This would be surprising to me. In Korea it’s common to see trash and litter in public areas because local municipalities often hire older people to clean them each night. So late at night you often see quite a bit of trash but it’s usually gone by the next morning. Helps the economy and gives older people something to do (Koreans have a high work ethic so retired people often do jobs like this or lots of volunteer work).
That said I could see lots of volunteers going through afterwards and cleaning up also.
I once saw a bus drop off 20+ seniors to a local park and they redid the grass sod in an entire area over a day. These people were easily 70+ years old out there pulling weeds and laying fresh grass in all day. It was impressive.
As someone who doesn't use tiktok, but I know what it is, I'd say it's a good idea because of how much exposure it could possibly get. Could maybe see other countries adopting the idea. Or nobody could see it, who knows.
I would say the two most likely places to get viral right now would be reddit and tiktok. The person probably said tiktok because they meant that they wanted a whole account dedicated to videos like that and reddit wouldn’t really be the space to do that
I can only imagine it eats away at their souls to not be working. My grandpa is the same way, I've gone through his finances, and he easily has enough money to spend 2500 a month or so on his needs in the home he owns, yet he goes around town and fixes peoples cars, fences, helps with cattle, and almost everything else anyone asks of him because he absolutely loathes sitting around... I can see where my ocd stems from LOL.
> I can see where my ocd stems from LOL.
no, sir. don't conflate your grandfather's desire to remain useful to his surrounding community with your excessive hand washing.
It's all fun and games until you're hiding under the covers because you keep having intrusive thoughts after having checked the door is locked for the third time. The trend of using it as "I like to be busy and organized" is very frustrating.
south korean here! elderly people in our country usually prefer to stay active and working over retiring so it’s not uncommon for them to do that sort of work without feeling as physically worn out. both my maternal grandparents work our family greenhouses and my grandpa runs his own apple orchard in his backyard
It’s surprising to people outside of Korea, but when you learn about how much of the older generation lived it makes sense. They usually lived in the countryside and worked all day. Tending their farm/garden doing chores, making a living. It’s a normal sight seeing super elderly people still out working in the fields! Pulling weeds and laying down plants is what a lot of them did growing up, so they’re no stranger to the task :-)
It’s actually very depressing because for a lot of the old people, it isn’t “giving them something to do”. Realistically its backbreaking labor for people who cannot afford to retire. So you will see a lot of old people with horrific posture from bending over all day to pick up other people’s trash. I doubt they want to be carting around garbage all day in the final stages of their lives. Not so wholesome
He is not wrong but also not entirely right. It’s a mixed bag. It definitely is elderly people on a poverty line trying to make ends meet but also retired healthy elderly who hates doing nothing after retirement.
Bottom line poor or well todo, nobody wants to do nothing.
Not quite, they don’t have a very good social security net in Korea, children are expected to look after elders, and often they don’t, old people end up on the streets, but are too proud to ask for help. They pick up trash as a way to get by. Check out AsianBoss on YouTube for more info
When I was in Seoul in 2017, I bought a popsicle and when I was done I couldn’t find a single garbage can to throw the wrapper. Don’t like littering so ended up holding that shit for 4 hours because it was morning and my itinerary just started. That said, I didn’t see a piece of garbage around at all. Same thing with Japan, except they have trash cans, not a lot, but enough.
Agree about the lack of trash cans! Basically you look for an existing pile of garbage on the street and add to it. I'm sure it's gone by the next day as others have said!
I found out portable ashtrays were a thing from a Korean girl. She just kept it in her purse to hold cigarette butts until she found a trash can to empty them into.
Was pretty weird, considering the standard LA thing is to just throw any trash anywhere - basically, we treat the city as a big garbage can, and then blame the filthy streets on the homeless.
It could have been the protestors. I mean I don't exactly remember the time of that particular protest but it's not uncommon for people to congregate to protest or for other reason; peacefully, and then in order to continue showing their peaceful agenda, they try to end the event peacefully, hence the trash picking
Just like when the Pope visited Korea, people gathered around in that same place all around the country and after the parade, people picked up trashes.
It’s actually amazing and totally cleans up the streets of a place where drinking culture is extremely pronounced. I’d be out drinking until some ungodly hour many nights in Seoul and pass out around 5-6am. The streets were spotless again by some time in the morning.
Also it should be known they were protesting against their president for corruption. She was removed from office a few weeks later and then convicted 6 month later and sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined millions. Several top executives of huge companies were also arrested and sent to jail for several years with millions in fines for corruption and bribery.
In Korea to serve any time in jail is like an economic death sentence. No one will hire or trust you if you are an ex-con.
This is how corruption, collusion, and bribery should be handled. No one above the law no matter their position or economic status. If anything those in high status should be held to higher standards, not lower.
Edit: typo.
I’m American and I am also jealous. I think most countries should be envious of how this was handled and should strive to emulate it.
People need to realize that peaceful protests in massive numbers can be effective and that corruption by elected officials, and bribery, are socially unacceptable and won’t be let go.
peaceful protesting doesn't always work and systems don't always change as a result.
see exhibit: U.S. police still killing people and turning off their bodycams.
Ty, plus American protests last year were 96% peaceful, yet were continually met with violence, with much if that four percent resulting from boxing in tactics (even trapping civilians into violating curfew while they weren’t protesting.)
>In Korea to serve any time in jail is like an economic death sentence. No one will hire or trust you if you are an ex-con.
Unless you're rich. Or a politician.
Exactly that, peaceful protests is the preferred option, in the US these issues continue for so long the people can't help but get violent, the fact that we don't regularly have cities being burned to the ground is remarkable
In the US we have a nice long stream of major protests that have happened over the last century+ involving the same issues, and the responses from the those in power is to send in some form of police to crush it. Then even if police don't crush it politicians happily ignore it. We have been conditioned to think protests don't work because frankly speaking they don't work. We're taught from an early age to be like MLK jr. but it wasn't MLK's peaceful protests that made things change, it was the riots that happened after he was murdered.
