The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 15 | Issue 14 | Number 5 | Jul 15, 2017

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Candlelight and the Yellow Ribbon: Catalyzing Re-Democratization in South Korea

Nan Kim

Abstract

A s a n o u t c o m e o f t h e o n g o i n g r e -democratization movement in South Korea, therecent success of the Candlelight Revolutionprovides valuable perspective for thosegrappling with the crisis of democracy in theU.S. Tracing an unexpected material link to the1986 People Power Revolution in thePhilippines, this article also seeks to explainthe relationship between the 2014 Sewol FerryDisaster and the Candlelight Movement, aconnection readily taken for granted amongmost South Koreans but often perplexing tothose outside of Korea.

Keywords

democracy, re-democratization, protestmovements, Sewol disaster, CandlelightRevolution, impeachment, material culture,Korea

Given the recent resurgence of democraticactivism in South Korea and the current senseof crisis regarding the state of democracy inthe United States, that contrast provided anironic framing to last month’s summit meetingwhen South Korean President Moon Jae-invisited Washington to meet with his U.S.counterpart Donald Trump on June 29-30. Forhis first overseas trip since being elected tooffice, Moon’s decision to travel to the UnitedStates was a customary choice among newpresidents of the Republic of Korea. Althoughthe U.S. traditionally holds the upper-hand insuch negotiations with its Northeast Asian ally,in this case Moon brought to the table somenotable assets: strong approval ratings in South

Korean national polls and an unusually highlevel of political legitimacy at home andabroad. In the snap election held on May 9th,Moon won by a landslide, taking 41 percent ofthe vote, in a national election that the non-partisan Asia Foundation called “a model ofbest practice”: transparent, efficient, peaceful,and credible.1 Moon’s term started immediatelythereafter, and the honeymoon period has seenapproval ratings that currently stand at anestimated 83%. If one considers Moon’sbackground as a seasoned human rights lawyerand his reputation as a pragmatic down-to-earth politician who has already made headwayin pursuing a popular anti-corruption mandate,the contrast between Moon and the brash andimpulsive Trump could hardly be more stark.

Moon’s recent U.S. trip therefore provides atimely occasion to assess the popular SouthKorean citizens’ movement that opened a pathto the presidency following the ouster andprosecution of his disgraced predecessor ParkGeun-hye. Beginning on October 29th, weeklyanti-Park protests were held on an enormousscale for 17 consecutive weeks, filling thestreets at the center of Seoul and continuingthroughout the bitter cold of winter.Participants in the candlelight vigils grew tohundreds of thousands in the ensuing weeksand eventually numbered in the millions bymid-winter. At their height in early December,the total estimate of people who joined theprotests on a single day exceeded 2.3 millionpeople across the country – with 1.6 million inSeoul alone – on December 3rd, whensimultaneous demonstrations occurred in thecapi ta l c i ty and in prov inc ia l urbancenters.Though predominantly youthful,

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participants in the weekly Saturday ralliescame from a diverse range of age groups,backgrounds, and walks of life, including manywho had never participated in protests before.Intermingled among them were parents withyoung children in tow, artists and writers whohad been blacklisted, groups of alumni buddies,irregular workers, retirees, middle-aged unionmembers, and students at all levels, includinghigh school and middle school.

The cascade of events that removed Park frompower was the culmination of South Korea’sCandlelight Movement, which paved the wayfor Moon to ascend to the presidency with acompelling anti-corruption mandate. The nameevokes the movement’s signature candlelightvigils, whose enormous scale was made evidentin iconic photographic depictions. The dramaticaerial night-shots reveal a vast expanse ofl ights that b lanketed a broad urbanthoroughfare. In these vigils that doubled asmass protests, “candlelight” also refers to thedirect participation by individuals, eachbearing a candle - or its smartphone-appequivalent - and adding their embodiedpresence to the collective action. The main siteof protest was Seoul’s central arterial roadextending from City Hall plaza through an areaknown as Gwanghwamun, a publicly accessiblearea directly adjacent to the more secludedneighborhood where the Blue House is located.The candlelight protests of 2016-2017 wereorganized by a coalition made up of more than1500 civic organizations, which used socialmedia networks and existing personalconnections to come together as the looselyaffiliated “Emergency Public Campaign for theR e s i g n a t i o n o f t h e P a r k G e u n - h y eAdministration.” Taking a page from musicfestivals and mainstream political rallies, theprotests combined social-media savvy andcreative visual panache with the nitty-gritty oflarge-scale logistical operations behind thescenes.2 That is, while retaining some of thespontaneity of activist interventions, the ralliesalso required extensive coordination to manage

the details of holding enormous publicassemblies that started in the afternoon andcontinued for hours to last well past nightfall.Truly, the term “street protests” can bemisleading as a description of these well-organized events, which featured professional-grade sound stages, reams of semi-glossprinted placards, and a network of crews tohandle set-up, distribution of materials, andclean-up. Also crucial was the fact that theprogressive Park Won-soon is the currentmayor of Seoul, and having a friendly cityadministration made a difference in securingtimely permits that allowed the protests to takeplace.

During the Candlelight protests, thecentral stage made the scene resemble anoutdoor music festival, but in addition to

musical performances, the program ofevents also included rally speeches by

representatives of various civicorganizations as well as time allotted for

spontaneous remarks from members of theaudience.

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Candlelight protest on November 5, 2016.Photo by Seong Nae Kim.

Throughout the contested election campaignthat ensued, Moon Jae-in as a presidentialcandidate signaled his personal alignment withthat broad-based citizens’ movement bywearing an emblem of personal identificationwith the Candlelight protesters. However, thetell-tale solidarity symbol was not a literalrepresentation of candlelight per se, but rathera small enamel lapel pin in the shape of ayellow ribbon. Such semiotic gesturing took onan added flourish during Moon’s victorycelebration on election night when someoneattached to his opposite lapel a second yellowribbon, a whimsically oversized version thatwas even brighter and bigger than his usualpin. Prominently visible against his dark bluesuit jacket, that additional celebratory yellowribbon seemed to put an exclamation mark onthe polling outcome.

