KJ
Selections
Korean
Protest Culture
Gabriele Hadl,
from KJ #60
Downtown Seoul has more protest spots than coffeehouses.
Protesters of many persuasions have taken up a permanent, rotating residency
in front of the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential mansion,
while the American embassy is never without riot police. For most of
the country’s history, demonstrations have been put down with
an iron fist. In the 1960s, widespread protest won a three-year respite
from dictatorship. Though short-lived, it piqued the hunger for democratic
reform. Dissent then burned underground for two decades. Ultimately,
the military regime could not contain it. In 1985, the struggle was
reignited en masse, and a two-year protest campaign brought down the
government. No velvet revolution here, but a series of powerful, sustained
confrontations, culminating in a radical rewriting of the social contract.
Its provisions are still being negotiated, in parliament and on the
street.
Demonstrations, accepted and widespread as they are, are now but one
facet of public debate. The traditional protest repertoire of marches,
sit-ins, stones and Molotov cocktails is evolving. Some of the new techniques
remain confrontational, even violent. Others rely on technology, subtlety,
inner strength and community.
Lee Won Jae of Cultural Action sees it this way: “The patterns
and genres are set, but there is a big demand for innovation, mostly
from the side of the peace and ecology movements. Even the labor unions
see that aggressive mass rallies have lost some impact. There’s
a shift to non-violent protests, but the repertoire is limited. People
are hungry for new ways.” Says one Green, “We don't like
to go out and shout.” Illegal hip-hop concerts are more her idea
of a good protest. A labor media activist reflects, “We separate
action and daily life…go to a rally, then home. We have to integrate
struggle into our everyday lives.”
Here are some methods of protest now widely used:
Candlelight
Vigil (Chopul)
Widespread since the 2002 Yang-ju incident in Kyoung-gi Province. A
U.S. military vehicle killed two school girls, but the American military
court exonerated the driver, bringing discontent with U.S. military
presence to a boil. Nationwide candlelight vigils ensued, quickly becoming
a dominant protest genre. Not everyone subscribes. One labor movement
organizer explains, “There are many meanings attached to candles:
grief, peace, remembrance... Chopul does not emphasize agency, but victimization.”
Still, this method was used to bring the more progressive Roh Myunhun
to the presidency, and later to successfully protest his impeachment
proceedings.
Lie-in
The classic sit-down demo spawned the lie-in. One staged at a Daewoo
plant in 2001 by men naked to the waist (to show that they were unarmed)
ended with eleven protesters beaten to the point of becoming invalids,
and hundreds of others injured. As one witness recalls, “Riot
police had sharpened the edges of their shields on the asphalt, then
used them to break ribs and puncture people’s lungs. We found
ourselves wishing for tear gas… ” In the three-month struggle,
protesters also used Molotov cocktails, painted their bodies with “wishes
to be let into the union office,” broke into the former CEO's
French villa, brought forklifts and their families to marches, and set
cars on fire.
See the 2001 Daewoo struggle, documented by organizers KCTU (Korean
Coalition of Trade Unions) at: http://dwtubon.nodong.net/english/
Follow
the Mimes
The cultural committees of labor unions keep rallies lively and cheer
striking workers, offering plays and organizing screenings. In marches,
black-dressed “dancing agitators” lead crowds in movements.
The set sequences may include pantomime (putting on a strike vest),
gestures (shaking a fist), and moves from dance and martial arts.
Three Steps, One Bow (Sambo Ilbae)
Simple, but powerful: Walk three steps, prostrate, rise, repeat….
for several (or several hundred) kilometers. From the Chogye order of
Buddhism, whose aspiring monks and nuns perform it to shed the “three
poisons” — greed, anger and delusion. Pioneered as a protest
technique by Abbot Sugyeong of Sudeoksa temple, one of Korea’s
oldest, it became the signature action against the Mount Bukhan tunnel
and the Mount Jiri reservoir projects. In a 2003 protest against the
Saemangeun Land Reclamation Project, four spiritual leaders covered
the 305 km from Puan to Seoul in 65 days. Thousands organized by Green
Korea and others joined for stretches and support events, and Buddhist
groups organized solidarity sambo ilbae walks internationally.
See Saemangeun Reference Page: http://www.birdskorea.org/saemref.asp
Band-in-a-truck
A truck pulls up to a crowded curb, opens one side, the lights go up,
and bam: a wall of sound. Bands, some famous, some aiming to be, jam
on well-known protest tunes and songs written for the occasion. “The
band truck has lots of advantages: you can put up a fancy stage for
an illegal concert, pack up quickly and be gone before the police get
you,” says an activist from Cultural Action (credited with pioneering
the technique around 2000). In an alternate version, the “peace
caravan” moves while people walk and dance alongside.
[See bands and songs at People’s Song http://plsong.org]
Protest Fashion
The basics were: a vest (like a factory workers uniform), headband and
body-banner, the color and slogans depending on union affiliation. Tear
gas is now banned, but surgical masks help against burning tire fumes,
fire extinguisher foam… and provide another surface for slogans.
As protest culture evolves, so does fashion. The fight for maternity
leave featured members of the Korean Women’s Trade Union marching
in dresses “pregnant” with pillows. “If you want to
freak out your employer, try wearing a pink strike vest to work!”
said one organizer. On eco and peace marches, animal costumes, traditional
pilgrims’ dress and nuke suits are increasingly popular.
Caskets
A popular prop in marches of the 1980s, caskets are carried gleefully
with captions such as “World Bank,” or mournfully with ones
like “Democracy.” Says Choe Seijin, of KCTU (Korean Confederation
of Trade Unions), “Company managers in Hong Kong and Taiwan hate
it when their workers appear with a casket — they tend to be superstitious.