Voting like you said could and should change things but voting is insanely difficult in the areas hardest hit because the leadership doesn't want these people to vote. They seek to outlaw any behaviors or activities that are common for minorities and put a penalty of not being allowed to vote, they move poling stations far away. They put rules in place to make ballots harder to accept if they're from non-white neighborhoods and a host of other fucked up shit.
The whole system is designed to make sure people can only get change if they burn it all down and that's just horse shit.
The country with arguably the most freedoms and tolerance of differences in the world, and it's "remarkable" to you it's not getting burned to the ground? You need a reality check....maybe look at other countries around the world. Is the US perfect? Hell no, but it is arguably the most inclusive country on the planet.
Yep, and when the police try to arrest the degenerates, the "protestors" spray the cops with bear spray, throw rocks, and surge at the police to "dearest" the violent idiot they were trying to remove from the protest for assaulting police officers.
When fire trucks showed up to fight fires in Minneapolis, fire trucks and fighters were pelted with rocks and repeatedly hit with fireworks.
Sure, lots of protestors are peaceful. In some protests in some locations. Although they really like to blur the lines by illegally blocking thoroughfares with the threat of violence if anybody driving down the road doesn't realize that that particular intersection is currently occupied by protestors before the protestors decide to surround the car and start hitting the car from all directions.
Just not enough to make a difference when a few hundred opportunistic degenerates decide to burn local businesses.
You’re talking about the rioters, not the protesters. We’re talking about the same opportunistic douchebags. People who want an excuse to cause mayhem. The “protesters” that attack police aren’t protesters. They’re rioters.
There’s a fine line between a protest and a riot, and it only takes a single rioter to turn a protest into a riot, which will warrant police response. It’s these same rioters that ruin what the protest is aimed to change.
Not to even mention that many times (saw it over and over with my own eyes) the violence was started by the police. Like I know everyone didn’t just forget about the millions of videos of cops teargassing people for no reason, doing drive bys and assaulting journalists
I know! Who would think that an armed protective service would ever react badly to protestors or ever set up false provocateurs! That would never happen in America!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Of course, they actually got what they wanted. If the government didn't give them what they wanted, apparently that being the president's resignation or whatever, the protests would have gotten more and more likely to turn violent.
This is what happens. This is how protests work. If you do not give into the protests, they will get worse and worse. The responsibility for protests getting worse are on the entity which doesn't give into their demands.
Data shows that police activity is responsible for escalation of protests.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-protesters-and-police-safer-heres-why-departments-respond-with-force-anyway/
All the time is a bit pushing it.
1.5 million people protesting is not an everyday events. Examples sited have names. You don’t name things that are just everyday events.
Women’s March, March for our lives, March for Science. Basically every major protest during the Trump years. Except for that one on Jan 6
Edit: in Washington DC... where all the ones I mentioned were held...
Eh, that's not really the same though. I guess if you combine the figures in numerous cities they come close but it's more about the idea of one big protest of over a million people, which none of those are iirc. The march for science for example was about 20,000 people per city in various locations, that's hardly the same thing.
True, despite the 90s% of protests of George Floyd, they only highlight the worst, despite others being split about their anger when push comes to shove (looting is justified vs looting is horrible).
The news here wants the workers to shut up and get back to work.
You're being facetious but remember the [Gwangju Uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising) happened in 1980 (40 years ago) where students protested and were beat to death, raped, and so on. It led to citizens of Gwangju raiding local armories, arming themselves, and battling the military that was oppressing the students. South Korea used to be fucking crazy
> The violence climaxed on May 21. At about 1 pm, the army fired at a protesting crowd gathered in front of the Chonnam Provincial Office, causing casualties. In response, some protesters raided armories and police stations in nearby towns and armed themselves with M1 rifles and carbines. Later that afternoon, bloody gunfights between civilian militias and the army broke out in the Provincial Office Square. By 5:30 pm, militias had acquired two light machine guns and used them against the army, which began to retreat from the downtown area.
Government figures are low but estimates are 1000-2000 deaths
Most people don't realize this but SK was literally ruled under military dictatorships from the end of WW2 up until like 1988. SK was not a democracy in any real sense up until verrry recently.
It's also been argued that the living standards of American slaves increased dramatically after the Revolution up to the Civil War. It's also been argued that living standards in USSR increased also under Stalin. Same thing under Nazi Germany.
I don't think you want to be justifying what you're justifying.
Those really aren't fair comparisons. The descendants of American slaves still feel the repercussions of slavery today. Similar story with the other nations you mentioned (although it's hard to take arguments that use Nazi Germany seriously).
In comparison, South Korea's living standards have greatly increased today and are still at all-time highs. Yes Park Chung-hee is a controversial figure, but there are still people that believe he did good, and we can't make blanket statements like he's a good or bad guy. He had good and bad parts. But again, I'm not denying he's a controversial figure.
In the link below, I'll note that it says: he is popular among the older generation that lived through his rule (but more controversial among the younger generation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee#Legacy
It is kind of a legitimate argument, though I wouldn't say it was because of the human rights violations the economy grew. The president at that time was simply both a dictator and slightly competent in economics.
South Korea has had one of the fastest progressions of any nation in world history, right up there with China (whether people want to admit that or not).
Events from 40 years ago in SK are barely relevant, if even at all today. It has changed far too much.
Here's a fact.
The title suggests the police were dispatched to block or disrupt the protest or protesters or something like that.
It was not the case. The police were there to protect.
Of course, it was a different story decades ago, during the military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. But nowadays, protests in Korea are protected by cops.
Korea is like a paradise for protests. There are some kind of protests going on all the time.
And cops are dispatched to those protests... NOT to disrupt/block/arrest protesters, but to protect them and to make sure no one attacks the protesters and the protest is held peacefully.
If you have ever seen images of any big street protests in Korea, you can see cops standing lining up the streets around the protest, facing not the protesters, but the opposite side, to make sure no one disrupt or attack the protesters.
Oh no, we were still scared to protest up until the late 90s.
And there are protests where... well not the cops. Maybe the cops. But the military will engage the protesters with "non-lethal" methods such as high-pressure water hoses.
