Civic Groups "Vanguard of Smear Campaigns"

I have been saying this for years that many of the Korean civic groups are nothing more than front groups for their political puppet masters.  Often the purposes for these groups are to spread anti-Americanism.  Well now my thoughts on this are being confirmed even by Korean intellectuals:

On June 28, the Liberty Union released a book on the types of malicious propaganda and the problems involving civic groups which utilized propaganda in the run-up to the 2002 presidential election. Law professor Jeong Seung-yun of Busan National University wrote a book entitled, ‘Civic Groups & Political Maneuvering.’ And former student activist Lee Dal-won, who works for the Liberty Union and runs his own company, Kyungrim R&C, wrote a book entitled, ‘Co-failure, Civic Groups & the Participatory Government.’ The two authors combined their books into a single volume, which is entitled ‘Civic Groups, are they a hope or a drag?’

Here is how the propaganda process by the civic groups work:

Professor Jeong said “Malicious propaganda in the 2002 election was carried out in four steps.”

The first step: spreading rumors through the Internet and minor news outlets; the second step: political parties and civic groups making rumors appear real and affecting public opinion; the third step: collective hypnosis meaning some mainstream media report rumors as established fact; the fourth step: civic groups aggressively incite voters.

This process perfectly describes what happened with the 2002 Armored Vehicle Accident.  These same tactics were used even before 2002 with the 2000 Water Dumping Incident and the Kooni Range protests.  The tactics of these groups continues this day with their activities to stop the USFK relocation at Camp Humphreys along with their claims of pollution on vacated USFK camps. 

Expect to see these tactics used over and over again until like the article states, the members of these groups as well as the media are held responsible for spreading rumors and lies:

Regarding this matter, Professor Jeong said, “Civic groups want to get involved with smear campaigns because they know they will not be punished for their involvement.

In fact many of these civic groups and their media allies like OhMyNews are actually funded by the ruling Korean government, so of course they do not fear any prosecution for their rumor mongering and lies. In fact the government has leverage on them with the public funding to set what rumors and lies need to be spread.  Others that aren’t receiving funding from the South Korean government are front groups for the North Koreans. 

Finally some people in South Korea are waking up to the tactics and true purposes of these so called civic groups and their media allies.