Although colored-ribbon campaigns have beenused worldwide for all manner of causes, theyellow ribbon in South Korea has come to holdlayered meanings that can help to trace thetrajectory from “post-democracy” under Park,to the breakthrough in re-democratization thatwas the Candlelight Revolution. Above all,yellow ribbons are worn in South Korea - and inthe Korean diaspora - in remembrance of the

Sewol Ferry Disaster of April 16, 2014, whichkilled 304 people, including five victims whosebodies so far remain unrecovered. During thelast three years of the former Park presidencyand beyond, yellow ribbons – in tandem withother things colored vivid yellow3 – have alsobeen used in South Korea among progressiveactivists across diverse social movements tovisually define spaces of protest and to projecta personal identity of political resistance. Whythe yellow ribbon, and what did it mean for theCandlelight Revolution? Analyzing a key aspectof the material culture of re-democratization inSouth Korea, this article seeks to shed light onthe far-ranging civic movement galvanized by abroader sense of common cause that wassignified by the yellow ribbon. Despite facingrepeated setbacks and repression during thePark era, that movement nonetheless persistedin conveying sustained wide-scale dissent andsuccessfully secured the achievement ofthorough-going political change in a peacefuland orderly transfer of power.

Moon Jae-in greeting supporters on thenight of his landslide election victory, May

9, 2017.

While foreign coverage of these protests hasunderstandably drawn attention to theprecedent of South Korea’s June DemocraticUprising of 1987, such analysis can result in amisrecognition of the contemporary socialtransformations that brought about the

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Candlelight Revolution. On the one hand wasthe precedent of a series of earlier large-scalecandlelight protests in downtown Seoul,beginning in 2002 with periodic intense butshort-lived recurrences in the decade thatfollowed. Jiyeon Kang describes these earliercandlelight vigils as having established“Internet-born youth-driven protest as a newrepertoire for activism,”4 whereby suchactivism managed to break out of stereotypedperceptions of dissent movements of the past,as the vigils did not easily fit into establishedideological frames. On the other hand was thefact that, prior to the groundswell of eventssince last autumn, the generation of digitalnatives in South Korea has generally beenknown for an aversion to engage in eithertraditional politics or street protests. They werecalled the “Apathetic Generation” or the “SpecGeneration,” beset by financial burdens whilehaving internalized the labor market’s ruthlesscompetitiveness.5 Assumed to be largelyindifferent to politics and macroeconomictrends, these young people have largely beentied up by the imperative to accumulate“specs” (i.e. qualifications), leaving preciouslittle time or energy to devote toward buildingcommunity. This past year’s Candlelightprotests therefore marked a turning point fordirect political participation by youth - as wellas other formerly depoliticized South Koreans -on a scale unprecedented since the 1987Democratic Uprising, and that development canbe directly and indirectly traced to the SewolFerry Disaster of 2014.

The significance of this shift must also beweighed against the challenges posed by acontemporary social and political order inSouth Korea that had been in keeping with“post-democratization,” a process with clearparal lels to the current crisis facingprogressive coalitions in the U.S. The SouthKorean version of post-democratization, asdescribed by Jamie Doucette and Se-WoongKoo, signifies “a process whereby social rightsare increasing subordinated to market logic

and state power [is] insulated from popularchallenges.”6 This can be true alongside theostensible traits of a democracy, such as theholding of elections and formal guarantees offree speech. Post-democratization therebyrepresents “an erosion of democracy in thesense that key political and economic decision-making powers as provided within thedemocratic framework are monopolized by asmall elite” while “political disagreement istreated as a disturbance to public order andtargeted with the same logic as a policeoperation.” Published last year, Doucette andKoo’s analysis provides valuable recentretrospective insight regarding obstacles thathad faced pro-democracy activists in SouthKorea. Particularly in light of how the formerPark Government actively engaged in the tacticof targeting and criminalizing dissent, it alsoprovides a diagnostic for appreciating how theSouth Korean Candlelight Revolutionsucceeded in overcoming obstacles similar tothose now increasingly deployed in the U.S.under Trump.

Remarkably, within months after theCandlelight protests started gaining tractionamong South Koreans in mid-autumn 2016, thepolitics of the street in Seoul would not onlyalter public discourse but also led to formalchanges in power through the functioning ofSouth Korean democratic institutions. It wasonly last October when the Choi Soon-silscandal exposed a complex and vast scheme ofgraft that was breathtaking in its brazenness.While political corruption is nothing new inKorea, the shocking details of the scandalrevealed the extent to which corruption hadproliferated under Park, which ignitedsimmering public outrage and gave rise tomassive street protests. Choi, confidante of theformer president, has since been prosecutedfor conspiring with Park and using herinfluence to amass a personal fortune worthtens of millions of dollars, funneled from SouthKorea’s largest companies through bribery andextortion. Despite the fact that Choi held no

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official position and had no experience inpolicy-making, she was given the power byPark to shape national policy withoutaccountability. In a story first broken by theindependent South Korean media - includingThe Hankyoreh daily newspaper, TV Chosun,and the JTBC network - a stream of evidencepointed to how Choi had secretly wieldedenormous influence over state affairs. Not onlydid Choi secure senior government positionsfor her friends and associates, she effectivelyhad the last word in presidential statements onnational policy, by having the power to vet andedit presidential speeches - in some casesmaking changes just hours before Park wasscheduled to deliver an official address. Addingto the outrage in the eyes of the public was thefact that Choi had used her influence to securea spot for her daughter Chung Yoo-ra at EwhaWomans University, a leading university inSeoul, despite the fact that Chung lacked thequalifications, let alone the inclination to attendclasses. In opposing questionable universitypolicies that later turned out to be linked alsowith Choi, Ewha students are credited withlaunching the forerunning campus protests thatprompted the investigation by JTBC reportersand other journalists, which eventuallyunravelled the larger scandal centered on Parkand Choi. Amid the scandalous revelations,Park’s public-approval ratings plummeted to alow of 4 percent, as a near-consensus amongthe electorate agreed that she was unfit toserve as president.

