any more of time responding to.  Isn’t it incredible that this garbage is worth a Ph.D from UCLA?

The participants in the 119th anniversary of May Day, including the bereaved families of Yongsan crackdown victims, march towards Yeongdeungpo Station from Yeouido where they held a celebration ceremony. Photo courtesy of Yonhap News Agency

Thousands of South Koreans took to the streets Friday, demanding jobs and denouncing government policies in mostly peaceful May Day protests.

Police said about 16,000 people converged on a park near the National Assembly to mark the international labor day. They waved signs and chanted ant-government slogans under clear skies. Some called on South Korean President Lee Myung-bak step down.

“I am here to be with the people screaming for jobs and kicking and screaming to keep their jobs,” said Kang Ki-kab, leader of the progressive Democratic Labor Party.

South Korea’s economy has been hit hard by the global economic slump as demand for the country’s exports has waned, though large-scale job losses and layoffs have so far been avoided. Still, the country’s unemployment rate has steadily risen and reached 4 percent in March.  [Associated Press]

They drew only 16,000 people which just shows they were able to only mobilize their core professional protesters who many are paid and do this for a living.  Also notice how they decided to change the rally to protesting the 2002 Armored Vehicle Accident and the Yongsan Fire issue to now protesting about the economy.  These leftists ar schzophrenic in their efforts to come up with anything to bash the United States of Korean President Lee Myung-bak with.

U.S. Forces Korea is advising all U.S. personnel to avoid a large area of downtown Seoul on Friday and Saturday because of large gatherings that could turn violent.

According to the USFK Web site, a protest group with strong anti-American sentiment is planning a series of demonstrations at the Seoul City Hall Plaza and/or the Cheonggue Plaza. One demonstration is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, and a larger protest, expected to draw about 100,000 people, is planned for Saturday. Several other groups also plan to protest government policies in rallies Friday that could draw an additional 20,000 to 100,000 people, USFK said.

The Korean National Police have vowed to exercise tight control over the crowds, USFK said, creating the potential for violent clashes between police and protesters. Security cordons near the plazas are expected to cause delays.

USFK is advising Americans to avoid the area as well as mass transit that is near or leads to the area.

I went over to the USFK website to see what group would be able to draw 100,000 people to protest and here is who it is:

From 28 Apr to 2 May 09, the Yongsan POMDAEWI (Pan-National Countermeasure Committee for the Late Middle School Girls Killed by US Military Armored Vehicle) is planning on leading a series of demonstrations at the Seoul City Hall Plaza and/or the Cheonggue Plaza in Seoul in honor of the five protesters and one police officer who were killed in Yongsan over eviction disputes which turned violent on 20 Jan 09.  The Yongsan POMDAEWI party claims they want to find out the truth behind the Yongsan accident and punish those responsible.  Yongsan POMDAEWI has designated 28 to 30 Apr 09 as the Pan National Week to honor the memories of those killed on 20 Jan 09.  From 28 to 30 Apr 09, at 1900 hours daily, the Yongsan POMDAEWI will gather at the Seoul City Hall or the Cheonggue Plaza.  [USFK.mil]

You can read much more at the USFK link.

So what does a traffic accident have to do with a building fire?  Absolutely nothing but this is nothing new in Korea with these leftist thugs continuously using anti-Americanism to promote other causes, last year’s US beef protests are the best example.

By the way the truth from the armored vehicle accident and the Yongsan fire are already known, but these people could care less; they are just looking for an excuse to bash policemen.  Personally I would be surprised if they get 100,000 people to show up considering how discredited these people are due to the exposing of the lies surrounding the US beef protests.  This is probably why they are trying to rally people around the armored vehicle accident instead.

I guess we will see if this is the next increase in protest activity that USinKorea has been speculating about.

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….

Members of the U.S. Forces Korea community have been warned to avoid the areas around the Korean War Memorial on Saturday because of a demonstration slated to take place there between 3 and 5 p.m.

According to an announcement on the USFK Web site, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and a group known as Pyong Tong San will be in the area protesting the Key Resolve/Foal Eagle exercises.

The announcement said the groups will march from the War Memorial to the area near Yongsan’s Gate 19.

The announcement said the demonstration was expected to be peaceful, but warned USFK members to avoid the areas, and mass transit around them, because “there is a potential that these gatherings may trigger unexpected violence.”  [Stars & Stripes]

For those that don’t know the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions regularly hold protests against USFK and any other anti-US issue they can conjure up.  It should also come as no surprise that the groups was linked to a North Korean spy scandal. 

So in other words if you are in the Yongsan area just stay away from these North Korean stooges.

Finally ground has been broken to construct a long overdue statue of one of the heroes of the Korean War General Walton Walker:

When Gen. Walton Walker died after a noncombat-related traffic accident during some of the darkest days of the Korean War, his 8th Army soldiers were taking a beating from the enemy.

On Tuesday, the 58th anniversary of Walker’s death, South Korean and U.S. military officials gathered at Yongsan Garrison on Tuesday to break ground on a statue dedicated to the man, one of the war’s earliest U.S. generals who was credited for doing much to buy time so United Nations forces could turn the war around.

On the 58th anniversary of Walker’s death, officials marked the beginning of construction of a statue in his honor by cutting a ribbon and moving a ceremonial shovelful of dirt outside the 8th U.S. Army headquarters building.

