Save our friends from the hands of the South Korean police state!! Help us fight the oppressive G20 regime right now!!

by Byeong-gwon Goh

Dear friends,

This is Byeong-gwon Goh of Research Machine Suyunomo R.

We are a commune located in Seoul. Our membership consists of mostly precariously employed academics and students. Being formed at the time of the Asian currency crisis of 1997, we consider ourselves a member of the broader network of socially conscious collectives or communes that have sprouted across this country and beyond under the
neo-liberalist globalization scheme, Now I'm writing this letter to ask for your help.

As you know, the Korean government is hosting the G20 Seoul Summit from November 11th to the 12th in Seoul. And now we are witnessing ridiculous ordeals that this two day "global" event is putting us through.

We are being bombarded daily by the media, be it print, broadcast or cyber, with special features celebrating the greatness of the G20. Civil servants are being mobilized to clean up the streets. And all of the sudden they are making a scene out of teaching children economics. The police have suddenly begun strictly enforcing "basic law and order" to show off to the heads of G20 how serene this 10 million strong capitalist capital of the streets, and the crackdown and deportation process of undocumented migrant workers whom the authorities suspect might harbor 'terrorists' among them is more violent than ever. The situation appears more and more like a flashback of the American supported authoritarian regime that we overthrew in 1987. Indeed the whole nation is being held in a state of alertness and a total warfare where currency and stocks rise and fall instead of planes, tanks and bombs.

A special law that will be in effect only for this month has been instituted ahead of this summit. This act allows the military force to be mobilized to keep the "public security." What we have instead is the prohibitive curtailing of basic civil rights.

It was under these social circumstances that one of the members of our collective drew graffiti on pro-G20 propaganda posters. His intention was merely to poke fun at the ludicrous state of the nation. He just spray painted a figure of a rat in such a position so it appears to hold a traditional lamp once used to greet the noble ruling class in pre-modern Korea (the lamp was the central design of the poster which read "The turning point to light up the future-G20 Seoul Summit: The World Eyes Turn to the Republic of Korea) (See the attached image file). While the rat figure was a visual pun on the pronunciation of 'G' that resembles the sound for the word 'rat' in Korean, it was a representation of the president Lee Myung-bak who won the nickname "rat" due to his facial appearance as well as untrustworthy track record as a politician and businessman (he was once a CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction).

In any case, the police tried to seek an arrest warrant for our friend based on their suspicion (they never cease to be suspicious!!) that there would be a meticulous and organized conspiracy to obstruct the grand national event. But the truth of the matter is that he just made
a graffiti on the posters to voice opposition to the government mobilization of the entire populous in service of the summit. Now as we observe the threatening maneuvers of the police and the prosecution I think he is in a dangerous situation. Their tactic can turn far more
aggressive than it already is if they think they can get away with In this state of hyper-security the government is targeting organizations where members have openly criticized the government. This puts us as a commune at risk of being cracked down on as the government uses this moment to intimidate its critics in civil society.

Fortunately, as his actions have been covered widely by the media, many people in Korea are voicing their opposition. Still, the security officials are working to get him arrested. So I am asking you to join us in voicing our solidarity beyond borders and protest against the abusive use of the state power in the name of security.

His name is Jeong-soo Park. While he is very active in organizing seminars and presenting lectures at our commune, he is also a part time lecturer of cultural studies at a university. He has written many articles on psychoanalysis and translated several of Slavoj Zizek's works into Korean.

Please give your support and show solidarity.

Send petitions, words, and pictures of solidarity to this email address below. Any show of support, no matter how brief it is. We would like to display you're these signs of international support via our web site and other venues once we get then before 10th November. While it is important to do this quickly before the summit, we would like to keep getting support after the deadline to sustain our action as the impending trial will be a much longer process. Please send your mail to our email address : suyunomo at daum.net

Just in case, if you would not like to reveal your real name, we would accept your support in pseudonym as well. If you are comfortable, please also give us your affiliation and/or geographical location.