Regarding a crucial piece of evidence inthe investigative coverage of the Choi-Park

scandal, JTBC reporter Shim Su-miexplains in a December 8th broadcast howshe found a tablet computer that belongedto Choi Soon-sil in an office that Choi had

abandoned.

After weeks of debate, on December 9th theSouth Korean National Assembly voted to passan impeachment bill, which held that thePresident had violated her oath of office as wellas core tenets of the Constitution and lawsgoverning the operation of the presidency. With234 out of 300 lawmakers casting ballots infavor of the bill, the National Assembly votedby an overwhelming margin to impeach Park, amove that led immediately to the suspension ofher presidential powers. However, the NationalAssembly vote did not automatically removePark from office. For the ouster of thepresident to take effect, judicial review wasrequired to confirm whether the NationalAssembly members had followed due process inthe impeachment proceedings. During thesubsequent limbo, with Prime Minister HwangKyo-ahn designated acting president, theprospect that Park would be reinstated topower remained a possibility. After all, the finaldecision would fall to the Constitutional Court,a judicial body dominated by conservatives. Sixof the eight justices had been beholden to Parkin some way, either appointed by Park or herpredecessor or nominated by her party.

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For three months following the NationalAssembly’s impeachment vote, Park became arecluse in the Blue House, as if living out acaricatured version of her reputation as aloofand disconnected from the public. AlthoughPark had earlier agreed to cooperate with theinvestigations, she refused to appear at any ofthe 17 hearings held by the ConstitutionalCourt during that period. Instead Parkdispatched one of her lawyers to read aprepared statement in which she vehementlydenied any wrongdoing. As public opinioncontinued to turn against Park, South Koreanprogressives became cautiously hopeful thatthe court would validate the legislature’s voteto impeach her. An affirmative verdict requireda supermajority of six justices, the minimumneeded to prevent the National Assembly’simpeachment vote from being overturned.Meanwhile, political conservatives wereconfident in their opinion that, with the courtstacked in their favor, no more than fivejustices would validate the impeachment,meaning the motion would be rejected andPark would soon be returned to office. If Parkwere to serve out the rest of her five-year termuntil next February, that would in turn bodewell for the far right to retain control of theBlue House in next year’s election, as hard-lineconservatives had been in power for the lastdecade. Given the uncertainty and tremendousstakes, the atmosphere was charged when theConstitutional Court justices finally appearedon March 10th in a live broadcast on nationaltelevision to announce their verdict. It turnedout that neither side’s prediction of a split votecame true. Instead, the decision wasunanimous: 8-0 in favor of upholding theNational Assembly vote for impeachment.

Acting Chief Justice Lee Jung-mi read theConstitutional Court’s ruling in a resolute butdispassionate tone, stating that Park’s actionhad “seriously impaired the spirit of ...democracy and the rule of law.” Reading thetext aloud in Korean, she said:

“The president must use her power based onthe Constitution and the law, and must makeher work transparent so that it may beevaluated by the public.

“But Park concealed completely Choi’smeddling in state affairs and denied itwhenever suspicions…emerged and evencriticized those who raised suspicions.

“Judging from [Park’s] words and deeds, therewere repeated unlawful activities, and a failureto show a determination to abide by theConstitution.

“In the end, the president’s unconstitutionaland illegal activities betrayed the people’strust, and she carried out illegal activities thatcannot be tolerated for the sake of protectingthe Constitution.”7

With its verdict, South Korea’s highest courtreaffirmed that constitutional law applies to alland that no one is above the law, including thePresident.

Lee Jung-mi (center), Acting Chief Justiceof the South Korean Constitutional Court,

reads the court’s final ruling on theimpeachment of Park Geun-hye.

The court’s decision triggered a presidentialby-election within 60 days. The ruling also

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stripped immunity from Park, who wassubsequently arrested, imprisoned, indicted,and prosecuted on charges of corruption andabuse of power. Choi met a parallel fate, and isnow serving a prison sentence after criminalprosecution on charges of bribery. Perhaps inthe most remarkable turn of all, the scandalhas embroi led the country ’s largestmultinational conglomerate, Samsung, whoseheir Lee Jae-yong was arrested and now facesmultiple charges including bribery andembezzlement in what has been called the“Trial of the Century.”

How Can You Call This a Country? PeoplePower, Sovereignty, and the Drive to Hold aPresident Accountable for Incompetence

For all its meticulous analysis of evidence, theMarch 9th Constitutional Court ruling excludedfrom the grounds for impeachment the issuethat figured highly into the Candlelightprotests: the former president’s handling of theSewol Ferry disaster. The National Assemblybill in December recognized the issue amongthe reasons for impeachment, stating that Parkwas derelict in her duty and failed to protectthe lives of the disaster’s victims. The familiesof the Sewol victims and their advocates hadbeen at the forefront of the movement that firstbrought widespread attention to the issue ofPark’s incompetence. It was thereforesurprising that the Constitutional Courtexcluded their claims from the ruling, whichstated that political incompetence did notconstitute sufficient grounds for a presidentialimpeachment. Countering this view were publicperceptions of how the Sewol disaster hadfactored into Park’s ouster, as summed up bySim Sang-jung, National Assembly member andleader of the progressive Justice Party: "The[Constitutional] Court did not include the Sewolferry issue in the reasons for her removal, butit is the No. 1 cause in the people's mind. April16, 2014, is when Park's collapse began. Shetried to hide her incompetence, which could notbe hidden, and tried to avoid responsibility,

which could not be avoided, resulting in herpolitical demise."8 As Sim’s explanation makesplain, this is not to say that Park’s opponentsalleged that the former president was herselfresponsible for the ferry sinking. Rather, Park’shandling of the disaster was the beginning ofher own political demise because it hardenedthe determination of a wider public to holdPark and her administration accountable fortheir incompetence, which was exemplified bythe Sewol crisis while also reflected in severalother highly contentious controversies.

