“Broadly speaking, the candlelight protest movement had two goals. The first goal was to restore social justice by punishing wrong-doers under the previous Park and Lee administrations. The second goal was to implement equitable policies and measures that could ensure a level playing field for the haves and the have-nots.”
— Mi Park, South Korea’s Candlelight Revolution: The Power of Plaza Democracy (2018)
Understanding how Koreans have achieved some of their goals through their Candlelight Revolution may help us all find a way to cope with the rise of nationalism, racism, and tribalism; militarism; sexism; violations of our right to freedom of expression; and the power gap between often unified corporate and government power on the one hand, and usually weak people power on the other—in short, the subjugation of democracy to the global resurgence of fascism. Fortunately, even in this period of danger and darkness, there are those who are willing do the work of laying the foundations for genuine democracy. No better example can be found than the 2016/17 Candlelight Revolution of South Korea, which showed unequivocally that genuine democratic action can lead to peaceful revolution in the real world.
The use of candlelight to oppose government policy goes back to the Yangju Highway Incident of 13 June 2002, when two 14-year-old girls, Shim Mi-son and Shin Hyo-sun, were run over and killed by a 57-ton, US Army, bridge-launching, armored…