[Citizen College Season 2] The Spirit of Candlelight Revolution

On December 7, 2018, the final lecture of “Citizen College Season 2: Complex conflict and reconciliation of Korean Society” was held by the Seongbuk Village Citizenship Education Center and the Korea University Peace and Democracy Institute (PDI). The last speaker was Professor Jung, Jai-Kwan of Korea University.

In the lecture titled “The Spirit of Candlelight Revolution,” the professor and participants discussed the spirit of the people who joined the candlelight revolution and the meaning of the candlelight revolution in Korean society. In Korea, there was a large-scale peaceful demonstration from July 2016 to April 2017, and it is called a “candlelight protest.” However, the professor asked if we could call it a candlelight revolution. It’s usually defined as a revolution when the existing system changes through one instrument. Hence, It is hard to say whether the political, social and economic system of Korean society changed through the 23 times of candlelight protests. However, it is important to focus on the meaning of the peaceful protest, which was firstly occurred in Korean history that many people participated (about 17 million people in total). Previous demonstrations were organized primarily by a few organizations. However, in the candlelight protests, many people participated mainly as individuals rather than as a group. In addition, a survey found that 8 out of 10 citizens who participated in the protests were informed by a news and made their own judgments rather than by Social Medias or KakaoTalk. The reasons for their involvement are various, but about 44% of the respondents said they participated to recover democracy. Through this, the professor said that it cannot be called a revolution as it did not change the existing system rapidly, but can be evaluated as an opportunity for growth of democratic consciousness and democratic citizenship.

After the lecture, evaluation of the citizen college season 2 were done during the completion ceremony. Thank you all for your participation.