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)
It is good to see the anti-government protests this weekend did not turn violent like the last ones. I do have to chuckle in regards to the opinion of how many people showed up. The protesters say they had 50,000 while the police say there was 14,000. At least the discrepancy isn’t as bad as all the million man marches in the US where there is only a few thousand people actually there:
Tens of thousands of protesters held a massive rally Saturday to protest the government’s move to adopt state history textbooks and push for labor reform and it ended without any clashes with police.
The rally, the second of its kind in three weeks, brought together about 14,000 participants who gathered at Seoul Plaza in central Seoul and marched peacefully, according to police. Organizers put the number at some 50,000.
The focal point of the rally was whether the rally would turn violent as some participants at the Nov. 14 one brandished metal pipes, clashing with police who fired water cannons at them.
A farmer still remains in critical condition after being knocked down by a police water cannon.
Organizers vowed to hold Saturday’s rally in a peaceful manner, while police also warned that they will take stern action if the rally turns violent. [Yonhap]
This photo, taken on Dec. 2, 2015, shows part of a makeshift tent on the premises of Seoul’s Dongguk University where a haggard Kim Kun-jung, vice chief of the General Student Association at the university, stages the 49th day of a hunger strike. He is demanding that Ven. Ilmyeon, head of the school’s board of directors, and Ven. Bogwang, the university’s president, step down over the alleged theft of a Buddhist painting and plagiarism of a paper, respectively. The school, founded by the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, has been embroiled in the scandal. (Yonhap)
So does anyone agree with the Korean court that the KCTU can be trusted to hold a peaceful rally this weekend in Seoul?:
A court has ruled against a police move to ban a rally planned for Saturday in central Seoul by civic, labor and farmers groups that held a massive anti-government demonstration on Nov. 14.
The Seoul Administrative Court said Thursday that it had accepted the request from the groups to annul the police ban on their second rally.
The decision comes five days after police announced a prohibition of the Dec. 5 rally requested by the groups, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), citing a possible repeat of the violence between police and protesters at the previous demonstration.
“It is unreasonable to presume that the second rally will be violent only because the organizers are the same to the first one,” the court said. “The organizers have repeatedly said they will hold the second one peacefully.” [Korea Times]
