Body
Thanks to Kathy Moon for messaging out a great Vimeo clip of the South Korean protests that played a central role leading up to Park Geun-hye’s impeachment. Although the video has a feel-good quality—neatly edited to Coldplay’s When I Ruled the World—it captures quite well the mood of the demonstrations (I was in Seoul for the November 12 protest, which was estimated at over 1 million). An interesting tidbit about Coldplay: tickets for their April 2017 Seoul concert sold out almost instantaneously on November 25. A particular feature of the protest movement writ large were diverse interest groups that formed to protest Park; this even included Coldplay ticket-holders who formed their own protest subgroup.
That mood managed to combine a certain festiveness with both order and a deep determination, bringing out whole families. Only visible on a closer look: the organizational role played by unions—note the tight legions of workers in similarly-colored vests—and the mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon. Park had a key role in staging—in a quite literal sense—the spectacle; large stages, top entertainers, a high-quality sound system and even projection screens gave the protests coherence. Now, the hard part.
For details on how we got here, see:
- South Korea's Park Geun-hye Impeached: What's Next? (video)
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling VI: Endgame
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling V: Playing for Time
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling IV: The Prosecutors’ Statement
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling III: The Politics
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling II: The Issues
- Park Geun-hye Unraveling I: Polls and Timeline
