A sea of red flames

No, I'm not talking about the North Korean threat back in 1994 to turn Seoul into a "Sea of Fire". I have something more recent in mind.

Students at a candlelit vigil protesting US beef imports, May 6

I have to wonder to what degree high school students, most of whom have just finished mid-term exams, are informed of the issues surrounding this. Is this just an excuse to skip school after being cooped up studying for the past few weeks? How much of this, for high school students, is motivated by anti-American sentiment, an inverse of the "go Korea!" sentiment of the World Cup street cheering of 2002 and 2006? Gord Sellar commented, after attending the first two protests, that the second protest "turned the participants into a mere audience."

Young people cheering the Korean soccer team, June 23, 2006

While some may say that the public are being mislead by an anti-American news media, and others may point out there are legitimate reasons for concern, I sometimes wonder if it's the candle makers (or flashing-horn-headset makers) who are the ones setting the agenda...

Rub a dub dub,
Three men in a rub n' tug;
And who do you think they be?
The muckraker, the lawmaker,
The candlestick-maker;
Turn 'em out, knaves all three!

Yes, I'm poking a bit of fun. But the prosecution frowns upon fun, and wants to add "mad cow horror story maker" to the list above, as the Hankyoreh tells us:

The national prosecution and police say they are going to criminally prosecute people involved in spreading so-called “mad cow horror stories” (gwangubyeong goedam) on the Internet, in addition to prosecuting the organizers of candlelight protests against imports of American beef.

Top ranking officials at the Supreme Prosecutor General’s Office held an unscheduled meeting on May 6 to discuss ways to prosecute “horror stories (goedam) on the Internet.”

“The number of horror stories on the Internet is reaching serious proportions and we can’t just sit around and do nothing,” said one prosecutor. “We’re going to look at what’s going on and see if there are any issues.”

A high-ranking police official, said the police see it as a “serious problem” that there is “inaccurate information about American beef and criticism of government policy that is not factual overflowing” on the Internet.

I guess the inaccurate information about every other topic on the internet is of little concern of them. Much as information (such as videos) of people being beheaded in Iraq was of little concern until Kim Sun-il was beheaded and the government had internet providers cut access to foreign blogs because a few of them were hosting the video.

Anyways, I do wonder what these "mad cow horror stories" are like. Are they something like this?

I heard this conversation on the bus today:

Hey, you know that girl I told you about in my class, the one who was crying after she saw her test scores?
Yeah.
Well after school my friends saw her eat a burger at Burger King.
So?
Guess what happened?
What?
They found her in the parking lot of her apartment building that night. She was lying on the ground covered in blood, and people could see her brains. They looked like...
What??
A sponge.
Wow.
She totally died of mad cow disease.

That's what I heard on the bus today.

I'm curious as to who exactly is writing these stories, and sending those text messages. I'd tend to think they're students, but who knows? How will the writers of these stories be punished? Perhaps the police could force them to stay indoors, sit in one spot for hours, and deprive them of sleep until they're 18.