Candlelight Vigils and Citizen Activism

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Technological Development ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Citizen Activism ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Armored Vehicle ◽  
Social Collective

This chapter focuses on modern political and social collective actions in South Korea to illustrate how changing information ecosystems have influenced the ways protests and candlelight vigils have been organized over the past several decades. In particular, the chapter explains how Internet and digital communication technologies began to be used to facilitate collective actions in South Korea in a series of candlelight vigils beginning in 2002, when two South Korean teenage girls were killed by a U.S. armored vehicle. It also covers other major candlelight vigils, including 2004 vigils against the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun and 2008 vigils against U.S. beef importation. In examining candlelight vigils at different time points and stages of technological development, it considers both what changed and what has remained largely the same, while highlighting key agents and affordances and their interactions at each time period analyzed.

Networked Collective Actions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Key Participants

Massive and sustained candlelight vigils in 2016–2017, the most significant citizen-led protests in the history of democratic South Korea, led to the impeachment and removal of then President Park Geun-hye. These protests took place in a South Korean media environment characterized by polarization and low public trust, and where conspiracy theories and false claims by those opposing impeachment were frequently amplified by extreme right-wing media outlets. How then was it possible for pro-impeachment protests seeking major social change to succeed? And why did pro-Park protesters and government efforts to defend Park ultimately fail? An agent-affordance framework is introduced to explain how key participants (agents), including journalists, citizens, social media influencers, bots, and civic organizations, together produced a broad citizen consensus that Park should be removed from office. This was accomplished by creatively employing affordances made available by South Korea’s history, legal system, and technologies. New empirical evidence illustrates the ongoing significant roles of both traditional and nontraditional agents as they continue to co-adapt to affordances provided by changing information environments. Interviews with key players yield firsthand descriptions of events. The interviews, original content analyses of media reports, and examination of social media posts combine to provide strong empirical support for the agent-affordance framework. Lessons drawn from citizen-led protests surrounding Park Geun-hye’s removal from office in South Korea are used to offer suggestions for how technology-enabled affordances may support and constrain movements for social change elsewhere in the world.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hyunjin Seo
Keyword(s):  
Digital Communication ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Dynamic Interactions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Methodological Approaches

This chapter serves as an overview of the book and orients readers to subsequent chapters. It provides major contexts for networked collective actions and offers a quick look at the emergence of nontraditional intermediaries and their dynamic interactions with traditional intermediaries. Then the chapter introduces South Korean citizens’ candlelight vigils in 2016 and 2017 calling for the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and discusses how the impeachment example is an instance of the complex changes being observed in collective actions facilitated by digital communication technologies. The chapter briefly explains theoretical and methodological approaches used in this book in analyzing the intricate relationships between various agents (e.g., individuals, institutions, bots/algorithms) and their interactions with relevant affordances during South Korean citizens’ candlelight vigils demanding Park’s impeachment. The chapter ends with a brief summary of the focus of subsequent chapters.

scholarly journals South Korean Teachers’ Perceptions of Integrating Information and Communication Technologies into Literacy Instruction

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangho Pang ◽  
David Reinking ◽  
Amy Hutchison ◽  
Deanna Ramey
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Literacy Instruction ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
National Level ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Technological Support ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Usa

We investigated South Korean literacy and language arts teachers’ perceptions about integrating interactive communication technologies (ICTs) into instruction. The survey addressed their access to various applications and technologies associated with ICTs, access to technological support, frequency and importance of use, and obstacles to and conceptions of integrating ICTs. Descriptive and correlational data are reported suggesting that although classroom use of ICTs is mandated at the national level, South Korean teachers perceive access to some tools and applications, as well as the availability of technical assistance at both the school and district level, to be limited. We compare data from this study to our findings from a similar study conducted in the USA and discuss what the findings reveal about integration of ICTs into literacy instruction in South Korea. The implications for education policy in South Korea and for continued research to clarify findings across national and cultural boundaries are discussed. For example, despite reporting greater impact of obstacles and less technical support than their US counterparts, South Korean teachers reported using ICTs more frequently than teachers from the USA.

Revisiting the Public Administration Education

2022 ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Onur Kulaç
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
International Crises ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Global Engagement ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Economic Developments

Political and economic developments in the 20th century affected the forms and preferences of public service delivery. In addition, the increasing demands and expectations of citizens, the development in information and communication technologies and, finally, international crises, and in particular, COVID-19 pandemic lead to differences on the idea of public administration (PA) discipline and education. South Korea has become one of the prominent countries in the field of PA with its great transformation and change in the historical process. The foremost aim of this study is to scrutinize the PA of South Korea, which has successes in many policy areas in the past 50 years, from the perspective of education and discipline development. To this end, the emergence and the development of the discipline and education of PA in South Korea will be discussed. In addition, the discipline of PA in South Korea will be examined in terms of internationalization and global engagement. Finally, policy recommendations regarding the South Korean PA education and discipline will be presented.

The U.S.–South Korean Alliance: Anti-American Challenges

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byung-Kook Kim
Keyword(s):  
Military Bases ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Teenage Girls ◽  
South Korean ◽  
The Past ◽  
City Hall ◽  
Umbrella Organization ◽  
Armored Vehicle ◽  
The U.S

December 2002 shook up South Korea's conservative establishment and its U.S. ally. Five days before the South Korean presidential election, with a quarter of the electorate still remaining undecided, leaders of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and religious activists staged a massive candlelight vigil in front of Seoul's city hall to protest against “unequal” provisions in South Korea's Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with its U.S. ally. The political rally drew some 40,000 protestors from all walks of life. Moreover, it was only one among many climaxes in a long mobilization drive launched by NGOs and “netizens” since June, when a U.S. armored vehicle driven by Sergeant Fernando Nino and Mark Walker ran over two teenage girls during a military exercise in Hyochonli. That month saw some thirty NGOs establish a national umbrella organization to demand the trial of Nino and Walker under South Korean law. Then, in December, the Catholic, Buddhist, and Protestant religious orders joined in to lend their authority to the protestors by collectively calling for the revision of SOFA to give South Korea “primary jurisdiction” over criminal cases. The radicalhanchongryonuniversity students, too, showed up in protest sites to stir up and escalate anti-American sentiments, regularly raiding U.S. military bases in Uijongbu and Yongsan and even breaking into the U.S. Embassy compound in November. But unlike the past, this intrusion of radicalhanchongryonactivists did not drive away presumably conservative middle-class groups from political rallies. On the contrary, the call for a SOFA revision grew louder after the U.S. military court judged Nino and Walker not guilty of negligent homicide.

Elusive Belonging

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Multicultural Society ◽  
Projected Image ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Everyday Lives

With the unprecedented number of foreign-born population, South Korea has tried to reinvent itself as a multicultural society, but the intense multiculturalism efforts have focused exclusively on marriage immigrants. At the advent and height of South Korea’s eschewed multiculturalism, Elusive Belonging takes the readers to everyday lives of marriage immigrants in rural Korea where the projected image of a developed Korea which lured marriage immigrants and the gloomy reality of rural lives clashed. The intimate ethnographic account pays attention to emotional entanglements among Filipina wives, South Korean husbands, in-laws, and multicultural agents, with particular focus on such emotions as love, intimacy, anxiety, gratitude, and derision, which shape marriage immigrants’ fragmented citizenship and elusive sense of belonging to their new country. This investigation of the politics of belonging illuminates how marriage immigrants explore to mold a new identity in their new home, Korea.

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