We Still Have Candles, Hope

Millions of Candles which are not turned off by wind, rain and snow those
candles are marching through Gwang-Hwa-Mun Square in downtown Seoul, the center
stage of huge weekly demonstrations calling for South Korean President Park Geun-hye
to step down. It is continued for 5 weeks like that. By state prosecutor, President of
Republic of Korea was accused of giving a hand to her close confidante extort money
and favors from large companies and manipulate state affairs in November. And her
confidante, Choi-Sun-Sil was arrested on 3rd of the month. This scandal is called as
Choi-Sun-Sil Gate in Korea. People got angry after the news. The more presses reveal
bad behaviors of Mrs. Choi and people who are close with her, the more people got
furious. They commented and tweeted badly and violently on SNS, web pages, blogs or
Internet news. This is a huge crisis for Korean society. We deserve to be angry and
furious. However, We have to be alert on getting "Drunk" on the anger. And at the
same time, we should consider this critical moment as an opportunity for people of
Korean society.
The anger of citizen is getting larger and more dramatic. Some people shouted
cut the throat President Park's neck with guillotines in demonstration. And on 29 th of
October, actually people brought a fake guillotine (but made with real steel)
and mockup of actual Park's neck separated from her body to the demonstration place
in Gwang-Hwa-Mun Square. A citizen threw dog shit to the prosecutors office on the
day the secret adviser of the president was summoned to get investigated. The citizen
said, Deactivate prosecutors which are servant of president Also it became more
violent. An excavator driver rushed in to Supreme Prosecutors' Office and destroyed
walls, entrance shutter, and gate of service center with the machine. A male who was
wearing military uniform of ROKs Marine, rushed in to JTBC(Joonang Tongyang
Broadcasting) with his truck There were arsons on Parliament building and the
birthplace of former President Mr. Park(Father of current president). These people are
using this crisis as a chance just to get rid of their stress. These irrational, drastic and
violent responses will not help anything. On the contrary, it will interrupt good will of
people who are protesting every weekend peacefully
Manipulators also exist in this crisis. They use this crisis as a chance to get
political or economical benefits. For example, one candidate of presidency Moon-Jae-In
said There will be only Revolution left if the impeachment is rejected. He continued to
say words which are very extreme and denying the constitution and law. Even though
candidates should be evaluated by their visions and countermeasure or policies for crisis,
It seems that Mr. Moon believes instigating people with using their anger will help him
to get win at the election. Until now, it looks like he is right. He is the top candidate who
has the largest approval rating, 23.7%p until the 2nd week of December according to a
public poll from Realmeter. People who are fulfilled with the anger are easy to be
persuaded by those manipulators and wrong information. Not only politicians, there are
also many other people who use this crisis as their chance to success and rumor makers
who likes generating the rumor itself or getting attention from other people and doesnt
have more intention than that.
Most voters are ignorant or misinformed because the costs to them of

acquiring political information greatly exceed the potential benefits.(BRENNAN, 2016)

Most of People are usually indifferent and uninformed with political information
especially which is right and they are easy to be manipulated by rumor makers and fall
into manipulated information. It is not because they are stupid or fool. It takes time and
efforts to acquire right information while wrong information is easy to get and
tempting. But fundamentally it is because they cannot visualize benefits or
disadvantages of getting right political information or not. When we buy a car or a
laptop, we evaluate all those alternatives and sources of information we got. We have
motives to do those efforts because we are the one who suffers or get benefits very
soon from the choice we make. But the election is different. We dont get our results
soon enough and it is kind of invisible. However thanks to the crisis people got to have
interests in information more than before. Still, they dont have interests in distinguishing
whether the information is right or wrong. The web and media are now full of
political information. It is important for us to think about the source of information to be
alert with anger and to get rid of those manipulators from our sight. And it is also
important to distinguish real politicians who really cares about people and country. In
this kind of crisis it is easy to recognize those manipulators and patriots. This is a chance
to grow our view of political information.
Expressing our idea, showing our anger to this country is very important but it
should be done without any violence. Some activists say the peaceful protest wont work
at all. Even though it is done, it wont be useless. There is no way this kind of idea is
accepted. About few decades ago, there were presidents who got the regime without
right, democratic election but coup detat. People of this country didnt admit those and
protestors came out to the street. Most of protests at that time was full of violence.
Protestors threw rocks to police and Polices beat protestors brutally. Even a situation of a
province was similar to civil war. But now it is different. We elected the president with
our hand. Our education level has been improved and the way to get information is
relatively more standardized than the past. Above all things, our democratic awareness is
more improved and matured than ever.
We saw a hope of these. The demonstrations which have been occurring every
weekend in the center of Seoul has been done very peacefully. More than 2 million
people swarmed on the 3rd of December. Even though there were so many people in the
protest, there was no person who got hurt until this moment. This is a memorable
record. They threw flowers instead of rocks. People put the flower stickers on the
barricades. Even some of the people tried to take those off after the demonstration is
finished because they didnt want to hand over another chores to drafted policemen
which are some of their sons. They brought their children to the place to let them see
what is happening in this country and at the same time to prevent the demo gets
violent. Seo Young-pyo, a resident of Jeju Island, 450km south of Seoul, came to
Saturday's protest with his 18-year-old daughter. "It's not that there is less passion
outside of Seoul or on Jeju Island. But Gwang-hwa-mun Square in Seoul is the center of
Korean society and there is a lot to see and learn," he said. When some activists tried to
say far extreme words and instigate, people booed at them. They sang songs, they
chanted slogans. All those buildings near from the square turned off their lights and all
those cars started honking at 8pm. The only light shining was from the candles on

peoples hands at that moment. We already saw a hope from there that we can
overcome this crisis without any violence or excessive anger. And even though it is a
crisis to Korean society, this is another chance to grow our citizenship as voters.

References
1. Dae-Suk Kim, Public poll of approval rate for next candidates of presidency
election, http://www.focus.kr/view.php?key=2016122200084626009 Web.
19 December 2016.
2. JASON BRENNAN, Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
Foreign Policy, N.p, 10 November 2016.
3. Associated press, South Koreans Pour Into Streets Against President Park
Geun-hye Amid Scandal, NBC News, 3 December 2016
4. Yun Hwan Chae & Nataly Pak, Slogans, placards and food: South Korean
protests a boon for restaurants, Reuters, 4 Dec 2016
5. Jin Won Kim, , ,
http://m.news.naver.com/read.nhn?
mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=004&oid=016&aid=0001165754,
Heraldbiz.com, 8 December 2016.
6. Ji-Hye Kang,

http://www.newsis.com/ar_detail/view.html?
ar_id=NISX20161219_0014591024&cID=10301&pID=10300, Newsis,19
December 2016
7. Ggot Deul Lee, 7
http://www.etoday.co.kr/news/section/newsview.php?idxno=1425638,
Etoday News, 10 December 2016.