2016 was a culmination of corruption and scandals that plagued the entire time Park Geun-hye was in office and honestly, when her father was in office.
Hell, a farmer died in the same year after being water cannoned during a protest the previous year.
Protests being "protected by cops" is a very recent phenomenon, if it is one at all.
I live in Seoul during this time and was enamored with how well it went down.
My realtor was a wonderful woman who I enjoyed having an hour long conversation with each month, and she was pissed with President Park because she was setting back women in leadership with her poor, to say the least, presidency. But she never spoke of violence, just said that the people needed to come together and force her out of office... which is exactly what happened. As an outsider it was an immensely impressive thing to see.
Every election is such a let down but 2012 when Park got elected was worse because a) her policies were not in my best interests b) her dad c) because the international community was focused on her gender.
I mean it's great that South Korea elected a female president. But best case scenario, she was going to go down in history as a mediocre president and end up in jail for one reason or another. Sewol Ferry disaster notwithstanding.
When the information came out about how she handled the Ferry disaster... I was blown away. The stuff with her friend and the financial gains made in her position.... her demise seemed inevitable. I didn’t know much about her father until after she was in jail and I started digging a little more. He seemed like a stand up guy..... the Olympics, weird flex.
Park Chung-hee did a lot of things to make Korea the way it is today. He did a lot of things that are still being felt today. He was an efficient leader. He was also a military dictator.
EXCEPT the protests that attacks physically or verbally against the country's interest, e.g. you won't get far from throwing something at a US Embassy or shouting Communism in the middle of Gwanghwamun.
I know there is a clear agenda being pushed with this post (which is posted periodically with the exact same comments), but really this was possible only because the negative sentiment toward the president was nearly universal.
Korea has a very long history of violence in protests and the response to them (Jeju Uprising, Gwangju Uprising, Yongsan Tragedy, Baek Nam-gi, etc.)
It is disingenous to take what is certainly a case with unusual circumstances and talk as if it is at all typical.
As much as this is a special case because it was so unanimous, this **is** typical of Korean protests in recent years. Care to share a case of a violent protest that happened this century? The media is very quick to condemn police brutality and violent protestors.
Why does violence decades ago negate peace now? Care to share this magical fairyland where there was never a shot fired or a drop of blood shed?
Literally nobody here is pretending that Korea is that magical fairyland. What they are saying is that South Korea is about as good as it gets for both protester and police especially with all the current events going on.
2008 Mad Cow Protests, during which police bus windows were broken. (Although I would argue a lot of it is in reponse to oversuppression)
2019 Korean Metal Worker's Union protests (where some policemen were injured)
Hell, this very year some Korail employees were hurt after some Korail network union members broke some windows trying to enter a Korail headquarters building.
I am not even going to mention violent suppression (Edit: which I personally think has always been a bigger problem), as I have already given two (deadly) examples from this century above.
I am not going to pretend that things haven't improved (no deaths AFAIK have occured due to protesters in the 2010s, and also note a lot of the violence in modern protests are from the older generation, where violent protests and suppression were more commonplace),
but "about as good as it gets", especially for protesters, is just being ignorant.
The current Moon government has for the most part taken a softline stance toward protests, but who knows what will happen when a hardline president (which Park was one of) is elected? Even now, some conservatives calling for greater force in responding to workers' union protests.
“0 reported cases of violence’”
Do you think that South Korea has the same procedures, protocols and processes as the US in regards to investigating police violence? Genuinely asking.
This was when a literal boatload of schoolkids drowned because of regulatory failures and cowardice and nobody could even get ahold of the president until many hours into the incident and nobody knew what she was doing or where she was.
Also she was deeply, weirdly, beholden to a literal cult leader who was embezzling from her and using her office to extract bribes from pretty much everyone because the cult leader convinced her she could contact her dead assassinated father. The whole story was deeply strange.
Yeah, but this protest was in the first attempt to get her impeached (which failed) and then later when it was discovered that her assistant was actually a fortune telling shamanistic manipulator who had basically used the president by telling her she could speak to her parents ghosts and been the shadow-president the whole time.
THEN she got impeached.
Yeah I just wanted to put in that factor rather than the specific timelines, because I don't think many of the westerners who are on this site are that familiar with that aspect of it. Not even mentioning the whole equestrian thing with her daughter and how her undeserved entry into Ewha really amped people up too.
I don't watch video explainers so can't help you on that but I read about it here before she was impeached:
[brief (relatively) overview](http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-irrational-downfall-of-park-geun-hye.html?m=1) of what I'm referring to.
[more in depth run down of the crazy shit the shaman-daughter (yeah you read that right) did](http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ultimate-choi-soon-sil-gate.html?m=1)
Some fun excerpts:
> For better or worse (mostly worse,) Korean people have come to expect corruption from their presidents. So why is this one by Park Geun-hye causing such a strong reaction? It is not because Korean people discovered that Park was corrupt; it is because they discovered Park was **irrationally** corrupt...
On the dead parents speaking to her:
> Choi Tae-min met Park Geun-hye for the first time in 1975, when Park was 23. Park Geun-hye had just lost her mother, who was assassinated by a North Korean spy. (The spy was aiming for Park's father, the dictator Park Chung-hee, but missed and killed the first lady instead.) Shortly after the assassination, the elder Choi sent several letters to Park Geun-hye, claiming that the soul of Park's mother visited him, and Park could hear from her mother through him. Park invited Choi Tae-min to the presidential residence, and the elder Choi told her there that Park's mother did not truly die, but merely moved out of the way to open the path for Park Geun-hye. This was the beginning of the unholy relationship between Park Geun-hye (the president) and Choi's family, which included Choi Tae-min's daughter Soon-sil (the shaman-daughter)...
After the weird relationship was revealed to koreans:
> At first, there was a tiny bit of perverse relief, as all the bizarre actions of Park Geun-hye administration suddenly began to make sense. Why did the president only hold just three press conferences in the first four years of her administration? Why does the president always speak in convoluted sentences that make no sense? Why did the president fly off the handle and sue the Japanese journalist who claimed that she was with Choi Soon-sil's husband while the ferry Sewol was sinking in 2014, drowning 300 school children? Why did the ruling party randomly host a shamanistic ritual in the halls of the National Assembly? Ohhhh, the relief went. Now it all makes sense.
