Last Sunday, disagreements about the statue of General Douglas MacArthur, in the city of Incheon reached physical violence. More than twenty people were hurt when demonstrators tried to reach the statue, ostensibly to remove or damage it, but were halted by thousands of riot police.

MacArthur was the U.N. commander in chief who, at Incheon, commanded a counter offensive attack on North Korea on September 15, 1950; which is understood to have been a move that (temporarily) defeated the North during the Korean War.

The statue has been chosen by various groups as a symbolic point; a gathering place; to call for the removal of U.S. forces from Korea. These groups consider the presence of U.S. troops as an occupation. Some of them also put forward the idea that Korea would have been better off, united under the Stalinist North.

The events have sparked off passionate debates in the media and government.

However, last Sunday, September 11th, things got violent at the statue. The day was chosen - in very poor taste - to coincide with the memorial of the attacks on New York and Washington. Some 4000 demonstrators were faced off by 4000 riot police, who protected the statue and prevented the demonstrators from reaching it.

The violence was not planned, as some members of the representative groups pulled up nearby bamboo support posts from the park and used these to attack the riot police. Stones were also thrown, by both sides (reportedly). Unfortunately, some web references and images of the day have since been removed from South Korean news sites.

It is true that the South is occupied by U.S. forces, for their own strategic, global interests. Likewise, the South’s free market economy is a far cry from a democratic and fair system. However, the nature and method of these groups’ actions are backward and reactionary. They put forward retrograde notions of nationalism, as well as a callous disrespect for the ordinary people who died and were injured in the September 11 tragedy.

By attacking statues and riot police, they only increase misunderstanding; feed into the hands of the right-wing press, and ultimately distract attention from the real issues that ordinary people are faced with in South Korea, and indeed the world.

Only by forming a world-wide, international movement of ordinary working people, with their interests at centre place, can the injustices and imbalances experienced by all ordinary people be properly addressed.