Symbolic Attack on the American Chamber
of Commerce and Korean Support
On 18 Feb 2002,a group of mostly student activists
with one or more adult leaders stormed the ACC in Seoul.
They came armed with metal pipes and smashed windows, furniture and computers,
causing tens of thousands of dollars in damage. They forced the
guards and workers to leave the offices, then blocked the doors with furniture
and prepared for the riot police who retook the office hours later.
They also knocked out a large section of window on the skyscraper and
unfurled a banner that read in part "Withdraw Hard-line Policy Toward
North Korea." The action was taken on the eve of President Bush's state
visit.
Click
on the link for video shot by the activists.
Opinion polls
showed
that 47.1% of Koreans agreed with the action. A Gallop poll done shortly
before found that 59.6 percent of Koreans say they don't like the U.S.
with a 71.6% rate among college educated Koreans as opposed to 48% of
those without a college degree.
The symbolism of the target is worth noting if you also look at how
images of 9/11
were mixed with the Olympic short track skating scandal that took place
after this event. The short track event brought out the anti-American
rhetoric to a very high degree throughout all of Korean society.
The
Christian Science Monitor
published an article at how Korea's reaction to the 9/11 tragedy was puzzling
at best to some expats. An article in the
Asia edition of Time
also noted the negative reaction to the Terrorist Attacks from a country
were Americans have died and are prepared to die to defend it.
The point is that picking the American Chamber of Commerce to seize by
force was chosen after the choice of the World Trade Center was well-known
as a symbolic target.
The reporting of the attack in
the Herald
quickly jumped to the many other protests that were happening in Korea.
South Koreans reacted to the "axis of evil" speech as if it were an insult
directly at them and not at the Kim Jong Il regime which had preferred
to watch millions of its own citizens starve in the 1990s rather than
risk opening up to the outside world.
In reporting the attack on the ACC, the
Korea Times
noted many of the other protests that same day, including this one:
The Korean Teachers and Educational Workers' Union also released a declaration opposing Bush's stay and made a protest visit to the U.S. Embassy."As teachers of the nation's future leaders, we cannot just stand by and let our country be sacrificed for the pursuit of world domination and military power by the United States,'' they said in the statement.
The "axis of evil" speech was a blow to the prestige of President Kim
Dae Jung's Sunshine policy, but opposition politicians had been attacking
that since it began at the start of Kim's term in 1998.
The scale of Korea's violent reaction to the remark and Bush's visit as
well as the many events of 2002 and before are more a sign of the long
term, deeply felt hatred of the U.S. government and USFK.
The Korean media took an unusual focus on the ACC attack itself.
On Feb. 21st,
the Herald
ran this head line:
U.S. may term Korean student activists' occupation
of AmCham office 'terrorism'
It was perfect for setting the Korean agenda without having to get into
much detail.
The details that the article did provide were:
"According to the intelligence we obtained recently, the U.S. Embassy is considering denying the detained student activists and other violent anti-U.S. protesters entry into the United States," said an NPA official.
The U.S. Embassy, however, denied those possibilities, saying it is not considering terming the student activists terrorists.
The headline is puzzling after this quote, and I do not understand the
connection between calling it terrorism and not issuing visas to those
who have violated Korean law.
On a side note, the first comment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks by
a Korean graduate student in the US I knew was, "Many Korean students
are worried the US will
use this as an excuse to prohibit students who protest
American polices from coming to the US to study."
The article continued with this:
"We decided to take tough legal action against those student activists who initiated the raid on the AmCham office, as they used violence," said a prosecutor.
The
Korea Times
ran this story:
Bush in Seoul -- US Preparing to Ban Entry of Anti-American Activists
"There are reports that the U.S. Embassy may prevent Hanchongnyon members
and other extremists from entering the U.S.," said a National Police Agency
official, on condition of anonymity.
The embassy is seeking to compile data on the Hanchongnyon members involved
in the protest with the help of the NPA, according to the official. He
also expressed concerns that American officials may regard Monday's AmCham
incident as an act of terrorism. If the student activists are branded
as terrorists, the move will be the most hardline stance the embassy has
shown to anti-U.S. activists in Korea, observers say.
Hanchongnyon is deemed an anti-state, illegal group in Korea. It
is the group that often breaks into US bases and into the US Embassy compound
in Seoul. At different times since I went to Korea in the early
1990s, the Korean police have had to warn USFK of plans to kidnap a US
soldier to protest this or that crime by the US military or to stage a
fight with US MPs to put on digital video and put on the many popular
anti-USFK/US websites in Korea like
www.voiceofpeople.org
In the end, only 11 of the students who attacked the ACC were taken to
court. They were given two years probation with their records cleared
at the end of that term. They were also not dismissed from university
which is usually standard when students do such things to Korean government
buildings.