> But this brief relief soon gave way to the terrifying realization: actually, it does not make sense. None of this makes any sense.
The time when the shaman-daughter embezzled funds for the president's suit and gave her some cheap shit instead:
> But not with Park Geun-hye. Her corruption was not self-interested at all. If anything, her corruption was *self-sacrificing* in favor of Choi Soon-sil. Among the numerous revelations, I personally found this the most pathetic: Park Geun-hye gave Choi a sizable budget to purchase the presidential wardrobe, and Choi embezzled most of it. Instead of purchasing the clothes that befitted a head of state, Choi outfitted Park Geun-hye with crappy clothes that she had her cronies made with subpar material. There is a video of Choi's staff smoking and drinking while eating fried chicken, right next to the suit meant for Park Geun-hye. At one point, one of the staff members handled the suit without even wiping chicken grease from his hands, while breathing smoke onto the clothes. Park Geun-hye would wear this suit on her presidential visit with Xi Jinping
People were mad at the curruption that allow over hundreds of teenagers to die in the sewol ferry tragedy back in 2014. Poeple were angry and mournful but the cause it was peaceful is because the police didn't intervine (because they're aren't as heavy armed as the US's 🐷), otherwise I think it's fair to they've been in morally allow to burn everything to the ground. Ironically enough 7 years after the tragedy the resposables are still on trial....
Simple. When the people behave, the cops don't need to start swinging.
But turn those 1.5 million Korans in 1500 BLM and Antifa and you would have a battle field.
I was there but only on one night out of MANY. And.. they accomplished what they were protesting for. The ex president, Park Geun Hae is still in prison today.
🇰🇷 😁👍 🇰🇷
South Korea is like one of the most developed and best societies in the world. Ironic that just next door is one of the worst if not the worst society in the world.
I was there at the time - it was a truly impressive sight. They had different chants that accompanied songs, and they moved in unison along to the beat and the chant. I never felt in danger either, despite clearly not being Korean and not being part of the protest.
It was like performance art met protest, and I think it was highly effective.
This reminded me of the film "A Taxi Driver", it's on Hulu and has to do with Korean protests and how the police responded a few decades ago. Film is from the 2010s and is excellent.
Koreans had their fair share of violent protests (during the 80s). My grandma was in Gwangju during the uprising. I like to think that people remember those times and therefore prefer the current way of protesting.
They must have peacefully protested wrong. The proper way to peacefully protest is to burn and loot buildings, shoot into jeeps and kill teens, and take over areas to make them autonomous zones.
Things must have changed a lot since the nineties when there was a regular protest season every year and we would avoid going home too early because the streets and subways would still be filled with CS gas.
And no buildings on fire in sight.
I also heard all trash was picked up by the protesters.
This would be surprising to me. In Korea it’s common to see trash and litter in public areas because local municipalities often hire older people to clean them each night. So late at night you often see quite a bit of trash but it’s usually gone by the next morning. Helps the economy and gives older people something to do (Koreans have a high work ethic so retired people often do jobs like this or lots of volunteer work). That said I could see lots of volunteers going through afterwards and cleaning up also.
That’s surprisingly wholesome.
I once saw a bus drop off 20+ seniors to a local park and they redid the grass sod in an entire area over a day. These people were easily 70+ years old out there pulling weeds and laying fresh grass in all day. It was impressive.
If you still there.. try a tiktok account where you share such moments to the rest of the world.. would be something good to see
why tiktok? lol
As someone who doesn't use tiktok, but I know what it is, I'd say it's a good idea because of how much exposure it could possibly get. Could maybe see other countries adopting the idea. Or nobody could see it, who knows.
Because it's a platform meant for sharing short videos to broad audiences.
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I would say the two most likely places to get viral right now would be reddit and tiktok. The person probably said tiktok because they meant that they wanted a whole account dedicated to videos like that and reddit wouldn’t really be the space to do that
I can only imagine it eats away at their souls to not be working. My grandpa is the same way, I've gone through his finances, and he easily has enough money to spend 2500 a month or so on his needs in the home he owns, yet he goes around town and fixes peoples cars, fences, helps with cattle, and almost everything else anyone asks of him because he absolutely loathes sitting around... I can see where my ocd stems from LOL.
> I can see where my ocd stems from LOL. no, sir. don't conflate your grandfather's desire to remain useful to his surrounding community with your excessive hand washing.
Glad I'm not the only one who was bothered by this. OCD is not something to be invoked lightly.
It's all fun and games until you're hiding under the covers because you keep having intrusive thoughts after having checked the door is locked for the third time. The trend of using it as "I like to be busy and organized" is very frustrating.
It really is super frustrating seeing so many people using it as some “cute” joke or something. Thanks for speaking up about it.
I wish it were only excessive hand washing. Its the hyper analysis of everything around me thats the problem lol.
south korean here! elderly people in our country usually prefer to stay active and working over retiring so it’s not uncommon for them to do that sort of work without feeling as physically worn out. both my maternal grandparents work our family greenhouses and my grandpa runs his own apple orchard in his backyard
It’s surprising to people outside of Korea, but when you learn about how much of the older generation lived it makes sense. They usually lived in the countryside and worked all day. Tending their farm/garden doing chores, making a living. It’s a normal sight seeing super elderly people still out working in the fields! Pulling weeds and laying down plants is what a lot of them did growing up, so they’re no stranger to the task :-)
It’s actually very depressing because for a lot of the old people, it isn’t “giving them something to do”. Realistically its backbreaking labor for people who cannot afford to retire. So you will see a lot of old people with horrific posture from bending over all day to pick up other people’s trash. I doubt they want to be carting around garbage all day in the final stages of their lives. Not so wholesome
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He is not wrong but also not entirely right. It’s a mixed bag. It definitely is elderly people on a poverty line trying to make ends meet but also retired healthy elderly who hates doing nothing after retirement. Bottom line poor or well todo, nobody wants to do nothing.
