On the morning of the 5th, at the 2nd polling station in Jamsil 7-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul, where patriotic citizens had been blocking the removal of ballot boxes due to a shortage of ballots in the 6·3 local elections, police forcibly dispersed the protest and removed the ballot boxes. A citizen being dragged away by the police [Photo=SNS]

In April, members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' cargo transport division staged a large-scale protest. At the time, the KCTU, which had illegally occupied the CU convenience store logistics center, held the arteries of distribution hostage for a full ‘25 days’ and acted belligerently. [Photo=Yonhap News]

10 PM on June 3rd. Citizens in Jamsil, whose constitutional sovereignty was stripped away due to the election commission's failure to supply ballots, took to the streets. It was a perfectly natural and rational protest, as sovereign citizens, demanding the right to exercise their vote. And on the morning of June 5th, the state deployed a large riot police force, forcibly disbanded the protest, dragging them away like cargo.

This was a remarkably swift and brutal suppression operation, carried out just 33 hours after citizens cried out for the return of their lost right to vote.

Witnessing this chillingly swift maneuver of the 'cold shield,' I cannot help but recall another protest that brought South Korea to a standstill not long ago.

In April, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' cargo transport division illegally occupied the CU convenience store logistics center. At the time, the KCTU held the arteries of distribution hostage for a staggering '25 days' and acted belligerently.

In the process of physically blocking alternative vehicles from exiting, a tragic casualty occurred when a person was hit by a truck. Enraged union members then drove large vehicles and charged at police barricades, wantonly trampling on state authority. This was not a protest; it was an outright riot and a massive act of violence that violated the property rights of others.

But how did the South Korean authorities operate at that time? Throughout those long and horrific 25 days of lawlessness, the police consistently acted as mere bystanders, extremely cautious even when faced with charging trucks. Far from forcibly dispersing them, the Minister of Labor himself personally entered late-night negotiation rooms to mediate. Ultimately, they twisted the arms of legally operating businesses, handing the instigators of violence a complete prize: 'exemption from civil and criminal liability.'

Now, let's coldly compare these two incidents.

When the core cartel of power, wearing the red armband of 'progressivism,' choked the economy for 25 days and rammed police vehicles, the nation was an endlessly generous and sweet negotiator.

However, when citizens without backing, robbed of their sacred right to vote due to the bankruptcy of a constitutional institution, took to the streets, the state transformed into a brutal instrument of violence within just 33 hours, crushing citizens' lips with the shields of riot police.

This insidious double standard—granting 25 days of extraterritoriality to those wielding violence and weapons, while suppressing the cries of sovereign citizens demanding the constitution with bare hands in just a day and a half—is not public order maintenance; it is the blatant privatization of power.

Today, South Korean public authority has been reduced to a vile private army, one that observes the whims of the ruling power and shields the illegal actions of its own side while suppressing the legitimate rights of the other, having shattered the universal scales of law and principle.

This chilling public square, where an angel who grovels before the KCTU transforms into a club-wielding monster before manageable sovereign citizens. In a country that turns a blind eye to 25 days of violence from its own side while crushing 33 hours of legitimate resistance from the other, democracy has already ceased to breathe. On the empty asphalt of Jamsil, forcibly dispersed that morning, the shadow of fascism, which we so despised, casts long and deep.

Has there ever been a power that wields public authority so arbitrarily?

◆ Author Park Joo-hyun

Composer, music director, columnist, essayist. She actively expresses her opinions on political, current affairs, and social issues on Facebook, gaining the empathy of many. She published the essay collection 'Crossing the Stormy Sea.'