The motive is clear. They want to teach the merchants a lesson. Already, protesters have descended on the stores and restaurants of the merchants who filed the suit and have resorted to taking pictures and sitting in front of entrances, making it difficult for customers to enter. On its homepage, the association is filled with posting by people vowing to hold one-man protests in front of those stores so they’d go out of business or vowing to boycott them.

People running their own businesses are trying everything to survive slow economic conditions. On top of that, more than two straight months of mad cow protests in the Gwanghwamun area have led to snowballing losses. Roads have been blocked every day, while the streets were filled with violence. So the stream of customers had come to a grinding halt. Some restaurants say their sales have dropped to a tenth of what they used to be. Restaurants have had their signs destroyed, windows broken and their premises ruined by the trash left behind by the protesters. The people who led the mad cow protests should come and apologize on their knees and even that won’t be enough to compensate for the damage.

The association said it is customary for civil suits to be held in an open trial. It vehemently denied allegations that it was prodding its supporters to launch a boycott by posting the information about the plaintiffs on its homepage. When advertisers to newspapers critical of the mad cow hysteria were being threatened to pull their ads from those dailies, it had shrewdly provoked others to join in by asking its supporters to make phone calls “praising” those companies for advertising on those newspapers.

The merchants must not cave in to the threats and push ahead with their suit. They must create a precedent that those who lead illegal protests must bear the responsibility in the end. If not, then the pain and damage those merchants suffered will be repeated in the future.