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“It’s not easy, but they keep pulling it off. It’s like a party every weekend,” said Park Chae-un, 42, who lives in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province. This past weekend, he drove through the snow for three hours on his way to Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul. Everywhere he went on Sejong Street was overflowing with satire and parody. The people who attended the fifth nationwide rally - 1.5 million of them, organizers estimate - called for President Park Geun-hye to step down, each in their own ways.

In front of the office of the Sewol Special Investigative Commissions, a big whale rose into the air. The whale, which was carrying on its back figurines representing the 304 people who died in the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking, was part of a parade organized by the Apr. 16 Coalition to demand a full investigation into the Sewol tragedy. The Sewol whale was made by students at the Sungmisan School in the Mapo District of Seoul to honor the memory of the victims. Drawn by illustrator Seok Jeong-hyeon and turned into a video using “augmented reality” and shared on Facebook by designer Lee Gun-seop, it was brought to life for the protest.

“With all the candles lit, Gwanghwamun looked like a runway. I drew the whale soaring above the runway with the children watching us from its back,” Seok said. After being taken to Cheongwoon Hyojadong Community Service Center (200 meters from the Blue House) on Nov. 26, the Sewol whale flew above the candles until late that night.

Demonstrators waved hilarious, witty banners over their heads. The banners were not made by civic groups or labor unions but by ordinary people and by the members of small online communities. Several banners made light of the fact that the Blue House had purchased pills of Viagra, a medicine prescribed for erectile dysfunction, with wordplay calling on Park to step down and to clear out of the Blue House. Skewering the Blue House for its explanation that the Viagra pills had been purchased to prevent altitude sickness, one banner read, “The South Korean Altitude Sickness Erectile Dysfunction Research Society.” Other banners calling for Park‘s resignation included puns on Park’s name and on the name of a well-known matchmaking service.

Some of the demonstrators also engaged in voluntary acts of generosity. Members of online community 82 Cook set up a tent on Gwanghwamun Square and provided other demonstrators with hot drinks such as ginger tea and “resignation coffee.” The Spring Flowers Food Truck, which has been handing out soy milk that puns on the phrase “please quit” at each demonstration, once again gave protestors 5,000 cartons of soy milk around Seoul Plaza in front of City Hall.

Shopkeepers in Seochon also lent a hand. Employees at Caf? Tongin, located near Cheongwoon Hyojadong Community Service Center, handed out warm water and other beverages to protestors who had marched to the vicinity of the Blue House.

The number of protestors bringing LED candles as a precaution against the sleet also increased considerably. There were quite a few LED candles that doubled as head bands or scarves to deal with the chillier nighttime temperatures.

“The demonstrators appear to be gearing up for a long campaign and are determined to see this through because of Park‘s stubbornness and a string of insensitive comments about how ’candles go out when the wind blows,‘” said one of the organizers of the demonstration.

By Park Soo-jin, Kim Kyu-nam, Park Su-ji and Heo Seung, staff reporters

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