political turmoil

While the world is still bitching and moaning about North Korea, by far the most consistent and continuing news story in South Korea is the ongoing FTA negotiations with the United States. I found it particularly of note when I read a news article back in the middle of October about the fact that the National Police force was sending 10,000 "troops" to the fourth round of FTA talks. I mean, I know that Free Trade Agreements are not popular around the world, but seriously, 10,000 policemen? This in a country where laws seem to just be abided by, despite the visible lack of any kind of police presence. I see a police car on the street maybe once every three days. If you would have asked me, I would have been surprised that there even were 10,000 police officers in the country. Yet, all the plant stores leave their merchandise outside all night long, and no one steals it. I couldn't imagine what they thought the FTA protesters would do.

As it turned out, on the second day of talks, the protesters stormed the fortified compound where the talks were taking place, managing to tear down a shipping container and hospitalizing several police officers. I talked about this incident with my students, telling them I was surprised, considering how mild mannered, polite, and law abiding I had found Koreans to be. My students were not surprised. I now realize why they were not surprised. Since then, violent FTA protests have occurred at least twice a week, all across the country. In Seoul, there are major labor protests almost every day. Some of these target the FTA, others are for completely unrelated reasons. It seems universally known that protesters bring sharpened bamboo spears to every protest, and pictures of black masked people lighting buildings on fire seem commonplace in the newspaper. How is it that a society I find to be so respectful of the law can have this continuous violence?

The answer I have gotten is that it is related to Korea's semi-recent political situation. If you have only been alive since the early 1980's (as I have), you weren't alive for the huge political turmoil that characterized this country from the 1960's to the early 1980's. I still know very little about this period of Korean history, save that there were military coups, assassinations, extremely repressive military regimes, etc. So, even though South Korea has had a period of political stability and economic growth for the past twenty-odd years, this legacy of social and political upheaval seems to have survived. And despite a general feeling that everything is business as usual around here, I recently found out that President Roh (pronounced No (I don't have time to explain, or really a good understanding of, the reason the President's name is different in Korean and English)) Mu-Hyun's approval rating is significantly below that of even our beloved Bush (whose name, incidentally, in Korean, is pronounced "Goji Bushi"). This actually has nothing to do with North Korea, and everything to do with what Koreans see as a lack of job opportunities.

I had always assumed that South Korea was a stable, developed country; that political turmoil was limited to Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. My experiences here initially did nothing but reinforce this notion. The atmosphere is calm, people are generally prosperous (at least moderately), and society doesn't seem to be extremely polarized. However, the FTA protests and other events have changed my mind. While I am not worried about serious political instability, or a coup of any sort, I can definitely see the effects of decades of turmoil still rippling around society. My favorite example of this came today, regarding the issue of a conservative group writing new history textbooks that glorify the military regimes of the 1960's. At an academic conference discussing the new book, violence broke out, including desks flying through the air. Not generally the type of behavior you expect from academics at a nation's top university.