In Korea, it doesn’t scare anyone, it’s just a symbol.”
Media and Communication Technology
IT has been at the core of Korea’s economic policy since the 1980s.
Ambitious projects of government and chaebol (conglomerates) to wire
the country and build a tech-savvy workforce have had unintended side
effects: activists have appropriated the technologies for their movements.
Broadband, public wireless Internet access, i-mode cell phones, cheap
video gear, a widespread tech know-how have been a bane to the targets
of protest. Activists have at once become more agile, elusive, focused
and effective. They have created independent video distribution networks,
open-publishing online newspapers/bulletin boards, publicly funded centers
for media activist training and policy — a whole sphere of communication
almost beyond the reach of state and business. At Mayday demos or November
rallies, video cameras are connected to live netcasting equipment.
South Korea is the only nation whose president was elected and kept
in office largely due to an alternative online newspaper. President
Roh gave his first interview not to the main media corporations, but
to OhmyNews (motto, “Every citizen is a reporter”).
A video taken by a participant in the bloody Daewoo clashes of 2001
was widely circulated on the net. It convinced even the president that
in fact the police did instigate the violence, in spite of their claims
to the contrary. “Since then, every rally has become a kind of
media war — it’s the police videos against the protesters’
videos...Everybody comes armed with cameras,” says a KCTU info
technology staff.
OhmyNews International http://english.ohmynews.com/
(Content originally written in English) Recommended: Howard Rheingold’s
Column; signing up to be a citizen reporter.
Jinbonet Korean Progressive Network http://www.jinbo.net/
(Korean)
Jinbonet Videos http://media.jinbo.net/
(Korean, worthwhile videos)
Hunger strike
Even conservative politicians have used it (Choe Byung-yul of the Grand
National Party in 2003, to force President Roh Myun-hee to allow investigation
into his campaign funds), but usually this is a tool of the politically
weak and spiritually strong: Jiyul Sunim, a Buddhist nun in her late
forties, fasted a combined 200 days on water, salt and occasional tea
(four fasts, the latest of which ended in February 2005 on the 100th
day) to hold Roh to his 2002 election promise to halt and re-assess
a controversial tunnel project. Part of a mega-project of high speed
train lines, the track between Seoul and Busan was planned to run through
Mt. Cheonseong, where her nunnery is located.
Fasting is not the only means of resistance she has used in this fight.
In 2003, she prostrated herself 3,000 times a day for 43 days in front
of Busan’s City Hall. She was also part of a class action suit
on behalf of the clawed salamander (Hynobius leechi), as a
representative for the 30 rare species on the mountain endangered by
the project" A total of 175,000 people signed a supporting petition,
yet a court approved the project. Determined to give her life for her
fellow creatures if need be, Jiyul set out on her fourth fast. It was
accompanied by candlelight vigils, marathon prayers, the making of prayer
quilts and paper salamanders and solidarity fasts across the country,
as well as fierce public controversies over the ethical and long-term
political implications. Her comment: “People are concerned about
my health, I wish they’d care more about the mountain.”
She took up food again after prime minister Lee Hae-chan agreed to halt
the blasting and conduct a re-assessment together with citizens’
groups. Her protest also prompted a bipartisan parliamentary committee
to call for an end to the “devil-may-care way of thinking”
that dominates government development policy.
More on Jiyul http://ns1.greenkorea.org/english/
Jungto Society — Buddhist Academy for Ecological Awakening http://www.jungto.org
Protest Suicide
Political suicide, though a small percentage of the yearly total, has
a long tradition in South Korea. In 1970, Jan Te-Il burned himself publicly
with the labor law in his hand, shouting “enforce the labor law!”
He became a heroic figure, drawing attention to the plight of the workers
paying a high price for economic progress. The protests of the late
‘80s were accompanied and fired by a series of suicides. In 1991,
police killings of two students caused a new wave of demonstrations
and suicides by students, activists and workers. Recent years have seen
protest suicides by migrant workers (to resist deportation), “irregular
workers” (temp workers who have no protection by labor law) and
farmers desperate to stop trade liberalization. Sadly, this technique
has at times been quite effective, not always for a concrete policy
change, but to call attention to the seriousness of an issue. The suicide
of a farming movement leader, Lee Kyoung-Hae, at the 2003 WTO protests
in Cancun drew the kind of worldwide attention that his hunger strike
at WTO headquarters earlier that year had failed to get. The Hanjin
Shipbuilding Company in 2004 regularized all its “irregular workers”
after the second suicide by one of its shipbuilders. A man had hung
himself from his crane, leaving a suicide note saying being an irregular
worker was “a frightening thing.”
Movement organizers have been suspected of encouraging would-be martyrs.
In 1991, the government used a wave of suicides as a pretext to hunt
down dissident leaders and try them for assisting suicide (Source: Human
Rights Watch). In reality, most protest suicides appear to be public
acts of personal despair in the face of overwhelming political problems,
a last resort for speaking out when your voice has gone unheard. “Some
of these people have been inspiring and valuable leaders, often good
friends.... We discourage protest suicide and give guards to people
who seem to have suicide plans,” said a union organizer. Another
labor activist said, “We should try to prevent it, but if it happens,
we have to respect it.”
Lee Kyoung-Hae Memorial Hall at http://nowto.jinbo.net/en/index.php
(You can virtually light incense and lay a flower, leave a message for
him, watch video.)
Human Rights Watch 1992 Report http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/WR92/ASW-13.htm
Gabi
Hadl was formerly KJ's Circulation manager and Intern coordinator, now
coordinates the Buy Nothing Day Japan Network.
— Buy Nothing Day Japan (2005/11/26) http://www.bndjapan.org
Copyright
held by the author
Back to Selections
Subscriptions