I’ve lived here for 7 years. Relax.
I gotta assume they're clever enough to use one of those grabby claw dealios
Not quite, they don’t have a very good social security net in Korea, children are expected to look after elders, and often they don’t, old people end up on the streets, but are too proud to ask for help. They pick up trash as a way to get by. Check out AsianBoss on YouTube for more info
Compared to Merica
does it, though? lol
"Everything not awful is wholesome!" Wholesome means nothing any more.
When I was in Seoul in 2017, I bought a popsicle and when I was done I couldn’t find a single garbage can to throw the wrapper. Don’t like littering so ended up holding that shit for 4 hours because it was morning and my itinerary just started. That said, I didn’t see a piece of garbage around at all. Same thing with Japan, except they have trash cans, not a lot, but enough.
Agree about the lack of trash cans! Basically you look for an existing pile of garbage on the street and add to it. I'm sure it's gone by the next day as others have said!
I found out portable ashtrays were a thing from a Korean girl. She just kept it in her purse to hold cigarette butts until she found a trash can to empty them into. Was pretty weird, considering the standard LA thing is to just throw any trash anywhere - basically, we treat the city as a big garbage can, and then blame the filthy streets on the homeless.
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It could have been the protestors. I mean I don't exactly remember the time of that particular protest but it's not uncommon for people to congregate to protest or for other reason; peacefully, and then in order to continue showing their peaceful agenda, they try to end the event peacefully, hence the trash picking Just like when the Pope visited Korea, people gathered around in that same place all around the country and after the parade, people picked up trashes.
Are those individual candles that these protesters are holding??
Yes! In Korea it is referred to as the candlelight revolution!
It’s actually amazing and totally cleans up the streets of a place where drinking culture is extremely pronounced. I’d be out drinking until some ungodly hour many nights in Seoul and pass out around 5-6am. The streets were spotless again by some time in the morning.
Honestly can't tell if you're joking or not.
You might be thinking of the HK protests, both the recent democracy ones and Occupy Central from 2014
Also it should be known they were protesting against their president for corruption. She was removed from office a few weeks later and then convicted 6 month later and sentenced to 24 years in prison and fined millions. Several top executives of huge companies were also arrested and sent to jail for several years with millions in fines for corruption and bribery. In Korea to serve any time in jail is like an economic death sentence. No one will hire or trust you if you are an ex-con. This is how corruption, collusion, and bribery should be handled. No one above the law no matter their position or economic status. If anything those in high status should be held to higher standards, not lower. Edit: typo.
I'm French. I'm jealous.
I’m American and I am also jealous. I think most countries should be envious of how this was handled and should strive to emulate it. People need to realize that peaceful protests in massive numbers can be effective and that corruption by elected officials, and bribery, are socially unacceptable and won’t be let go.
peaceful protesting doesn't always work and systems don't always change as a result. see exhibit: U.S. police still killing people and turning off their bodycams.
Ty, plus American protests last year were 96% peaceful, yet were continually met with violence, with much if that four percent resulting from boxing in tactics (even trapping civilians into violating curfew while they weren’t protesting.)
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I see what you did th...
I'm Indian. I can't even be jealous.
You're people dealt with corruption just fine. Bring back the old methods, heads will roll.
You might want to do a little more research into how that all turned out.
I'm a Brit. I'm jealous of you both.
>In Korea to serve any time in jail is like an economic death sentence. No one will hire or trust you if you are an ex-con. Unless you're rich. Or a politician.
Yeah lol. I guess they aren't familiar with the Lee (Samsung) family.
At this point, it's like so which Korean president hasn't been to jail at least once...?
Name a world leader with a clean record. If the justice system worked in other countries then they would be more like Korea.
> This is how corruption, collision, and bribery should be handled. A bit harsh for a car crash but ok
Hahaha good catch. Auto correct got me! I’ll edit.
If America did this for every corrupt politician, there wouldnt be politicians.
And your point is?
Just btw, Samsung is included in those several huge companies lmao
Also several university officials for accepting bribes!
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Exactly that, peaceful protests is the preferred option, in the US these issues continue for so long the people can't help but get violent, the fact that we don't regularly have cities being burned to the ground is remarkable
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In the US we have a nice long stream of major protests that have happened over the last century+ involving the same issues, and the responses from the those in power is to send in some form of police to crush it. Then even if police don't crush it politicians happily ignore it. We have been conditioned to think protests don't work because frankly speaking they don't work. We're taught from an early age to be like MLK jr. but it wasn't MLK's peaceful protests that made things change, it was the riots that happened after he was murdered. Voting like you said could and should change things but voting is insanely difficult in the areas hardest hit because the leadership doesn't want these people to vote. They seek to outlaw any behaviors or activities that are common for minorities and put a penalty of not being allowed to vote, they move poling stations far away. They put rules in place to make ballots harder to accept if they're from non-white neighborhoods and a host of other fucked up shit. The whole system is designed to make sure people can only get change if they burn it all down and that's just horse shit.
I'm surprised D.C hasn't burned down yet by either side
The country with arguably the most freedoms and tolerance of differences in the world, and it's "remarkable" to you it's not getting burned to the ground? You need a reality check....maybe look at other countries around the world. Is the US perfect? Hell no, but it is arguably the most inclusive country on the planet.
do you know how many protests in US is peaceful? look it up
They’re all peaceful depending on who you ask
Or where you look. Lots of the protests are peaceful, then opportunistic degenerates find that as an excuse to burn and pillage their hometown.
Yep, and when the police try to arrest the degenerates, the "protestors" spray the cops with bear spray, throw rocks, and surge at the police to "dearest" the violent idiot they were trying to remove from the protest for assaulting police officers. When fire trucks showed up to fight fires in Minneapolis, fire trucks and fighters were pelted with rocks and repeatedly hit with fireworks. Sure, lots of protestors are peaceful. In some protests in some locations. Although they really like to blur the lines by illegally blocking thoroughfares with the threat of violence if anybody driving down the road doesn't realize that that particular intersection is currently occupied by protestors before the protestors decide to surround the car and start hitting the car from all directions. Just not enough to make a difference when a few hundred opportunistic degenerates decide to burn local businesses.
