hankyoreh

Hwang Yeon-ju recently received a visit from around ten police officers. The 44-year-old, who runs a furniture workshop in Seoul’s Mapo district, had put up a poster in her shop window from the popular indignation rally held on Nov. 14. It showed the face of President Park Geun-hye, with the words “the dictator’s daughter” underneath it. Another read, “Enough is enough! We can’t take it anymore!”

The first visit to her workshop came at around one in the afternoon on Nov. 28, when five officers with the Mapo Police Station stopped by in a patrol car. Telling Hwang they had “gotten a report,” they asked her why she had put the poster up.

“I’m freely expressing my opinion. Is there a problem with that?” she replied.

The police then ordered her to take it down, saying it “defamed a person’s reputation with false content.” Hwang asked which part of it was false. The police told her it was the reference to the “dictator’s daughter,” and demanded that she prove that Park was indeed a dictator’s daughter, Hwang said.

Ten minutes later, another four to five officers in plain clothes came to record the poster’s text in notebooks. In all, around ten police officers came to Hwang’s shop over a thirty-minute period.

“This is a case of the authorities trying to intimidate ordinary citizens,” Hwang contended. “When police start investigating and they start telling you to ‘come to the station,’ anybody who wants to put up a poster or anything else in the future is going to be scared away from expressing their opinions.”

Hwang put up the poster on the morning of Nov. 14. While she did not attend the demonstration that day, she received a message from a friend on social media saying that “anyone who can‘t attend on Nov. 14 should at least put up this poster.” Deciding that she should show her support, Hwang printed out the two posters and put them up in her shop windows.

“When the public calls you names, you should ask why they’re using those names. It‘s not our politicians’ place to just round up anyone who uses names,” she said. 　

President Park Geun-hye is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the president of South Korea between 1961 and 1979. The New York Times described her as “a dictator‘s daughter with an unsoiled aura” in an April 2012 piece written before her election, while she was serving as chairperson of the ruling Saenuri Party’s emergency committee. During the election later that year, the BBC described the candidate as the daughter of a “military ruler.” CNN also referred to then-candidate Park as the daughter of a “dictator.” The Washington Post described the election as a battle between a “dictator’s daughter” (Park) and a “North Korean refugees’ son,” opponent Moon Jae-in.　

By Ko Han-sol, staff reporter

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