» Another Gwangju

The candlelight protests for renegotiation of the U.S. beef and the government of Lee Myung-bak grew violent over the weekend, with riot police beating protesters with shields and truncheons, and in some instances trampling them down.

The cartoon is a re-drawing of a photograph taken during that time - with one important exception. In the cartoon, the armband reads, “The Lee Myung-bak Police.”

President Lee and his staff have been making comments about the candlelight protests that hark back to the days of authoritarian government suppression, before Korea became a democracy. In a Cabinet meeting last week, the president said that protests that are “illegal and challenge the identity of the state” should be “dealt with sternly.” The Justice Ministry and the National Police Agency have begun to follow suit, with the Justice Ministry backing a prosecutorial investigation into MBC over allegations that it televised inflammatory information about U.S. beef and the NPA stepping up the number of arrests made.

All of this calls to mind the violence of the Gwangju Uprising, in which police used violent tactics to quell protests against the military government of Chun Doo-hwan and which resulted in hundreds of people killed and injured.

(Hankyoreh Geurimpan, 30 June 2008)