Free Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" by P. J. O’Rourke Page B

district of Kuro, in southern
Seoul.
    As usual, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Korea has an infinite capacity to make you feel dumb. This is a whole nation
of people who did their homework on Friday night. Even when they
don't know what they're doing, they're doing so damn much of it
that they're still going to get an A.

    Anyway, the student radicals discovered a locked ballot box
under a stack of bread and milk in a truck leaving the Kuro gu
compound. Local officials gave some lame excuse about how the
ballot box had to go to a special vote-counting place, and how the
bread and milk truck just happened to be headed that way, and how
they'd covered the ballot box to keep the votes from getting
cold. . . . The students were having none of it. They invaded the
five-story Kuro gu building, took the local officials hostage and
called for one of those massive violent student demonstrations for
which Korea is justly famous.
    The way famous, massive, violent Korean student demonstrations work is that the students get a sound truck, turn the volume
up to Motley Crue and take turns screaming at themselves. Violent
student demonstrators sit around cross-legged in an appreciative
half circle and, between screams, holler "Dok chore tado! Dok chae
tado! Dok chae tado!" which means "Smash the dictatorship." The
chant is punctuated with unnerving, black-shirtish synchronized
karate chops.
    This can go on for days, and at Kuro it did.
    Meanwhile, extra-violent student demonstrators were breaking paving stones into handy projectiles, filling soju rice-winebottle kerosene bombs, building desk-and-filing-cabinet barricades in the Kuro gu doorways and pulling apart some nearby
scaffolding to make quarterstaves out of iron pipe. A line of
command had been created, and all defense preparations were
taking place behind a row of stick-wielding young malcontents.
    Lack of press freedom in Korea is one of the big student
gripes. But the students don't like actual reporters any better than
the government does, at least not American reporters. The radicals-in counterfeit New Balance shoes, Levi's knockoffs and
unlicensed Madonna T-shirts-are much given to denouncing
American dominance of Korean culture. It took a lot of arguing to
get past these ding-dongs. One pair, a dog-faced, grousing fat girl
in glasses and a weedy, mouthy, fever-eyed boy, were almost as obnoxious as my girlfriend and I were twenty years ago at the march
on the Pentagon. However, they had some oddly Korean priorities.
"Don't you step on bushes!" shouted the fat girl as I made my way
into the building that they were tearing to shreds.

    Inside, firebombs were parked neatly in crates, stones were
gathered in tidy piles, more lengths of pipe were laid in evenly
spaced rows to booby-trap the stairs, and additional barricades
were being carefully constructed on the landings.
    Looking down from the roof, I saw little groups of students
break away from the chanting and form themselves into squads,
squatting in formation. They dok chore tadoed for a while then
quick-marched to the front lines around the Kuro gu compound,
where each was given an assigned position and his own firebomb to
sit patiently beside. Demonstrators continued to arrive, bringing
boxes of food, fruit juice and cigarettes.
    You had to admire the students' industry and organization, if
not their common sense. The Kuro gu building faced a spikefenced courtyard with only one narrow gate to the street. There was
no way out the back of the place except through the upper-story
windows or off the roof. And right next door, completely overshadowing the scene, was a huge police station. Four thousand
policemen gathered there that evening, in their distinctive Darth
Vader outfits-black gas masks, Nazi helmets and stiff olive-drab
pants and jackets stuffed with protective padding.
    The government assault came on Friday morning, two days
after the election. It was well under