5 - South Korean Anti-Base Movements and the Resilience of the Security Consensus

Summary

It's a crucial and legitimate government project that has much at stake, namely U.S.-Korea relations.

– ROK Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung

On May 4, 2005, 12,000 riot police entered Daechuri village, a small village in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, 50 miles south of Seoul in Kyongi Province. Activists and local residents, refusing to leave their farmland, were making a desperate stand to block the expansion and relocation of United States Forces, Korea (USFK) headquarters to Camp Humphreys. While South Korean soldiers erected barbed wire around the base expansion land outside Camp Humphreys, 2,000 activists battled riot police who stormed Daechuri Elementary School, the makeshift headquarters of the Pan–South Korean Solution Committee Against Base Expansion in Pyeongtaek (KCPT). One hundred and twenty protestors, police, and soldiers were injured, and 524 protestors, mostly students and activists, were taken into custody. Immediately following the violence, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) went on a public relations offensive, highlighting the violent tactics of protestors attacking an unarmed engineering brigade. The government's public relations campaign severely damaged the credibility of South Korean anti-base activists in their struggle to block the expansion of Camp Humphreys. The KCPT never fully recovered from the May 4 clash, and eventually faded away by the end of 2007.