Parents and relatives of the Sewol victimswere prominently involved in theCandlelight protests in Seoul and

elsewhere. They carried a banner withimages of the victims at the rally on

January 7, 2017, two days before the 1000-day commemoration of the ferry sinking.

(Korea Times)

The sinking of the MV Sewol has been widelydescribed in South Korea as a national trauma.In its aftermath, the disaster left South Koreansshocked and traumatized by the inability tosave hundreds of trapped passengers in asituation where deaths should have beenavoidable. Teenage high school students on afield trip accounted for 250 of the passengerswho drowned or otherwise died because theycould not escape the capsized ferry. Afterinitial misleading reports had given the

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impression that all passengers were rescued tosafety, that account was soon disproven andgave way to the horrified realization thatprecious hours at the outset of the disaster hadbeen squandered by a disorganized responseand attempts to cover up mistakes committedby the Coast Guard and other governmentofficials. In the ensuing days, a bleak tableaushowing the inverted hull of the ferrydominated ongoing live national broadcasts,which also featured a tally of how many hadbeen saved and how many were s t i l lunaccounted for. The number of the missingwould later translate to the disaster’s deathtoll, which represented nearly two-thirds of thepassengers.

One of the most outrageously unconscionableaspects of the tragedy was the fact thatpassengers could have jumped into the water tobe rescued, had they not been instructed tostay onboard. Closer examination into thecauses behind the ferry sinking uncoveredpractices of reckless greed, which alsoaccounts for the degree of crew incompetencegiven that the Sewol’s management companylargely staffed the ferry with poorly trainedirregular employees. It was later revealed thatChonghaejin Marine, the firm that operated theSewol, prioritized stabilizing the ship for thesake of attempting to recover the cargoonboard, and the inexperienced crew wasordered against a sudden evacuation ofpassengers, which might have accelerated thecapsizing. Without guidance or experience in achaotic emergency, crew members followed themanual and made hapless announcements overthe public-address system telling passengers tostay in their cabins for their own safety. Soonaf terwards the capta in - h imse l f anundertrained irregular worker - and severalcrew members abandoned ship withoutnotifying the passengers to escape. The captainwas later sentenced to life in prison for murder,but others who unquest ionably boreresponsibility for the disaster were neverarrested. For example, Chonghaejin Marine

had completed illegal renovations that violatedrestrictions by dangerously raising the centerof gravity, adding floors of cabins to increasethe capacity for more passengers. The firm’sowner Yoo Byung-eun also ignored repeatedwarnings about the risk of the Sewol capsizing.On the Sewol’s fateful last journey, there wasnot enough ballast water to stabilize the ferrybecause Chonghaejin illegally dischargedhundreds of tons of ballast water prior tolaunching in order to compensate for theoverloading of cargo, which was also poorlysecured. Even at times when they wereoperating within mandated standards, Yoo andhis company were allowed to systematically putprofit over safety due to government standardsthat had been relaxed by deregulation.9 In thewake of the ferry sinking, Yoo disappeared andevaded arrest despite a nationwide manhunt.Several weeks later in a remote field in thesouthernmost part o f the country , adecomposed body was found that reportedlymatched Yoo’s identity, and he was never triedor brought to justice.

I had been living in Seoul that spring, andduring the days and weeks in the wake of theSewol disaster, a palpable sense of depressionwas all but ubiquitous. What surprised me washow common i t became for everydayconversations to start with expressions of notonly sorrow but also guilt over the loss of somany young lives. I remember asking a friendwhat she made of this spontaneous andpervasive guilt complex. On top of anger atthose responsible, she described an anguishedsense of regret for having tolerated the kind ofsociety that had allowed this disaster to happenand a feeling of personal responsibility for nothaving done enough to fight corruption. Whilethe perception of responsibility for the Sewoldisaster was diffuse and complex from early on,the disaster’s political impact was notimmediate. That is, it had seemed inevitablethat the pervasive shock about the disasterwould affect the outcome of the local elections,which were to be held in early June, only six

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weeks after the ferry sinking. Instead, the then-ruling party handily won most of those races,which included elections of provincialgovernors, metropolitan mayors, and locallegislatures. With that electoral victory, formerPresident Park appeared to emerge from thedisaster with her reputation intact as “Queen ofElections.”

Yet, disturbing questions about Park’swhereabouts during the emergency wouldcontinue to dog her presidency for months andthen years afterwards, amid ongoing efforts byher administration to squelch that scrutinyrather than accede to public accountability.Those questions from Park’s critics focused onher unexplained absence for seven hours in thecrucial period immediately after the ferry’scapsizing, when those trapped inside still had achance to survive. Although officials had sentPark notification by text at 9:24 AM at theoutset of the crisis – and then by a writtenreport roughly a half-hour later – she wasnowhere to be seen all day until 5:15 PM, whenshe finally appeared at the Central Disaster andSafety Countermeasures Headquarters. Uponarriving at the disaster-response headquarters,her first question was, "The students arewearing life-vests, so why aren’t they foundyet?" While the rest of the nation had beenriveted for hours by the increasingly desperateemergency, Park’s own words revealed that shehad not even bothered to follow the breaking-news broadcasts aired by every major nationalnews outlet. Instead she was oblivious to theday’s events. Those would prove to be fatefulhours, and for the rest of her term in office,Park’s failure to account for her actions thatday drew ongoing heavy criticism. At the 11thweekly candlelight protest in Seoul on January7th, 20-year-old Jang Ae-jin spoke as arepresentative of those who had survived theferry disaster. “If the president had beenreceiving briefings and giving instructionsduring the seven hours when she did notappear on the day of the accident, and if wehad been told to get off the ferry immediately

instead of staying in our seats, there would nothave been as many victims as there are today.This obviously needs to be investigated,” Jangsaid.10 In the face of the government’s refusalto launch a full investigation into thecircumstances surrounding the ferry sinking,critics focused on the leadership vacuum thathad exacerbated the disaster amid adisorganized and ineffective response.

