South Korea: protests against US forces
Last August 14th, South Korea's capital, Seoul, was the scene of the largest public demonstration in recent decades against the US military presence in South Korea, some invisible blurb in official media that no one reads.
Instead, tens of thousands of people paraded chanting "this land is not a US war base" referring to the large-scale joint military exercises planned on the Korean peninsula after having avoided creating these disturbances in the difficult relations between the two Koreas. The protests were organized by the Korean Trade Union Confederation (KCTU), South Korea's second largest labor federation which is known to be quite combative. It has been joined by a series of allies, including People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), an influential group of citizens founded in 1994 and the group pioneers of peaceful reunification. According to the organizers, the military exercise risks increasing tension on the Korean peninsula without offering any contribution to peace, let alone the process of denuclearization. At the demonstration, the heart of US policy in Korea was directly targeted, with signs saying "No evidence of war, no US" and "No Korea-US-Japan military cooperation."
This is proof that things are changing even in a country where the majority of people according to government polls are in favor of the presence of US troops and tolerate that Korean forces are also under US command. However, for some years things have changed and that is why since 2018 military exercises are carried out as computer simulations and it is clear that the decision to return to do them in the real world with all the dangers of the case, has not been well received. And the suspicion is growing more and more that the United States wants to exploit the areas of friction to wage their war against Russia and China, sparing their men as much as possible. Something that is already a reality in Europe and that has already brought the continent to its knees.
Like in many US satellite countries, the idea is growing in South Korea that the alliance with Washington which does not conceive participation and partnership, but only command, is in the end a real obstacle for the future. If this happens in Seoul, which certainly has had turbulent moments, but which until now has been Washington's most diligent Asian servant, it means that the geopolitical climate is really changing.
References:
https://www.oom2.com/t43213-outrage-south-korea-s-satanic-president-park-geun-hye-impeached-millions-protest-in-the-streets that crowd, no wonder they scrubbed all videos from yt.