Political wrestling matches taint country’s rep

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Political wrestling matches taint country’s rep

In a seasonal tradition, violence has erupted in the National Assembly.

The most recent episode on Dec. 17 was relatively mild, though the politicians here are notorious for their brawls. Video of the July fight showed screaming, hair-pulling and jumping politicians, and the melee in December was like a pro wrestling pay-per-view, with hammers, tables and choke holds.

The violence has consequences outside of Korea. Several years ago a New Zealand company ran a commercial for dress shirts featuring brawling Korean politicians. The Korean Embassy there filed a complaint, saying the commercial “depicted Korean politics and people in a negative fashion and was therefore offensive to the Korean community in New Zealand.”

Of course, the main people depicting Korean politics in a negative fashion was the Korean politicians themselves.

“Actually, I think that the National Assembly brawls fit perfectly in Korean society and represent this place quite accurately,” writes Douglas. “It provides a telling example of how Koreans deal with conflict in a bitterly divisive society that hasn’t learned how to accommodate differences of opinion. Is it ugly? Yes. Does it embarrass Koreans? Yes. Does it misrepresent the country? No.”

“Does anyone know why this keeps happening?” Mike asks. “It is a definite blight on the Korean image.”

“Talk to your Korean friends and colleagues,” writes Darth Babaganoosh. “They believe it is just as ridiculous as ‘we’ do. None I’ve talked to accept it.”

“Just because a certain behavior is inappropriate in our cultures, that doesn’t mean it’s inappropriate in Korean culture,” adds Peter. “Despite the hand-wringing of the Korean Embassy in New Zealand, it seems to me that some level of angry confrontation (whether it’s physical, or raising one’s voice, etc.) is simply an accepted part of resolving a dispute in Korea. For the record, the vast majority of the confrontations I’ve seen between Koreans has been nonviolent, mostly involving raised voices or shouting, angry gesturing, occasionally physical intimidation, but rarely any actual hitting. Which makes the National Assembly fights an extreme example of this behavior, but not, in my opinion, all that shocking in context.”

An Acorn in the Dog’s Food writes: “I’m curious how much influence the ‘grassroots’ democracy movements of the 1970s and 1980s have had in generating an assumption that bravado, theatrics and even violence are normative ways of showing one’s dedication to the cause and fighting against ‘the man.’ In the past this figure was an authoritative dictator (and even further back, the Japanese colonial government) and now it’s a collection of individuals representing the opposing political parties. And it’s so much easier to get in a fellow politician’s face in the National Assembly than it was to do anything similar to the nation’s dictator.”

Roboseyo adds: “The people leading the country now were students when Korea’s democratic protests happened. At the age when people figure out how the world works, Korea’s politicians saw people get what they wanted politically through loud, extreme gestures and violence, not through discussion and debate.

“It’s no surprise they’re still using the same tactics. In the 1960s, when all channels for communicating with the government were ignored, tokens or corrupt, those gestures worked, and were necessary. Now, I wish they weren’t. Meanwhile, I also agree that as long as this kind of video footage makes headlines around the world (and it does) Korean politics will never be taken totally seriously by the rest of the world.”

“I used to wonder why no one had enacted a law making it a crime to interfere with parliamentary procedure,” writes @koreangov. “And then I remembered whose responsibility it would be to draft such a law.”



These comments were collected by Brian Deutsch from recent blog posts. To read more, visit his blog Brian in Jeollanam-do at: http://briandeutsch.blogspot.com/.

By Brian Deutsch Contributing writer
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