The statue, paid for by the Republic of Korea/U.S. Friendship society, is slated for completion in late 2009.  [Stars & Stripes]

General Walker’s Legacy A Victim of Anti-Americanism

ROK Drop readers may remember the difficulty the Korea/U.S. Friendship Society had trying to find a location to build this statue:

KAFA asked Busan’s United Nations Memorial Cemetery in 2005 if it could put a statue of Walker there. Some of the 11 countries whose soldiers are buried there said no, because the statue wouldn’t represent the United Nations.

“He is just a symbol of the U.S.,” said cemetery spokeswoman Park Eun-jung.

The association then asked the city of Daegu — home to the U.S. military’s Camps Henry and Camp Walker, named after the general — if it could erect the statue there. KAFA made its request during election season and during a period of elevated anti-Americanism, following the deaths of two South Korean schoolgirls killed by a military vehicle driven by U.S. soldiers three years earlier. City officials said they would review the plan after election, but civic groups protested, and the new mayor rejected it. A Daegu city spokesman said Friday he was unable to comment on the matter.

The claim that General Walton Walker does not represent the United Nations is ridiculous and one that the US should have protested to the United Nations about.  General Walker was the ground commander for the 8th Army during the war that included troops from UN member nations that were dispatched to aid in the defense of South Korea.

Where the Statue Should Be

With that said the statue shouldn’t be built in Pusan anyway, Daegu is the most fitting place since it was the key city on the front lines of the Pusan Perimeter:

It was the Pusan Perimeter defense that was General Walker’s greatest legacy during the war and Daegu should be the city any memorial to General Walker should be constructed.  It is a shame that once again anti-Americanism is prevented the construction of this statue in a city that General Walker and his men so valiantly defended from North Korean aggression.

Future of the Statue

For those wondering, since the statue is being built on Yongsan Garrison, it will remain there after US forces vacate the base in the coming years because the current 8th Army Headquarters is slated to become a museum after the base is handed over to the Korean government.  Let’s hope that when the base is handed over General Walker’s statue will not be vandalized and attempted to be tore down by the anti-US groups like another statue of an American General was.

Further Reading:
The Marmot’s Hole
Korea Times
Stars & Stripes

I decided to start a blog associated with the site where I’ll put up news and works-in-progress as they arise – while leaving the main site for the big updates —– because I expect things to be back to normal in Korean anti-US/USFK protest culture:  meaning, I expect a spike in activity about once a year.

You can access the blog at this link.

I’m not thrilled with the older version of WordPress my Yahoo!! webhosting service forces me to use.  It isn’t as user friendly as even the free Wordpress blogs, but it will do.  — I’ll be updating it with items most days – both new items and flashbacks and website reviews and so on as I go.

I’ll also cross-post some of the better items here at GI Korea’s.

I set up a PayPal donation widget at the blog.

The new item I wrote about today is —- the large growth in Korean websites covering the protest culture.

Anti-U.S. beef import protests offer a glimpse of what the future may hold for mass communication and journalism.

Alongside Korean television broadcasters KBS, MBC and SBS, numerous Internet journalists were using digital video recorders attached to their wireless laptops and broadcast the candlelit “vigils” on the Web in real time.

At the marathon 72-hour protest that started Thursday night in Seoul, an Internet reporting team from “Ohmynews” was filing news and broadcasting live images. There were also Internet journalists from “People’s Voice” and “Color TV” among others. Also countless protesters used video recorders on their cell phones to upload images to the Web.  (Korea Times 6 Jun 2008)

Ohmy(gosh!!)news (link is for English version) and Voice of People have been around for several years – including covering 2002.

Back in 2002, there were also a plethora of other websites related to South Korean society’s massive NGO or civic group culture.  Many rose and fell as 2002 kept going.  Many gave ground as sites like VOP developed into the better source of information, images, and especially videos.

Since 2002, however, the NGO websites have shifted with the time — as central players like Daum.net and YouTube and other sites —- offered more convenient and cheaper or free hosting of videos and images which sites like VOP could use rather than storing the stuff and paying for the bandwidth itself.

(I still house (and pay for) all my own video edits and have not taken advantage of YouTube or similar site yet, because most of the videos I have are at least a couple years old.  As I do work on new spikes in activity, I might switch to these free hosting sites who have more user-friendly interfaces than the html I have to use).

I am not up to speed on what is what in this part of Korea’s blog-site-sphere right now.  I’ve started looking around to see how things have changed……And this is one of the first things I’ve noticed:  the vast growth in “citizen journalist” outlets — with lots of people covering the protests and sometimes live.

Back in the day, as my students like to say, Voice Of People was about the only source that really had things going on. Now, there are more.  Too many more……And I am hampered in shifting through them due to my pathetic Korean language skills.  But…it is fun locating some of these sites.

—-If you know of any – please leave a note in the comments…

For example, the guys at http://www.chungchun.net/ gained my admiration for the level of propaganda videos they put out back when I discovered the site in 2003 or 2004 (or 2005)…

They too have undergone major changes in their website – as I can tell from a quick look – but I’ll have to stumble around it some to see what goodies they have to offer right now…

Another thing I’ve found is that VOP is not as easy to dig into as in the past:  You used to be able to scan their index pages and see which posts had images and/or videos embedded in them – but not anymore.  Even with weak Korean language skills, I was able to navigate around VOP before and mine it, but now it is more difficult – especially with them switching videos off-site.

I have no idea (yet) about these many live-blogging protest websites (like what they do with their videos after the events)….but I’ll be checking it out over the coming months….preparing for the next spike in activity on the US/USFK front….