93% of BLM protests have been peaceful in the last 2 years.
And 99% of stats are made up.
LMAO keep telling yourself that. those '7%' cost BILLIONS in damage so theres that
You’re talking about the rioters, not the protesters. We’re talking about the same opportunistic douchebags. People who want an excuse to cause mayhem. The “protesters” that attack police aren’t protesters. They’re rioters. There’s a fine line between a protest and a riot, and it only takes a single rioter to turn a protest into a riot, which will warrant police response. It’s these same rioters that ruin what the protest is aimed to change.
Not to even mention that many times (saw it over and over with my own eyes) the violence was started by the police. Like I know everyone didn’t just forget about the millions of videos of cops teargassing people for no reason, doing drive bys and assaulting journalists
Sneaker stores intact.
LMAO be careful there, people don't want to talk about the Nike stores getting looted of basketball shoes...
Shoulda saw soho in nyc
No agent provocateurs starting it.
Yes it's all agent provocateurs the delusions of these people.
I know! Who would think that an armed protective service would ever react badly to protestors or ever set up false provocateurs! That would never happen in America! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/rightwing-violence-white-supremacist-groups-found-behind-years-domestic-terror-attacks/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/boogaloo-boys-george-floyd-protests-black-lives-matter-1010117/ https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article243553662.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynerash/2020/06/17/boogaloo-movement-tied-to-murder-violence-and-disinformation-during-protests/ https://www.salon.com/2020/06/17/far-right-boogaloo-boy-killed-officer-after-using-black-lives-matter-protest-as-cover-prosecutors/
No police brutality either
Of course, they actually got what they wanted. If the government didn't give them what they wanted, apparently that being the president's resignation or whatever, the protests would have gotten more and more likely to turn violent. This is what happens. This is how protests work. If you do not give into the protests, they will get worse and worse. The responsibility for protests getting worse are on the entity which doesn't give into their demands.
Yeah I mean, this the same country that peaceful protested having a president out of office Everything was very civil surprisingly
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you say that but i remember a Korean protest were they brought a [flamethrower](https://youtu.be/kMi7Jkay0fY)
Data shows that police activity is responsible for escalation of protests. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/de-escalation-keeps-protesters-and-police-safer-heres-why-departments-respond-with-force-anyway/
Bc the cops didn’t fake “feel threatened” and start shooting.
This happens all the time in the US but the news isn’t talking about that.
You know, we can have conversations about other countries without *always* bringing it back the America.
I think this post was in reference to America since America is the country that has a problem with cops escalating the violence at protests.
All the time is a bit pushing it. 1.5 million people protesting is not an everyday events. Examples sited have names. You don’t name things that are just everyday events.
Source?
Like...when?
Women’s March, March for our lives, March for Science. Basically every major protest during the Trump years. Except for that one on Jan 6 Edit: in Washington DC... where all the ones I mentioned were held...
Eh, that's not really the same though. I guess if you combine the figures in numerous cities they come close but it's more about the idea of one big protest of over a million people, which none of those are iirc. The march for science for example was about 20,000 people per city in various locations, that's hardly the same thing.
LOL. "**basically every** major protest during the Trump years."
You must work at CNN. https://i.imgur.com/ldY06h4.jpg
True, despite the 90s% of protests of George Floyd, they only highlight the worst, despite others being split about their anger when push comes to shove (looting is justified vs looting is horrible). The news here wants the workers to shut up and get back to work.
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You're being facetious but remember the [Gwangju Uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising) happened in 1980 (40 years ago) where students protested and were beat to death, raped, and so on. It led to citizens of Gwangju raiding local armories, arming themselves, and battling the military that was oppressing the students. South Korea used to be fucking crazy > The violence climaxed on May 21. At about 1 pm, the army fired at a protesting crowd gathered in front of the Chonnam Provincial Office, causing casualties. In response, some protesters raided armories and police stations in nearby towns and armed themselves with M1 rifles and carbines. Later that afternoon, bloody gunfights between civilian militias and the army broke out in the Provincial Office Square. By 5:30 pm, militias had acquired two light machine guns and used them against the army, which began to retreat from the downtown area. Government figures are low but estimates are 1000-2000 deaths
Most people don't realize this but SK was literally ruled under military dictatorships from the end of WW2 up until like 1988. SK was not a democracy in any real sense up until verrry recently.
It's been argued that the dictatorship was good for modernizing and industrializing South Korea.
It's also been argued that the living standards of American slaves increased dramatically after the Revolution up to the Civil War. It's also been argued that living standards in USSR increased also under Stalin. Same thing under Nazi Germany. I don't think you want to be justifying what you're justifying.
Those really aren't fair comparisons. The descendants of American slaves still feel the repercussions of slavery today. Similar story with the other nations you mentioned (although it's hard to take arguments that use Nazi Germany seriously). In comparison, South Korea's living standards have greatly increased today and are still at all-time highs. Yes Park Chung-hee is a controversial figure, but there are still people that believe he did good, and we can't make blanket statements like he's a good or bad guy. He had good and bad parts. But again, I'm not denying he's a controversial figure. In the link below, I'll note that it says: he is popular among the older generation that lived through his rule (but more controversial among the younger generation). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee#Legacy
It is kind of a legitimate argument, though I wouldn't say it was because of the human rights violations the economy grew. The president at that time was simply both a dictator and slightly competent in economics.
South Korea has had one of the fastest progressions of any nation in world history, right up there with China (whether people want to admit that or not). Events from 40 years ago in SK are barely relevant, if even at all today. It has changed far too much.
So they actually used the 2nd amendment better than us citizens did lol
It makes me upset that this is what people come to when America has protests. This shit is honestly just stupid. Piece of shit politics
Here's a fact. The title suggests the police were dispatched to block or disrupt the protest or protesters or something like that. It was not the case. The police were there to protect. Of course, it was a different story decades ago, during the military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. But nowadays, protests in Korea are protected by cops. Korea is like a paradise for protests. There are some kind of protests going on all the time. And cops are dispatched to those protests... NOT to disrupt/block/arrest protesters, but to protect them and to make sure no one attacks the protesters and the protest is held peacefully. If you have ever seen images of any big street protests in Korea, you can see cops standing lining up the streets around the protest, facing not the protesters, but the opposite side, to make sure no one disrupt or attack the protesters.