At the site of the 11th Candlelight proteston January 7th, a public installation of 304life jackets paid tribute to the victims whodied in the Sewol Ferry Disaster. Photo by

Seong Nae Kim.

Perhaps Park could have eventually lived downher incompetent handling of the Sewoldisaster, but rather than owning up to thoseerrors, the Park government went after itscritics. In October 2016 came the revelation of

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a blacklist, published by the daily newspaperHankook Ilbo, which showed how the ParkAdministration had targeted creativeprofessionals who were seen as anti -government. The blacklist included over 9,000visual artists, writers, film directors, musicians,actors, playwrights, and others, with a notablefocus on those who had been critical of thegovernment’s handling of the Sewol Ferrydisaster or supported Park’s rivals. It was yetanother confirmation that Park’s leadershipstyle emulated the authoritarian orientation ofher father, former President Park Chung-hee,who had come to power in a military coup in1963 and imposed a military dictatorship onSouth Korea until his assassination in 1979.

Evoking a similar sense of throwback to thecountry’s authoritarian past, over the pastseveral years there had been a steadyregression of the hard-won political gains fromKorea’s struggle for democratization in the1980s. Meanwhile, national security was usedas the pretext to challenge all forms of dissent,as well as criticism of the government,including the continuing calls for investigationby the bereaved Sewol families and theiradvocates. When activists raised their demandsto an unresponsive government, they wouldroutinely be painted as pro-North under thelogic that any form of protests would disturbthe social order and thereby could underminenational security. This accusation also extendedto people who had been fighting for othersocial causes in South Korea including:opposition to the deployment of the THAADanti -missi le system; cr i t ic ism of thenationalization of textbooks that had mandatedthe teaching of a state-approved interpretationof the country’s history; protests against thegovernment’s deal with Japan that hadprofessed to resolve the so-called “comfortwomen” issue while ignoring the terms setforth by the actual survivors of that WWII-erasystem of sexual slavery; and demands forjustice for the family of Baek Nam-gi, thefarmers’ rights activist who died from

complications related to brain injuries afterbeing knocked down last November by high-powered water cannons as part of a policecrackdown of a wide-scale ant i -Parkdemonstration in Seoul.

The Choi Soon-sil scandal was the tipping pointthat brought together various protestmovements and tapped into widespreadpolitical frustration and simmering outrage.Contrary to the preoccupation in the Westernmedia with the figure of Choi Soon-sil herself,what the scandalous revelations largelysignified to South Koreans was how multiplecontroversies were connected and how a seriesof anti-democratic power-plays by the BlueHouse could be explained by how Park wasbeholden to the shadowy influences of Choi andalso Choi’s former husband Chung Yoon-hoi.The scandal brought activists of diverse causesto join together under a common bannerchallenging the Park government’s legitimacy,best captured by the meme, “Ige Naranya?”which translates to “Is this a Country?” or“How can you call this a Country?” The Choiscandal provided this window for breakthroughbecause it revealed that the true national-security threat at hand was not dissentingcitizens exercising their right to free speechand their right to assembly. Rather, as thescandalous revelations accumulated, it becameclear that the most serious threat that hadundermined the security and integrity of thenation was President Park herself along withChoi Soon-sil and her cronies.

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A solidarity rally took place on November12th in Berlin to show support for the

Candlelight protests in Korea. Serving as abackdrop was a hand-painted mural, a

montage visually connecting threecontroversies that had fueled popular

protest against the Park government: theSewol disaster, the excessively violent

crackdown on a popular protest assymbolized by the death of Baek Namgi,

and the South Korean’ government’shandling of the “comfort women” issue.

Photo by Dasom Yi.

Viral Hope and Diverging Paths of the YellowRibbon

The yellow-ribbon campaign in Korea for Sewolvictims was originally started by a coalition ofstudents from various South Koreanuniversities in Seoul. A few days after the ferrysinking, members of the group discussed theidea of the campaign as a way to expresscompassion and support for those affected. Thecampaign’s theme was inspired by an offhandremark by the mother o f one o f theorganization members, who recalled thatyellow ribbons express the hope for someone’ssafe return. Seven members took up the task ofbuying materials to make 500 yellow ribbons,which they handed out on the street topassersby in Sinchon, a university district ofSeoul. As the campaign quickly spread through

social media, the yellow ribbons went viralbeyond anything the students could haveimagined.

Yet, what had begun as a token of hope was bythen understood as a symbol of mourning andremembrance. Although the press had initiallyreported that the passengers were all saved, itwould soon become clear that none of thosetrapped inside the ferry would return alive.During the weeks that followed the ferrysinking, yellow ribbons could be seenthroughout the country, as they also became atribute of support for Ansan, the communitywhere many of the victims had grown up. Forexample, yellow ribbons covered a large multi-part public installation that made up an officialmemorial altar in Seoul’s Plaza in front of CityHall, which became converted into a space forcity residents and other members of the publicto share their grief and to pay their respects.Each of the ribbons was a personal tribute,indiv idual ly t ied and each bearing ahandwritten message expressing condolence,sorrow, apology, or a combination of all three.

