Controversy
Significant opposition to the U.S. presence in South Korea began with democratization in the 1980s. Initially, the opposition was a small movement due to the country's conservatism and the association between anti-Americanism and communism. Behind leaders like Father Mun Jeong Hyeon, a Roman Catholic priest who had previously been active in the Gwangju Democratization Movement, the movement became more popular and mainstream over the next two decades. In 2002, anti-American sentiment in South Korea spiked after two U.S. soldiers in an armored vehicle accidentally hit and killed two South Korean teenage girls in the Yangju highway incident. An expansion of Camp Humphreys later in the decade saw significant protests, drawing tens of thousands of South Korean citizens and causing occasional violent clashes and arrests. In 2011 and 2012, anti-U.S.-military activists occupied Gangjeong, Jeju Province, in protest of a planned Naval refueling base.
Read more about this topic: United States Forces Korea
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)