hankyoreh

A message of gratitude for the flood of public donations toward its 100 million won debt

“Here’s my payment for confirming democracy and the power of the citizenry. :-) Payment complete!” “Made a donation instead of ordering chicken.” “Just wired the money. . . what’s the point of making money if not to spend it on this kind of thing?”

Following the news that the Emergency Public Campaign for Park Geun-hye’s Resignation, the organizers of the candlelight rallies, had run up a debt of 100 million won (US$88,500), citizens voluntarily raised funds for the organizers that brought in more than 880 million won (US$779,000) in donations. The campaign announced this in a message of gratitude for the public donations toward its 100 million won debt that it posted to its website (http://bisang2016.net/b/notice/2178) on the afternoon of Mar. 17.

“When we were facing that debt, we hesitated to talk about donations. We believed that you would raise the money if we asked you to, but we were worried because money is always a sensitive subject,” the campaign said.

“We managed to muster up the courage to bring this up because it was obvious that, if we couldn’t cover the debt, the businesses would have to write it off. In no time at all, a miracle happened.

“We were really surprised to see the supportive comments and the photos of the amounts of bank transfers. There was also a flood of inquiries about setting up various accounts and donation methods so that people could also send money from overseas.

“More than 21,000 people donated over 880 million won. Some people said they were sorry they couldn’t join the candlelight rallies, while others said they were glad they’d been able to welcome the warm spring with us at the rallies.”

The campaign, which has been organizing weekly candlelight rallies since 2016, recently ran up more than 200 million won of debt after holding 20 rallies in a row. “Thus far, we’ve covered the cost of holding the rallies with donations from the public, but we quickly ran up a deficit while organizing rallies three days in a row around Mar. 10, when Park was impeached,” said Park Jin, co-director of the campaign’s situation room, during a phone call with the Hankyoreh on Mar. 16.

According to campaign staff, it costs more than 100 million won to rent and set up the equipment for each rally, and the campaign fell more than 200 million won behind during the recent rallies. While the candlelight rally stage team, which consists of eight stage crews, announced that it would donate 100 million won of the cost, that still left the campaign with a debt of 100 million won.

These circumstances were made public when Park Jin posted on Facebook on Mar. 14 that “the campaign’s accounts are facing a deficit.” “The situation is such that we have no way to cover the cost of the assemblies without help from the protesters. We can’t leave the stage crews unpaid when they’ve worked so hard, and we have a deficit of more than 100 million won. And that’s after the stage team donated more than 100 million won. We have no choice but making another appeal to the public,” Park said. When this news got out, ordinary people joined in the fundraiser and posted photographic evidence of their donations on social media.

“The companies who worked during the events at cost and who gave huge donations our of gratitude for letting them be part of the rallies will no longer have to worry about their finances. We’ll also use the donations to cover the cost of the candlelight rallies scheduled for Mar. 25 and Apr. 15. Just as we’ve always done so far, we’ll be transparent about our finances by making then public and won’t waste a single cent of the money,” the campaign said at the end of its post.

By Park Soo-jin, staff reporter

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