A public memorial altar remained in SeoulPlaza in front of City Hall for one month

beginning on April 27, 2014.

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The yellow ribbon would later be associatedwith the call for political and regulatoryreforms to avoid such a tragedy from recurring,and more pointedly it came to signify thedemand for a full investigation into the truthbehind the disaster. As the yellow ribbonthereby took on increasingly loaded politicalmeaning, the yellow ribbon had come to beregarded as an outward sign of rebellion, andthose wearing the ribbon would be targeted forharassment by police in the areas near anycommemoration event for the Sewol victims.11

Even three years after the disaster, during theearly weeks of the Candlelight Movement, amember of a conservative church in Seoul wascastigated for wearing a yellow ribbon,resu l t ing in h i s expu ls ion f rom thecongregation.

At the same time, the yellow ribbon provided apublic sign of remembrance and sympathy aswell as an emblem of dissent among those whohad defied the repression under Park. Whereasbuttons and similar items are used forfundraising for other social causes, advocatesfor the Sewol families regularly gave awayyellow-ribbon items to fellow activists followingmarches and rallies supporting other causes,with the request to keep the Sewol issue visibleand viable. These items in turn have circulatedas gifts among progressive activists of variousstripes in gestures of friendship and solidarity.They include not only yellow-ribbon pins, butalso backpack-charms, bracelets, cell-phonestickers, keychains, and handmade linenbrooches and other crafts, often featuringneedlework depicting a yellow flower and thenumber 4.16 for the date of the ferry sinking,April 16th.

In Ansan, tributes covered with yellow ribbonswould remain for months and then yearsafterwards at the “memory classrooms,” whichtransformed the school-desks and classrooms ofthe deceased Sewol victims at Danwon HighSchool into handcrafted memorial shrines.Dense clusters of yellow ribbons still cover

chain-link fences and are fastened onto treebranches at other key sites of Sewol memoryactivism such as the vigil location at PaengmokHarbor on Jindo Island, the point on landclosest to the location of the ferry’s sinking.Two other commemorative protest sites wherean abundance of yellow ribbons are displayedin solidarity with Sewol families are: (1) thecommunity cemetery at Mangwoldong inGwangju, a site of pilgrimage among Koreandemocratization activists to pay tribute to thosewho died in the 1980 Gwangju massacre; and(2) the activist community in GangjeongVilliage that oppose the newly constructed JejuNaval Base, which the activists warn willincrease the likelihood of a future war in asensitive region of Northeast Asia. The ribbonsappear a longs ide a fami l iar oath o fcommitment that is repeated among long-termSouth Korean movements rooted in the moralpolitics of remembering the victims oftraumatic violence: “I will not forget.”

One of the Memory Classrooms wheremementos and messages to lost classmateswere preserved as handcrafted shrines at

Danwon High School in Ansan.

Such embrace of the yellow ribbon by anti-militarist peace activists in South Korea may besurprising to those in the West, where theyellow ribbon is regarded as a symbol ofsupport for military troops in the U.S., Canada,

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and several Western European countries,including Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Theusage of yellow ribbons as a sign of hope forsomeone’s safe return traces back to the 1973hit song by Tony Orlando and Dawn, “Tie aYellow Ribbon (‘Round the Ole Oak Tree).” Atthe time, the first modern yellow-ribboncampaigns took off as soldiers were returningfrom the Vietnam War, but displaying yellowribbons spread as a truly national phenomenoneight years later toward the end of the IranHostage Crisis (1979-1981).12 Again in 1991, aphenomenon of “the yellow-ribboning ofAmerica” took hold during the Gulf War, whenyellow ribbons were tied everywhere: trees,fences, doors, barns, light poles, traffic lights,and car antennae. At the time, the yellowribbon stood for the slogan “Support OurTroops.” Though the slogan and symbol areunquestionably endorsements of militaryculture, they are ambivalent insofar as it couldalso convey a divided sentiment that wasc r i t i c a l o f t h e w a r : “ S u p p o r t O u rTroops/Oppose the War.” 1 3

Inspired by the same cultural touchstone,yellow-ribbon campaigns took a differenttrajectory in Asia. Beginning in the Philippines,yellow ribbons came to be associated not withmembers of the armed forces but rather withcivilian activists for democratization. In 1983,when Benigno Aquino, Jr., returned to Manilafrom three years in exile, the streets werefestooned with yel low ribbons by hissupporters, who staged their own “Tie a YellowRibbon” take-off from the Tony Orlando song. Along-time opponent of then-PresidentFerdinand Marcos, Aquino was assassinated onthe tarmac upon his return. Corazón Aquinowould eventually take up the mantle of herslain husband’s political legacy, using yellowribbons as her primary symbol, eventuallyleading the People Power Revolution of 1986.14

Inspired by the events in the Philippines, SouthKorean activists during that same year alsodistributed yellow ribbons to those who hadsigned the petition for direct elections, part of a

process that would eventually help themachieve their own democratization in Korea.15

