Clueless Nation

[Update: I changed the time stamp on this post because it was written to segue from the post on the CNN docu.]

Meanwhile, the flower of South Korean youth continue to do nearly nothing to help their brothers in the North. Unification makes a great chant at a soccer game, but let’s not rush it, k?

For now, they’re filling the streets over a visit by President Bush, who is as firmly linked to that amorphous bogeyman called “globalization” as Al Gore is to the Internet. Yonhap reports that some have decided that what their movement really needs is a mental, cultish, creepy vibe:

Farmers and anti-globalization activists in South Korea on Sunday threatened to increase their opposition to the upcoming meeting of Pacific Rim leaders in this southern port city after a South Korean farmer allegedly committed suicide to protest the country’s opening of its agricultural market.

The 38-year-old farmer, Chung Yong-pum, was found dead in his hometown of Damyang, South Jeolla Province, early Saturday, the opening day of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum with the Concluding Senior Officials’ Meeting in Busan.

Found alongside Chung’s body was a bottle of herbicide and a suicide note, calling for government protection of the country’s farming industry.

The crowds for those protests are expected to be so big, and apparently so violent, that President Bush may stay on the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk (the USFK denies this; it may be a back-up plan that was leaked).

We have 30,000 troops in this country, have kept it safe and prosperous for 50 years, midwifed its birth as a democracy, and our president can’t spend a safe and peaceful night on its soil.

Tell you anything?