Far Right Protests in Gwanghwamun, 6/19

Gwanghwamun, since the removal of the Sewol Ferry memorial tents in March 2019, has often been home to a polar opposite protest group: the Taegukgi (the Korean national flag) protests. The Taegukgi rallies lay claim to conservative buzzwords like: patriotic, liberty, democracy, rule of law, nation. The long history of anticommunism in postwar South Korea grants those words a certain gravity, amplified by historical trauma.

The story from this day is one of violence. The man in the bottom two photos beat up a biker. After a brief verbal altercation, he smashed the biker’s helmet with a metal Israeli flag, and beat his face as the man fell from the bike. Two bigger men came and restrained him, while the victim crumpled to the floor. The restrained man stopped swinging, and resorted to yelling at his victim about Moon Jae-in’s atrocities. Once the police arrived, he started pouring his heart about how the man had baited him into violence, with all the righteous indignance of one who had just suffered great injustice.

The Inspector for the local police station walked in with a slow gait, hand held behind his back and shades covering his eyes. He took one look at the victim on the floor, and walked over to his men, who were occupied with the sorrows of the aggressor and a random fellow taegukgi woman who had shown up to berate the victim for “getting beat up on purpose.” The Inspector, without saying a word, strolled back across the street to rest under a shade. The man was guided peacefully into the police vehicle, which promptly drove away.

Quick to resort to violence, quick to succumb to state-sanctioned power.