hankyoreh

April 28.

Saturday marks the one year anniversary of the first 2008 candlelight vigil demonstration. In anticipation of the anniversary of the demonstrations, which will go down in history as the largest political mass movement since 1987, the Hankyoreh joined the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy to sponsor a public forum to discuss the current meaning of the candlelight movement and to assess its future. The forum was held Tuesday at the Press Center in Seoul’s Taepyeongno. What follows is an introduction to the topic presented by two of the speakers, Korea University professor Cho Dae-yop and SungKongHoe University professor Jeong Tae-in. Editor

In his presentation “The Candlelight Vigil Demonstrations as Social Upheaval: a New Cycle in Civic Movements,” Cho Dae-yop, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Korea University, stated that social movements in South Korea have now entered their “fourth cycle.” He characterizes the first cycle by the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the second by the popular movement of the 1980s, and the third by the civic movement of the 1990s. From this standpoint, Cho recommends that civic movements move away from their methods to date, which have stayed true to seeking “macro democracy” at the institutional level, and turn their attention to the tasks of “microdemocracy” connected with everyday life.

In Cho’s view, the candlelight vigil demonstrations signal the arrival of a “new conflict society,” in that they show the spread of new lines of conflict that transcend class and ideology. A new conflict society is a society where conflict has become an everyday matter across all walks of life as the dissatisfaction and demands of civil society increase amid the state’s weakened ability to achieve social unity, and as the avenues for communication to express such dissatisfaction grow. In such a situation, not only do the issues of an industrial society like class and ethnicity become politicized, but so do everyday matters like the environment, education and housing, as well as issues related to identity like gender, culture and leisure. What Cho points to as the entity demanding the most attention in such a society is the “electronic masses” operating in online spaces.

In Cho’s view, the members of these electronic masses are networked through communications technology and new media, unlike the atomized masses of industrial society. What is important is that their online and offline movement transcends the methods of existing civic groups due to the unlimited natures both of the issues and scale of the spaces in which they operate. “South Korea’s civic movements still have not broken out of the limitations of the organized movements seen in the first three cycles of social movements,” Cho says. His advice is to adopt a future-oriented approach “accepting the ideological and cultural flexibility shown in the candlelight vigil demonstrations while working hard to achieve rationalization, openness and flexibility in organization.”

In contrast, SungKongHoe University professor Jeong Tae-in comments that the 2008 candlelight demonstrations could spread in the future into popular camps. While acknowledging problems in last year’s demonstrations, namely that they excluded socially disadvantaged classes like irregular workers and did not possess sophisticated theories or political principles, Jeong says that these problems “will certainly be resolved as the current economic crisis deepens.”

Jeong anticipates that even though the current economic crisis and suppression by the government using that crisis as a pretext could prevent the participation of middle class citizens in the immediate future, eventually the memories of the demonstrations and the festivals, inscribed into the citizens’ bodies and consciousness, will lead them back out into the streets once again. Also, Jeong predicts that by their nature, the candlelight vigil demonstrations will inevitably combine with popular movements, just as the major labor struggle of July and August 1987 did, and he foresees a strong possibility that “what happened for six months in 1987 could happen over a period of three to four years this time around.”

These predictions are connected with Jeong’s pessimistic forecast for the South Korean economy. Speaking on the recent flux in Gangnam real estate prices and soaring stock prices as a result of the government’s support policies, Jeong commented, “This ‘us alone bubble’ created while the whole world suffers in a slump cannot last for more than a year.” He predicted, “If this happens, the survival of the citizens, particularly those in the lower classes, will be placed in even greater danger.”

Jeong added, “When the bubble bursts and the livelihood crisis deepens there is no group that will not go racing out into the streets.” As an indicator of this likelihood, he cited the broad-ranging social movements that took place during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]