Three thousand protesters put the U.S. Embassy in downtown Seoul under siege for 20 minutes Saturday to protest the deployment of an American missile interceptor or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
But it may not set a good precedent, allowing a lapse in protection given by the host country to foreign missions. The tone of the rally shown by slogans and performances looked and sounded extreme to say the least.
It is worth turning the tables to think of how we would react, if a Korean mission was put under siege and received a plethora of anti-Korean slogans.
The Saturday protest was legal as the protesters followed a court order for the duration of their rally and there was no violence reported.
True, it was meaningful that it marked the first protest to be allowed in the vicinity of the American mission. No rally, not even a one-person protest, had been permitted so near it. So it could be taken as a manifestation of the basic democratic right of assembly and association.
Obviously, the court allowed the Saturday protest in the spirit of maximum freedom of expression _ the same as given to candlelit protesters who came close to the premises of the presidential office to demand the resignation of former President Park Geun-hye last year. Park was impeached and ousted from office.
Although there must have been a skeleton staff inside the embassy Saturday, the symbolism of the besieged premises would be hard for Americans to miss. During the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the U.S. embassy in Tehran was besieged for 444 days with its staff held hostage. This turned Iran into the U.S.’s No. 1 public enemy.
The slogans Saturday included “ROK-U.S. alliance is slave contract,” “Defense Minister Han Min-koo is manservant of the U.S.” and “U.S. plots war on the Korean Peninsula.” Effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump and models of THAAD were torn apart. Independent Rep. Kim Jong-hoon claimed, “No other country has oppressed Korea more than the U.S.” Other speakers said THAAD was no help in defending Korea or called for candlelit protests against the U.S.
Even if it is a mission of other countries such as Japan, China or other countries, the courtesy and protection as stipulated in related U.N. protocols such as the Geneva Convention should be as broadly interpreted as possible so diplomats of the pertinent nations shouldn’t feel threatened or worse by the rally.
By this sense, the court may need to take extra care the next time when reviewing a request for a rally around embassies. On Saturday, the human chain looked too dangerously close to the embassy in places, raising concerns about breaches into the premises with insufficient numbers of police on standby.