August 05, 2007

The Exciting World of South Korean Protests - possibly NSFW - Do not click if you are a bit squeamish or an animal lover - there are pix here that may disturb you. For a country of about 50 million people, there are a lot of protests in South Korea. With a national average of 11,000 public protests a year, the average South Korean riot policeman is mobilized to contain 85 demonstrations a year. Among these, there are some rather interesting protests. Here are a few particularly uniquely interesting/crazy South Korean protest photos.

I particularly dig the hardcore APEC protester who takes the water hose full-on in the face & just stares back at the cops. On another forum, a challenge was made to create a meme out of this guy. Here's my attempt: Pretty piss-poor, actually.

posted by Hank Mabuse 17 years ago
  • The Korean protesters at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong in 2005 made a big impression.
  • Also hardcore, but not in the article, is the practice of cutting off one's own finger in protest to show one's displeasure with such issues as Japanese claims to Dokdo/Takeshima or visits by the (then) Prime Minister of Japan to Yasukuni Shrine.
  • I think that is in the article, but yes.
  • Here's some (pretty violent, be warned) footage of riot cops captured and assaulted by students during clashes at Yonsei University in the late 90s.
  • Hank, you're right: it is in there. It's right after the photo of the guy with the knife sticking out of his stomach, so I think my brain stopped accepting input until I'd scrolled that gruesome image off the page!
  • Well I don't see what's so interesting about people who take to the streets and protest things when they're angry or upset. I mean, like, everyone knows that protests don't change anything. /returns to watching Big Brother 8
  • Okay, the guy that got hit by the hose had the best expression on his face. lol.
  • pretty distressing stuff on there.
  • I mean, like, everyone knows that protests don't change anything. One of my proudest moments was back when the current war in iraq was just starting and someone in the college paper wrote a column basically saying the same thing about protests being ineffective. My response? I just took the online copy of his column and search and replaced "protests" with "newspaper columns" and sent it off as a letter to the editor. They published it.
  • Absolutely beautiful, iccalhoun!