Pissed-Off GNP Parliamentarians Demand Chinese Apology!

Surgeon General’s Warning: Holding your breath while awaiting apologies from nuclear-armed Asian septuagenarians may be hazardous to your health. Insert your own “hey, what are you smoking?” reference here. Say the Grand National Party’s own Beijing Four ©:

We demand apology and punishment of those responsible for the sabotage of South Korean lawmakers’ press conference with the int’l media.

On Jan. 12 (Wed), 2005, at a conference room on the 2nd floor of the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel in Beijing, a very regrettable incident occurred at 2 p.m.. National Assemblymen of the Republic of Korea Kim Moon-soo, Choi Byung-gook, Bae Il-do and Park Seung-hwan were about to start a press conference, when all of the lights suddenly went out and the reporters were forcefully pulled out of the room.

This incident is a very grievous event that seriously threatens the diplomatic relations between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

In response, we hereby demand the following:

1. We urge the PRC government to figure out those who are responsible for the sabotage of this rightful press conference and deal with the same according to the Chinese law;

2. We urge the PRC government to show the law and/or regulation pertaining to the interference of this press conference;

3. We urge the PRC government to determine the person or persons in charge of those responsible for the black-out of said conference room for two hours and virtually detaining and/or isolating us for over five hours;

4. We urge the PRC government to punish the person or persons in charge of those dozen or so unidentified ruffians who shoved the reporters out of the conference room and threatened us on several occasions with the use of force; and

5. We urge the ROK government to lodge a stern protest with the PRC government for the disruption of this press conference and implement a strongest diplomatic measure ensuring the punishment of the person or persons responsible for this incident and the promise not to allow the recurrence of the like incident.
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Members of the National Assembly, Republic of Korea,
Kim Moon-soo, Choi Byung-gook, Bae Il-do, Park Seung-hwan

Pulling obvious stunts like this to embarrass China into changing its policies can be productive on occasion, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to play along with it. You don’t just fly to your neighborhood dictatorship, reserve the Hibiscus Room, hold a press conference to criticize government policies, and then claim to be shocked, shocked that the goons showed up to pull the plug. That’s what China is. That’s why they’re in power. Why pretend that we thought otherwise yesterday? Just scroll down. Indeed, the Grand National Party itself is hardly standing on high ground when it comes to North Korea policy, given their adoption of Sunshine Lite: the margarine of Sunshine, the Diet Coke of Sunshine, the microfiber of Sunshine. They might want to make Park Gye-Hyun their next target.

Here’s another interesting perspective along similar lines written (remarkably enough) by a Chinese author, but published in Taiwan.

The cause is just, the goal is noble, nobody got hurt, and the incident probably didn’t do any harm to the cause . . . at least any more than the Uri policy of doing absolutely nothing whatsoever “quiet diplomacy.” That’s more than I can say for ROK-PRC relations, which are probably too cozy anyway. Stunt or not, productive or not, I confess that part of me wishes that the South Korean people–who bought the very same “Korean pride” act so completely when it was used against the U.S.–will buy it.

They won’t, of course. Just watch.

UPDATE: Reporters Without Borders is not happy about this. Somewhere in the Forbidden City, Hu Jintao is picking his teeth, laughing, and asking how many divisions they have. China won’t care about incidents like this until they start to inflict a financial cost. The Koreans will have to keep this up to raise enough attention to inflict that cost.