The Korean has said all along that the moment the so-called "leaders" of the protesters in Korea tried to shift the issue away from what Korean people cared about, the protesters will go home. In other words, unless there was some external event, there was no danger that the protest would morph into broad anti-Americanist protest, random attack against the government, etc.

And this graph on Dong-A Ilbo proves that the Korean was, as he always is, right:


Here is the link from which the graph came.

For those who cannot read Korean, here is the translation. The graph is estimated attendance to protest by date, and notes associated with the date. Blue bar is the attendance estimated by the police, and gray bar is the attendance estimated by the protest organizers.

Protest on June 6, which was the 72-hour candlelight vigil, attracted 56,000 or 200,000, depending on who is counting.

One on June 10, which was the 21st anniversary of June Protests (important event in democratization history of Korea), attracted 80,000/600,000.

One on June 13, which was 6-year anniversary of the death of two middle school girls who sparked a wave of anti-Americanism (don't ask), attracted 15,000/30,000.

Protest on June 14, which was the funeral day of a protester who immolated himself, attracted 12,000/35,000

One on June 15, 8-year anniversary of June 15 Declaration (important event in North-South Korean history), drew 3,000/15,000.

Finally, the protest on June 16, when the protest leaders began adding different political issues on the agenda, drew 1,300/3,000.

This is happening because the protesters are anything but mindless lemmings. They are most certainly not blindly following the "leaders". They know exactly what they are protesting against, and when the message of the protest changes, they go away.

(By the way, mass suicide by lemmings is a myth. The Korean can't help but laugh when people make fun of fan death myth using the lemmings metaphor. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?")