LAUSR

The fabric of South Korea’s student activist history stretches across an intensely tumultuous century, and is richly textured with iconic sites, national figures, and venerated martyrs, forming a pervasive legacy that is survived by the current generation of Korean students, as evidenced by the nationwide response to the 2014 Sewol Ferry Disaster. South Korea, hereafter Korea, is an exemplary case study of effective student activism in the twentieth century and beyond, as its student actors have demonstrated an unparalleled ability to successfully enact critical political change on a mass scale. While the political goals of these student activists have largely shifted with the changeover in political systems, many of these demands persist today. Before 1987, democratization had been fabled to become the turning point for Korean society; however, the relationship between government and public remains strained to this day. Among other evidence, the ongoing mass protests in response to the 2014 Ferry Disaster are testaments to the failure of institutions of democracy in post-1987 Korea to ensure government accountability. Looking to sites of protest as evidence of the discontents within the public–state relationship, and more specifically to the visual and aural signs of protest that contextualize these landscapes, the following investigates the overarching demands of Korean student activists, and how their protest tactics have changed, and have been recycled to address challenges under a democratic system.