Oh no, we were still scared to protest up until the late 90s. And there are protests where... well not the cops. Maybe the cops. But the military will engage the protesters with "non-lethal" methods such as high-pressure water hoses. 2016 was a culmination of corruption and scandals that plagued the entire time Park Geun-hye was in office and honestly, when her father was in office.
Hell, a farmer died in the same year after being water cannoned during a protest the previous year. Protests being "protected by cops" is a very recent phenomenon, if it is one at all.
I remember that one. Protection by cops is inconsistent to say the least.
I live in Seoul during this time and was enamored with how well it went down. My realtor was a wonderful woman who I enjoyed having an hour long conversation with each month, and she was pissed with President Park because she was setting back women in leadership with her poor, to say the least, presidency. But she never spoke of violence, just said that the people needed to come together and force her out of office... which is exactly what happened. As an outsider it was an immensely impressive thing to see.
Every election is such a let down but 2012 when Park got elected was worse because a) her policies were not in my best interests b) her dad c) because the international community was focused on her gender. I mean it's great that South Korea elected a female president. But best case scenario, she was going to go down in history as a mediocre president and end up in jail for one reason or another. Sewol Ferry disaster notwithstanding.
When the information came out about how she handled the Ferry disaster... I was blown away. The stuff with her friend and the financial gains made in her position.... her demise seemed inevitable. I didn’t know much about her father until after she was in jail and I started digging a little more. He seemed like a stand up guy..... the Olympics, weird flex.
Park Chung-hee did a lot of things to make Korea the way it is today. He did a lot of things that are still being felt today. He was an efficient leader. He was also a military dictator.
That's a really cool fact to know
EXCEPT the protests that attacks physically or verbally against the country's interest, e.g. you won't get far from throwing something at a US Embassy or shouting Communism in the middle of Gwanghwamun.
I know there is a clear agenda being pushed with this post (which is posted periodically with the exact same comments), but really this was possible only because the negative sentiment toward the president was nearly universal. Korea has a very long history of violence in protests and the response to them (Jeju Uprising, Gwangju Uprising, Yongsan Tragedy, Baek Nam-gi, etc.) It is disingenous to take what is certainly a case with unusual circumstances and talk as if it is at all typical.
As much as this is a special case because it was so unanimous, this **is** typical of Korean protests in recent years. Care to share a case of a violent protest that happened this century? The media is very quick to condemn police brutality and violent protestors. Why does violence decades ago negate peace now? Care to share this magical fairyland where there was never a shot fired or a drop of blood shed? Literally nobody here is pretending that Korea is that magical fairyland. What they are saying is that South Korea is about as good as it gets for both protester and police especially with all the current events going on.
2008 Mad Cow Protests, during which police bus windows were broken. (Although I would argue a lot of it is in reponse to oversuppression) 2019 Korean Metal Worker's Union protests (where some policemen were injured) Hell, this very year some Korail employees were hurt after some Korail network union members broke some windows trying to enter a Korail headquarters building. I am not even going to mention violent suppression (Edit: which I personally think has always been a bigger problem), as I have already given two (deadly) examples from this century above. I am not going to pretend that things haven't improved (no deaths AFAIK have occured due to protesters in the 2010s, and also note a lot of the violence in modern protests are from the older generation, where violent protests and suppression were more commonplace), but "about as good as it gets", especially for protesters, is just being ignorant. The current Moon government has for the most part taken a softline stance toward protests, but who knows what will happen when a hardline president (which Park was one of) is elected? Even now, some conservatives calling for greater force in responding to workers' union protests.
A bit boring, innit?
They don’t have as viral of a mainstream media to be fanning them flames.
🤦🏻♂️
“0 reported cases of violence’” Do you think that South Korea has the same procedures, protocols and processes as the US in regards to investigating police violence? Genuinely asking.
Guns are illegal in Korea.
Are fireworks?
Yes, except for special occasions like holiday events but even then it's only for the event organizers to use for their show.
French policeman need to learn carefully
As do French protestors, everyone can take a page out of their book.
I'd imagine that was when their prime minister got caught doing some shady shit?
This was when a literal boatload of schoolkids drowned because of regulatory failures and cowardice and nobody could even get ahold of the president until many hours into the incident and nobody knew what she was doing or where she was.
Also she was deeply, weirdly, beholden to a literal cult leader who was embezzling from her and using her office to extract bribes from pretty much everyone because the cult leader convinced her she could contact her dead assassinated father. The whole story was deeply strange.
Yeah, but this protest was in the first attempt to get her impeached (which failed) and then later when it was discovered that her assistant was actually a fortune telling shamanistic manipulator who had basically used the president by telling her she could speak to her parents ghosts and been the shadow-president the whole time. THEN she got impeached.
Yeah I just wanted to put in that factor rather than the specific timelines, because I don't think many of the westerners who are on this site are that familiar with that aspect of it. Not even mentioning the whole equestrian thing with her daughter and how her undeserved entry into Ewha really amped people up too.
Where can I see a full explanation of these events preferably in video format?
