Anti-US Groups to Bring their Show on the Road to the US
A spokesman with a coalition of activist groups earlier said it will send a group of protestors to the U.S. to thwart the negotiations. ¿We already finished the preliminary work for our rally there¿, the spokesman said. The coalition includes the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Coalition of Farmers’ Associations. ¿We are in discussions with the Democratic Labor Party to decide whether lawmakers in the party will join the protests,¿ he said.
The original plan was to dispatch a twice the number, but the coalition reportedly ran into visa problems. Among the group¿s plans is a protest on the Potomac River in Washington D.C.
Washington D.C. police are preparing to deal strictly with any illegal protests in cooperation with the Korean Embassy in the U.S. and Interpol. U.S. police have set out stringent guidelines after seeing the violent demonstrations by Korean protestors against the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Hong Kong last year, according to officials in Seoul. Police there are analyzing video clips of the demonstrations and will treat protestors as terror suspects under the U.S.¿ sweeping anti-terror laws if they are found in possession of dangerous items, National Intelligence Service officials here said.
Can you imagine what these people would do to the US public’s perceptions of Korea if they protest and attack the police with the same venom that they have used before against the Korean police in places such as Inchon over the McArthur statue and in Pyeongtaek over the Camp Humphreys expansion. The Korean government is worried about that fact:
Friday¿s government plea was issued by five ministers including Finance Minister Han Duk-soo and Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon. Everyone has the right to speak their mind freely, but staging a rally in the U.S. does not help solve the problem, the statement said. Such protests by a handful of organizations could prove a stumbling block to a visa waiver for Koreans in the U.S. and thus inconvenience the entire people.
The statement warned Seoul will have very limited scope to intervene if protestors violate U.S. law.
That damn right, Seoul will not be able to intervene if these people break US law. That is why I say give them their visas and let them try to violently protest so the US courts can put these people in jail and fine them like they deserve. It would be nice if the Korean government came out as strongly against these same people violently rioting down at Camp Humphreys where they have been suspiciously silent, but the minute they talk about bringing their show on the road to the US the Korean government suddenly condemns them. Interesting.
