New Riot Police Tactics

In order to prevent violent protests on Sunday at Camp Humphreys, the Korean Riot police are going to try some new tactics:

The National Police Agency said yesterday it would limit contact between activists and riot police at a rally scheduled for Sunday to protest the relocation of United States Forces Korea bases to southern Gyeonggi province.
The Pan-South Korea Solution Committee Against U.S. Base Extension in Pyeongtaek, the rally organizer, earlier announced that 5,000 people would participate in the protest near the U.S. Camp Humphries in Pyeongtaek.

To prevent violent clashes, police in full riot gear would be inside the U.S. base, police said, and uniformed officers would patrol outside with observers from the National Human Rights Commission. At a similar rally last July, hundreds of protesters and police were injured in scuffles.

Let me get this straight, the riot police will hide inside of Camp Humphreys to prevent violent clashes. How about the protesters not bring metal pipes and bamboo poles to the protest to assault the police with? How about the protesters not throw stones and destroy public and private property? How about the police actually throw these people breaking the law into jail?

Here is an editorial also from the Joong Ang condemning the upcoming violence over the 2nd Infantry Division and Yongsan Garrison relocation to Camp Humphreys:

The government thinks that the residents have been influenced by outside instigators, who are demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the peninsula. “Do you think the farmers know anything about a U.S. war plan? I don’t understand why outsiders keep stirring them up,” said a taxi driver.

The relocation of the Yongsan garrison and U.S. 2nd Infantry Division installations to areas south of Seoul have been approved by the National Assembly. Attempts to overrule such an agreement are a challenge to this nation. One is free to oppose the relocation plan, but protests should be done sensibly within a legal framework. And yet, the activists are not doing so. They have occupied empty houses inside the site that they do not own, after former residents left the area.

As the taxi driver noted this is not a grass roots protest against USFK, but a well organized protest for mass propaganda value by anti-US hate groups. That is why they are occupying houses that have already been sold to the government so that when the government comes to kick them out they can kick and scream in front of television cameras and create sympathy within the Korean public against USFK. Stopping the Camp Humphreys relocation is the hate groups Super Bowl because they know that if the 2nd Infantry Division and Yongsan Garrison is not allowed to relocate that it will mean the end of the US-ROK relationship as we know it.

It will be interesting to see how things go on Sunday.