Compared to past anti-US protests targeting the MacArthur statue this is actually pretty mild:
South Korean police arrested a man Thursday suspected of defacing a bronze statue of the late General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in Incheon.
Detectives from the Incheon Jungbu station took a 60-year-old Korean man into custody following a 2:50 a.m. disturbance call at Freedom Park, an Incheon police official told Stars and Stripes by phone on Thursday. Police did not identify the man but said he belongs to an activist group called the Peace Agreement Movement Headquarters.
The group describes itself on its website as a peaceful organization that opposes the deployment of American troops in South Korea and their joint military exercises.
The man is suspected of destroying public property by writing “Deport U.S. troops” in red paint at the base of MacArthur’s statue located at the park, the police official said.
The man is also accused of chiseling a nearby inscription honoring MacArthur’s place in South Korea’s history, as well as defacing MacArthur’s face on a separate memorial with red paint.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but tearing down the MacArthur Statue has been a long time goal of the Korean radical left to tear down the MacArthur Statue. They even attempted to do this on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Unsurprisingly it was found that past attempts to tear down the statue were led by a North Korean spy.
It appears we may be beginning to see the playing of the anti-U.S. card by the Korean left:
Amid deteriorating inter-Korean relations, a South Korea-U.S. working group is taking flak for hampering progress in bilateral ties due to its excessively harsh standards adopted on North Korea.
Korea Times
Critics say unlike its initial goal of coordinating policy on the North, the group is obsessed with whether Seoul-driven initiatives to engage with Pyongyang violate economic sanctions on the reclusive state, with some even calling for its breakup.
The working group, co-chaired by Lee Do-hoon, special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs and U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun, was set up in November 2018 following three inter-Korean summits earlier that year.
Upon its establishment, the government had high hopes that it would be in close communication with the U.S. via the organization. But due to Washington’s stern stance that inter-Korean economic cooperation should proceed in step with significant progress in denuclearizing the North, the group has been more focused on whether inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation violate international and U.S. sanctions.
You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration has been holding off on playing the anti-U.S. card because of the efforts of the Trump administration to work out a deal with North Korea. However, no deal to end sanctions was ever reached. The Kim regime has lost patience thinks now is the time to pressure the Moon administration to unilaterally violate sanctions. This is because the Moon administration firmly won the April parliamentary elections and the Trump administration is bogged down with a number of issues.
To unilaterally violate sanctions the Moon administration will need to set conditions to blame the U.S. for the new tensions with North Korea. Sending out the activist groups to blame the South Korea-U.S. Work Group is just the start of this effort.
Good luck with trying to get these protests to stop:
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul last week asked local police if there was any way to block rallies held under the guise of press conferences in front of the embassy, according to a police source.
Joong Ang Ilbo
The People’s Democracy Party, a Korean progressive group, has held anti-American rallies in front of the embassy in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, for the past three years. The political party, established in 2016, has advocated for workers, farmers and small business owners while calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea.
On June 3, about 20 members of the People’s Democracy Party held a rally in the form of a press conference in Gwanghwamun Square, protesting the death of George Floyd, who died from suffocation in Minneapolis police custody last month. Protesters held up a sign that read: “U.S. imperialism means ‘I can’t breathe.’”
The next day, the protesters again gathered in Gwanghwamun and called for the expulsion of U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Harry Harris from Korea.
You can read more at the link, but the Korean government can get these protests stopped anytime they want. They have likely made a decision to keep a small undercurrent of anti-Americanism brewing that they can stoke at anytime when needed.
Today is the 18th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. This is usually a day of solemn memorials, but in South Korea back in 2005 it was used as day to bash Americans. Leftist protesters took to the streets of Incheon and battled with riot police in their attempt to topple the statue of General MacArthur at Jayu Park. As bad as the anti-Americanism of some of these leftists groups may be today in South Korea, we fortunately have not seen anything yet like we saw in the 2002-2006 period in South Korea. Hopefully it stays that way.
With the is rise of the anti-American left in South Korea once again, the Sept. 11th anniversary is good time to remind readers of how blatant anti-Americanism once was in South Korea:
https://www.rokdrop.net/2005/09/911-hate-fest-in-south-korea-2/