This explains how, decades before the yellowribbon turned unexpectedly into a sign ofprotest in South Korea during recent years, thecolor of vivid yellow that had already beenrepresentative of leftist opposition politicssince the turn of the millennium. In Korea, as inother countries, political alliances andrealignments are commonly signaled by theadoption of signature campaign colors. Theprogressive center-left South Korean leaderKim Dae-jung used vivid yellow for hispresidential campaign in a conscious move toemulate Aquino’s use of that color in thePhilippines.16 That color choice that wascontinued by his successor Roh Moo-hyun, asboth Kim and Roh identified with yellow as asymbol of hope. Last year, the elision betweenthe yellow ribbon and opposition politicsbecame even more apparent following the April2016 parliamentary elections, held just threedays before the second anniversary of the ferrysinking. When the liberal Minjoo Party won anupset victory and gained a plurality of seatsover the conservative Saenuri Party, the resultwas interpreted as a rebuke for the ParkAdministration’s unresponsiveness to the publicand its handling of the Sewol Ferry disaster.Posting of yellow ribbons via social-mediaplatforms framed the sharing of news aboutthat election upset, which itself laid theconditions of possibility for the impeachmentvote by the National Assembly last December.One of the historical ironies about the yellowribbon in South Korea, therefore, is that thesymbol was initially circulated in 2014 not as apolitical symbol but as an apolitical gesture ofhope after the Sewol disaster in Korea. Yet, itwould eventually come full circle to provide aninadvertent material link that highlights mutualresonances among pro-democracy movementsacross Asia: the People Power Revolution in thePhilippines in 1986; the Umbrella Revolution inHong Kong in 2014, which drew momentumfrom its own yellow-ribbon campaign17; and the

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Candlelight Revolution of 2016-2017.

Corazón Aquino speaking in Manila in1986 during the popular demonstrations inthe Philippines against state violence andalleged electoral fraud, a series of protests

that would later be called the PeoplePower Revolution for toppling

authoritarian dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Rather than protest an outright dictatorship,however, the Candlel ight Movementsuccessfully opposed an unrepresentativegovernment in South Korea through a popularmovement’s rejection of a system of corruptionthat had become synonymous with a callousdisregard of human vulnerability. Among thosewho embraced the yellow ribbon in Korea overthe past three years, there coalesced a broad-based movement intent on changing thedirection of South Korean society for the sakeof the country’s future and its youth, who likethe Sewol victims had been forced to the pointof despair and hopelessness wrought byendemic corruption. Indeed, South Korea hasranked at or near the top of global indicesm e a s u r i n g t h e h u m a n t o l l o fhypercompetitiveness stemming from thecurrent neoliberal conjuncture, a tollparticularly evident among young people.Suicide is the leading cause of death amongSouth Korean youth. The country has the

highest rate of suicide among OECD countries,which is also the second-highest suicide rate inthe world. Young South Koreans recorded someof the world’s lowest levels of happiness andsatisfaction with their society,18 second only toJapan – and they cited more economic equalityas a way to mitigate their country’s situation,as those under the age of 30 contend with anunemployment rate that is twice that of otherage-groups in Korea. For all the flash andinternational appeal of South Korea’s youthfulpop culture, there has been a deeper story ofan ongoing sense of despair over the futureamong the younger generations in South Korea,given the bleak prospects for anyone butwealthy elites.

The Sewol disaster drove the point homeamong youth that transforming a corruptgovernment and unfair society was not strictlythe battle of an older generation, but one thatwas their own life-or-death cause. As GooyoungKim argues, beyond the government’s inabilityto launch a successful rescue effort, the causeof the disaster could be traced to thegovernment’s own implication in neoliberalcapitalist profiteering, including the push forderegulating safety standards.19 The disastertherefore amounted to making visible thoseforms of structural violence that were normallyhidden. By violence here, I mean both thevarious ways that inaction and obstruction bythe government resulted in the avoidabledeaths of 304 people and also the repeatedattempts by the government to stifle citizens'demands for a truth-seeking investigationthrough police repression against the bereavedSewol families and their advocates. For thosetraumatized by witnessing the deaths of somany young people in real time on nationaltelevision, the necessity to work for sweepingchange could not be c learer or morecompelling.

In March, during the presidential campaign forthe snap election following Park’s ouster, theSewol ferry was finally raised from underwater

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to the surface. More than 1000 days after theferry sinking, the raising of the Sewol’scorroded hull from the bottom of the seaenabled a new search for the nine victims.Remains have so far been found to account forfour of them, including two students and ateacher from Danwon High School and anotherpassenger. After the political turmoil anduncertainty surrounding the scandal and thedramatic momentum of the CandlelightMovement, resuming the recovery of missingvictims and the docking of the Sewol back onland provided a sobering denouement, if notfull closure, to the saga of the ferry sinking.

Throughout that presidential campaign, MoonJae-in and members of his security detail hadeach worn a yellow-ribbon pin, but since takingoffice, the new president no longer wears thesymbol on his lapel. The decision was anapparent nod to Moon’s own promise in hisinauguration speech that he would be thepresident to all South Korean citizens,regardless of whether they voted for him ornot. As with all politicians, he will inevitably fallshort in some respects. Despite being sweptinto office on a populist wave of supportcatalyzed by political progressives, the liberal-leaning Moon is decidedly centrist. 20 This is notto imply that Moon’s adoption of the yellowribbon was sheerly a form of politicalopportunism. After all, as opposition-partyleader, Moon had consistently shown apersonal commitment to the issue in the pastand had joined a hunger strike in 2014 for ninedays to support the bereaved families of Sewolvictims in their advocacy for legislation toinvestigate into the truth behind the ferrysinking.

Rather, in prevailing as presidential candidate,

for Moon to wear the yellow ribbon was toacknowledge the movement that brought himto office, a recognition that he had arrived atthat historic moment only thanks to theCandlelight Revolution. Back in the early weeksof the scandal last autumn, Moon’s DemocraticParty did not immediately undertake a vigorousopposition of the Park Administration. It wasthe continuing protests that successfully forcedthe hand of opposition-party legislators andother members of the South Korean parliamentto step up and to overcome their timidity indealing with the Park Administration.21 Indeed,the past several months in South Korea canserve as an answer to those who cynicallyquestion whether protests achieve anythingconstructive. In the case of the CandlelightRevolution, the protests did not directly topplethe Park presidency. Instead, the Candlelightprotesters achieved something far moredurable and politically stabilizing by bringingpublic pressure to bear upon the working ofdemocratic institutions to ensure that thechecks instituted by their Constitution wouldsuccessfully guard against a tyrannicalpresident and one otherwise unfit for office.

