I fought the law and the law won: Anatomy of a Korean riot in Pictures

NOTE: Most pics are from OhmyNews as linked by the Marmot and reported by Oranckay. (BTW, Oranckay, can you help my woman get a gig at the Chosun Ilbo? She took the second test Saturday but didn't feel too good about it.) One pic is from the Korea Times.

OK, here we go:

Most riots start off as a protest march. Here we see some unionist marching towards Seoul City Hall. Note the masks. When protesters sport those, it means they are ready for a fight.

Here we have the pre-riot pep rally. For this protest, there were 40,000 unionist and their supporters. Once the rally ends, those who do not plan to riot quickly leave the area.

Once the non-rioters have cleared out, the riot police move in. The first thing they do is define the battlefield by sealing off avenues of attack/retreat for the rioters. (If I am not mistaken, this is a side street behind City Hall.)

Once the area has been sealed-off, the riot police can start attacking the main body of unionist rioters. They try to get the situation under control as dusk settles over the city.

But the rioters also have their moments and press the attack against isolated groups of police.

The rioters also try to disrupt police ranks with Molotov cocktails, which they prepared well in advance to use on this occasion.

Despite the occasional setback, the police continue to press forward. Here they drive some rioters into an underpass.

In the end, the police triumph and stand over their enemies...... victorious.

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I want to point out one thing here. This was not a protest that had gone out of control. There is nothing spontaneous about a Korean riot. Everyone knew there was going to be a riot and prepared accordingly.

These riots have a ritualistic quality. There are certain roles that everyone plays and certain rules that everyone follows. They are battles, but they are ritualistic battles like the flower wars of the Aztecs. If you don't believe me, take some time to compare the annual riots in Korea with the L.A. riot in 1992:

...thirty-eight (38) people dead, 1,250 people injured, 3,600 structural fires, hundreds of businesses looted and closed, and more than 3,000 people arrested. At least four (4) police officers and three (3) firefighters have been shot and hundreds of other injured as they attempted to control the fires and lawlessness of the past three days.

There is relatively little property damage in Korean riots these days (although there was more in past riots) and deaths are rare.

As a final note, remember this when you see pictures of Koreans rioting: Riots in Korea are not a sign that there is something wrong with the system or that people are trying to change the system. Riots in Korea are part of the system.

Comments

[Brian]

"Ritualistic quality" is right (I was considering my own post on exactly that).

I remember watching some of the anti-US protests about a year ago... students vs. the poh-leese. It was quite strange watching the give and take going on between the two groups... almost as if the whole thing was choreographed ahead of time.

Brian

[Machiavelli]

Excellent analysis of Korean democracy in action. The riots of today harken back to the 1980s when Korean democracy was taking its first halting steps. If memory serves, those protests were much more dangerous.

[The Yangban]

The protest today (Nov. 11) went peacefully so maybe the union leaders have gotten the message that they went a little too far with the Molotov cocktails. See the Korean media links for articles.

[David Mercer]

I showed my wife pictures of a Korean riot the other day, complete with flaming (literally!) cops, and said to her "THESE are riot police who knows what's up! Why do you think we want a bunch of S. Korean military for Iraqi stabilization. In addition to the badass white people, we will now bring in some hardass Asians, ones who've dealt with going from dictatorship to Democracy. Have a nice day."

So I think that the South should take our request for their troops to handle perhaps one of the more difficult regions as a complement. They've done some hard growing in recent decades, and they can really help out in this situation.

It is also probably unspoken but obvious that it is also their duty to us for backing their socioeconomic evolution with MUCH blood and treasure.

[Matt VanVolkenburg]

So the ROK should do what America asks of it because 50,000 americans died in the war, a war which came about because Korea was divided... by America, who then installed a rightest government amongst a left leaning, anti-imperialist constituency under the US military government, under which at least 100,000 people died (before the war). The war killed 3-4 million Koreans, but Koreans should do what America asks because Americans, whose lives are worth more, died as well?
The treasure America spent on Korea was not for altruistic purposes, nor was it to support a democracy against communism (SK and NK were mirror images of each other until the late 1980s - communist and anti-communist dictatorships). The US backed Park Chunghee and Chun Doohwan, backing both their socioeconomic evolution as well as their terrorizing of their own populations. In the ratio of people killed, perhaps the US has a duty to Korea, and not vice-versa. Maybe that treasure the US has spent on Korea almost evens the score; myself, I doubt it.

[Eric]

(NOTE: Yangban Edit for language)

Are you (...) kidding me? Mirror images? Americans always prefer democracy over dictatorships, but the military rulers in Seoul were not mirror images of Mr. Great Leader Kim Ill-sung, From Whom All Great Things Come (and if you don't think so, off you go to the gulag)