Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), South Korea’s second-largest umbrella labor union, hold a rally in front of the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul on July 4, 2016, calling for the release of its jailed leader. In a high-profile ruling the same day, the court sentenced KCTU leader Han Sang-gyun to five years in jail for leading last year’s violent rallies in downtown Seoul. (Yonhap)
Hwang In-cheol holds up a sign saying “North Korea…Be Free My Father” at an event to send a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the border city Paju, north of Seoul, on June 17, 2016. His father Hwang Won has been in captivity since December 1969, when a South Korean plane carrying Hwang, a radio producer, and 50 other crew members and passengers was hijacked by a North Korean agent on its way from the eastern South Korean city of Gangneung to Seoul. (Yonhap)
For those interested the story of how Mr. Hwang’s dad was taken hostage can be read at the below link:
This is yet another example that Okinawa has turned into South Korea circa 2002:
An overflow crowd of some 65,000 people packed a sports stadium Sunday to demand that U.S. forces leave Okinawa and drop a plan to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to a more remote area on the island.
Similar demonstrations were also scheduled in 41 of Japan’s 47 prefectures. More than 7,000 people gathered outside the Japanese parliament building in Tokyo to join the demand for a U.S. pullout and to bash Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A recent rash of crimes, including the slaying of a 20-year-old woman that has been linked to a U.S. civilian base worker, have tapped into Okinawa resentment over the disproportionate number of U.S. troops here, compared with the rest of Japan, and a sense of abandonment and betrayal by the central government even after it regained control of the island in 1972.
With U.S. servicemembers, family members and others with SOFA status strongly encouraged to avoid the protest area, Gov. Takeshi Onaga called for a total withdrawal of Marines.
“I will never forgive the inhumane and brutal act that trampled women’s human rights. I am indignant,” said Onaga, who won election on an anti-base platform. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but it is interesting that the anti-US base Governor is only calling for an end to the US Marine presence on the island. It would be interesting statistic to see if the Marines really do cause more crime than the other service branches on Okinawa? It has already been shown that the US military overall commits far less crime per capita than the local population, but of course none of this matters to activists looking to use any crime they can to advance their political agenda. It is an impossibility for such a large population of US military servicemembers on Okinawa to be completely crime free which means the activists will continue to find incidents to protest.
Members of the Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union form a human chain around the building housing the finance ministry in Sejong, south of Seoul, on June 3, 2016, to protest against the introduction of a performance-based pay system. The government is pushing the system as part of economic and labor reforms. (Yonhap)
Considering that the article states this group is practicing “hate speech” it looks like it is probably the Zaitokukai group that has been protesting not only North Korea, but also South Korea’s claims to Dokdo and the comfort women issue:
Riot police try to form a barrier between members of the ultraconservative anti-Korean Zaitokukai organization and a group of counterprotesters in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward in May 2013. | SATOKO KAWASAKI
The Japanese city of Kawasaki, where anti-Korean rallies are often held, has refused to allow an anti-Korean organization from using a park to hold a demonstration.
Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Tuesday that the city government decided not to allow an anti-Korean group to hold a protest on Sunday at a park in the city.
The city government’s decision marks the first such case since Japan legislated the antihate speech law aimed at preventing rallies against a specific race or country of origin.
Kyodo reported that the organization held 13 anti-Korean rallies in the city since 2013.
Kawasaki Mayor Norihiko Fukuda said that it is very regrettable that hate speech rallies have been held around the city, adding that the latest decision was made to ensure the safety of citizens who are targeted by unfair and discriminatory words and acts. [KBS World Radio]
Here is an example of what the Zaitokukai group says during their protests:
But despite their purported political nature, a “significant” number of the demonstrations in reality featured a string of derogatory invective against ethnic minorities, Maeda said.
Prominent examples of vitriolic language favored by the protesters include violent slogans such as “You should all be massacred,” phrases such as “Get the hell out of Japan,” and insults calling Koreans “cockroaches,” according to video analysis of 72 such rallies conducted by the ministry.
In the rallies, participants typically brandish placards and yell epithets while marching on the streets of neighborhoods home to large numbers of ethnic Koreans such as Shin-Okubo in Tokyo and Tsuruhashi in Osaka.
The ministry, meanwhile, attributed a recent drop in the frequency of these rallies to a 2014 Osaka High Court ruling that ordered Zaitokukai to pay about ¥12 million in damages for a series of hateful rallies it organized in front of a Kyoto-based Korean school.
The survey also followed an unprecedented move by the ministry last December to issue an official warning to Zaitokukai to halt its hateful activities. [Japan Times]
You can read more at the link, but that is pretty provocative to march down Shin-Okubo and say stuff like that. Whenever I go to Tokyo I usually find a place to stay in Shin-Okubo because it is a fairly cheap to find a place to stay there with one of the Korean owned hotels.
A crowd of protesters rally for improvements in South Korean labor law in a public demonstration organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the country’s second-largest umbrella union, in downtown Seoul on May 1, 2016. (Yonhap)
A group of members from more than 130 civic organizations in South Korea calls for the Japanese government to abolish discrimination against a high school for ethnic Koreans in Japan, called “Chosun School,” in a rally in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on April 22, 2016. The Japanese government has moved to exclude only this school among other high schools for foreigners from its free education program for high schools, citing tense Japan-North Korea relations and the North’s nuclear and missile threats. Most of the students in the school are from pro-Pyongyang families. (Yonhap)
The fast response unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency trains against riots at a command inspection in Seoul on Feb. 23, 2016, testing their preparedness against violent protests, road occupation and other scenarios. (Yonhap)
People sleep next to a bronze statue of a girl symbolizing the so-called “comfort women’ issue in front of the site of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Jan. 12, 2016, as they stage a sit-in protest to oppose a recent landmark deal between South Korea and Japan over women who were forced to work in Japan’s military brothels during World War II and Japan’s demand that the statue be removed. (Yonhap)