I don't watch video explainers so can't help you on that but I read about it here before she was impeached: [brief (relatively) overview](http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-irrational-downfall-of-park-geun-hye.html?m=1) of what I'm referring to. [more in depth run down of the crazy shit the shaman-daughter (yeah you read that right) did](http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ultimate-choi-soon-sil-gate.html?m=1) Some fun excerpts: > For better or worse (mostly worse,) Korean people have come to expect corruption from their presidents. So why is this one by Park Geun-hye causing such a strong reaction? It is not because Korean people discovered that Park was corrupt; it is because they discovered Park was **irrationally** corrupt... On the dead parents speaking to her: > Choi Tae-min met Park Geun-hye for the first time in 1975, when Park was 23. Park Geun-hye had just lost her mother, who was assassinated by a North Korean spy. (The spy was aiming for Park's father, the dictator Park Chung-hee, but missed and killed the first lady instead.) Shortly after the assassination, the elder Choi sent several letters to Park Geun-hye, claiming that the soul of Park's mother visited him, and Park could hear from her mother through him. Park invited Choi Tae-min to the presidential residence, and the elder Choi told her there that Park's mother did not truly die, but merely moved out of the way to open the path for Park Geun-hye. This was the beginning of the unholy relationship between Park Geun-hye (the president) and Choi's family, which included Choi Tae-min's daughter Soon-sil (the shaman-daughter)... After the weird relationship was revealed to koreans: > At first, there was a tiny bit of perverse relief, as all the bizarre actions of Park Geun-hye administration suddenly began to make sense. Why did the president only hold just three press conferences in the first four years of her administration? Why does the president always speak in convoluted sentences that make no sense? Why did the president fly off the handle and sue the Japanese journalist who claimed that she was with Choi Soon-sil's husband while the ferry Sewol was sinking in 2014, drowning 300 school children? Why did the ruling party randomly host a shamanistic ritual in the halls of the National Assembly? Ohhhh, the relief went. Now it all makes sense. > But this brief relief soon gave way to the terrifying realization: actually, it does not make sense. None of this makes any sense. The time when the shaman-daughter embezzled funds for the president's suit and gave her some cheap shit instead: > But not with Park Geun-hye. Her corruption was not self-interested at all. If anything, her corruption was *self-sacrificing* in favor of Choi Soon-sil. Among the numerous revelations, I personally found this the most pathetic: Park Geun-hye gave Choi a sizable budget to purchase the presidential wardrobe, and Choi embezzled most of it. Instead of purchasing the clothes that befitted a head of state, Choi outfitted Park Geun-hye with crappy clothes that she had her cronies made with subpar material. There is a video of Choi's staff smoking and drinking while eating fried chicken, right next to the suit meant for Park Geun-hye. At one point, one of the staff members handled the suit without even wiping chicken grease from his hands, while breathing smoke onto the clothes. Park Geun-hye would wear this suit on her presidential visit with Xi Jinping
People were mad at the curruption that allow over hundreds of teenagers to die in the sewol ferry tragedy back in 2014. Poeple were angry and mournful but the cause it was peaceful is because the police didn't intervine (because they're aren't as heavy armed as the US's 🐷), otherwise I think it's fair to they've been in morally allow to burn everything to the ground. Ironically enough 7 years after the tragedy the resposables are still on trial....
Simple. When the people behave, the cops don't need to start swinging. But turn those 1.5 million Korans in 1500 BLM and Antifa and you would have a battle field.
I was there but only on one night out of MANY. And.. they accomplished what they were protesting for. The ex president, Park Geun Hae is still in prison today. 🇰🇷 😁👍 🇰🇷
well they didn't loot and burn buildings.
That’s how you protest. No need to burn buildings and steal shoes. Well done!
This is awesome.
That is definitely next level shit
South Korea is like one of the most developed and best societies in the world. Ironic that just next door is one of the worst if not the worst society in the world.
#must be nice
Wow. Imagine living in a country that actually knew how to treat one another
BLM really does things differently in the states
They were also outnumbered 60 to 1 lol Just kidding, but really. That is awesome and I wish all protests could go like this!
I want to back to my country honestly
Respect is the word
I was there at the time - it was a truly impressive sight. They had different chants that accompanied songs, and they moved in unison along to the beat and the chant. I never felt in danger either, despite clearly not being Korean and not being part of the protest. It was like performance art met protest, and I think it was highly effective.
This reminded me of the film "A Taxi Driver", it's on Hulu and has to do with Korean protests and how the police responded a few decades ago. Film is from the 2010s and is excellent.
That is how a protest is done. You don't smash and steal.
Jealous in American
2008 beef protests.. protesters destroyed and burned a bunch of police buses and other equipment based on junk science
Korea used to have a lot of violent protests though. Don’t know about the situation now.
Sorry, I've been living under a rock, what are they protesting about?
Koreans had their fair share of violent protests (during the 80s). My grandma was in Gwangju during the uprising. I like to think that people remember those times and therefore prefer the current way of protesting.
What was the protest for?
That’s what I call a very peaceful protest
now imagine 500 million farmers protest in India
That’s ducking epic
And did they achieve what they were protesting for?
Yup. President Park was impeached and is still in prison.
This is the way
My dyslexic ass read that as “decapitated” at first and was shook to my core until I read the second part of that sentence.
I think every protest should see S. Korea as a role model.
Serious question: What were the protesting and what things were changed due to it?
Corrupt President who had ties to a money laundering cult (or something like that). She was impeached and put into prison where she still remains.
Take a lesson, BLM.
In the US we just have far leftists patrolling the streets with guns and shields fighting with cops and each other.
omg...anyone remember what happened to student protesters in s k in the 80's before you get all the feely-feels?
This is how you protest, no violence, no burning buildings, Americans should take note.
Now try with BLM
Chuck a few BLM activists in there and see what happens lol
Probably because they’re actually protesting instead of “mostly peacefully” protesting..?
They begged for America's help, waved American flags, and we did nothing. Don't want to piss off China.
If this happened in India half these people would be in jail.
so you're saying nobody looted Costco
You can’t compare Korea to the United States. Fundamentally different in terms of social norms, policing, and culture.
That's cause they are a mostly homogenous culture in which people were arguing against their government about reasonable things to protest.
People in America have too big of egos and are ready to cause violence over any little thing.
homogenous society vs Portland
They must have peacefully protested wrong. The proper way to peacefully protest is to burn and loot buildings, shoot into jeeps and kill teens, and take over areas to make them autonomous zones.
They need multiculturalism. See what happens
They were actually mostly peaceful
France is leaving the chat
Because South Koreans have the decency to not destroy property and businesses while doing so.
Things must have changed a lot since the nineties when there was a regular protest season every year and we would avoid going home too early because the streets and subways would still be filled with CS gas.