Related Articles:

Peter Dale Scott . The Threat toIndonesian Democracy in the NewG u i l d e d A g e o f T r u m p(https://apjjf.org/2017/12/Scott.html).Jamie Doucette and Se-Woong Koo.Distorting Democracy: Politics by PublicSecurity in Contemporary South Korea.Hyun Lee. The Erosion of Democracy inS o u t h K o r e a(https://apjjf.org/2014/12/52/Hyun-Lee/4245.html): The Dissolution of the UnifiedProgressive Party and the Incarcerationof Lee Seok-ki

Nan Kim is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, whereshe is a fellow at the Center for 21st Century Studies. Her research focuses on contemporary

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Korea, traumatic memory, and transnational public history, and she is currently working on aproject about long-term protest movements in South Korea. She is the author of Memory,Reconciliation, and Reunions in South Korea: Crossing the Divide, Lexington. Last August,she co-organized an international conference entitled “Power and Dissent: UnderstandingPast and Present Challenges to Korean Society through Korean Studies” at Seoul NationalUniversity’s Kyujanggak Institute.

Notes1 Tim Meisburger, “Korean Elections: A Model of Best Practice(http://asiafoundation.org/2016/04/20/korean-elections-a-model-of-best-practice/),” The AsiaFoundation, April 20, 2016. See also, Stephen Costello, “South Korea Steps Up as the USSteps Back(http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/06/13/south-korea-steps-up-as-the-us-steps-back/),” EastAsia Forum, June 13, 2017.2 Kim Ji-hoon and Park Su-ji, “How million-strong candlelight demonstrations are beingorganized (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/773491.html),” TheHankyoreh, December 6, 2016.3 Jenny Choi, “The Color Yellow (http://harvardpolitics.com/world/color-yellow/),” HarvardPolitical Review, May 7, 2014.4 Jiyeon Kang, Igniting the Internet: Youth and Activism in Post-authoritarian South Korea,Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2016, p. 152. See also Sun-Chul Kim, “South Korea’sCandlelight Protests(http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/02/07/south-koreas-candlelight-protests/),” East AsiaForum, February 7, 2017.5 Cho Hae-joang, “The Spec Generation Who Can't Say ‘No’: Overeducated andUnderemployed Youth in Contemporary South Korea,” positions: east asia cultures critique23.3 (2015): 437-462; Lee Soon-hyuk, “The Ironies of South Korea’s Digital Generation(http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/578654.html),” The Hankyoreh,March 19, 20136 Jamie Doucette & Se-Woong Koo, “Pursuing Post-democratisation: The Resilience of Politicsby Public Security in Contemporary South Korea,” Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46.2 (2016),p. 200.7 “South Korean President Park Geun-hye dismissed by constitutional court in unanimousdecision(http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/2077713/president-park-geun-hye-dismissed-constitutional-court),” South China Morning Post, March 10, 2017.8 Kim Rahn, “Sewol Raised as Park Sinks,” The Korea Times, March 23, 2017.9 Jae-Jung Suh, "The Failure of the South Korean National Security State: The Sewol Tragedyin the Age of Neoliberalism," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 40, No. 1, October 6,2014.10 Park Su-ji and Ko Han-sol, “Sewol survivors say their mistake was making it off the ferryalive (http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/777993.html),” The Hankyoreh,

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January 9, 2017.11 Heo Seung, “Yellow Sewol ribbons have become a symbol of rebellion,” The Hankyoreh,April 22, 2015; Seohui Stephanie Park, “Politics of the Yellow ‘Sewol’ Ribbon(https://koreaexpose.com/politics-yellow-sewol-ribbon/),” Korea Expose, April 16, 2017.12 Gerald E. Parsons, “How the Yellow Ribbon Became a National Folk Symbol(https://www.loc.gov/folklife/ribbons/ribbons.html),” American Folklife Center, Summer 1991.13 George Mariscal, “In the Wake of the Gulf War: Untying the Yellow Ribbon,” CulturalCritique (1991) p. 98.14 Elfren S. Cruz, “The Yellow Ribbon(http://www.philstar.com/opinion/2016/02/25/1556571/yellow-ribbon),” The Philippine Star,February 26, 2016; Michael Francis C. Andrada, “Untie/Anti-the Yellow Ribbon,” PhilippinesHumanities Review 14.1 (2012) 49-73.15 John Burgess, “Thousands Protest Rule in South Korea(https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/03/31/thousands-protest-rule-in-south-korea/b8d4cb1d-656a-460e-a4f8-0ac8e6d1d9df/?utm_term=.0cc1497111b7),” TheWashington Post, March 16, 1986.16 Geum, Key-Sook and Hyun Jung, “Color Continuity and Change in Korean Culture,” in Colorand Design, edited by DeLong, Marilyn and Barbara Martinson, pp. 125-140, London and NewYork: Berg, 2012.17 Matikas Santos, ‘Yellow’ is color of protest in Hong Kong(http://globalnation.inquirer.net/111975/yellow-is-color-of-protest-in-hong-kong#ixzz4mqor2euG),” Philippine Daily Inquirer, October 2, 2014.18 Cho Il-jun, “Survey finds South Korean youth among the unhappiest in the(http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/782260.html) world,“ TheHankyoreh, February 12, 2017.19 Gooyoung Kim, “Eros Effect as Emergency Politics: Affective and Networked Politics ofAgonistic Humanism in South Korea’s Sewol Ferry Disaster,” New Political Science 38, no. 2(2016): 160–177.20 See Owen Miller, “South Korea After Park(https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/south-korea-elections-moon-jae-in-park-chaebols-north-korea),” Jacobin, May 18, 2017.21 Ock Hyun-ju, “Candle Revolution: How Candles Led to Park’s Impeachment(http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20161209000458),” The Korea Herald, December9, 2016.