Art, Protest, and Lightsticks

Happy holidays, and happy end of 2024. I hope lightsticks help light a way to a better 2025, and future for us all. I'm a bit late on sharing thoughts about the recent protests against now-impeached South Korean president Yoon, but I started writing this a few weeks ago and as many of us around the world are about to spend the next week or so celebrating holidays of light and joy, or just taking some time off, I wanted to reflect a bit on how important art and pop culture are to me, and, honestly, I think humanity.

A few years ago, I tweeted about how being a K-pop fan was innately a political thing. I meant it broadly, because I do personally feel that way, but also personally: I’m a white American woman, for me to be engaging consistently with content from a non-white, non-Anglocentric culture, is - even if by accident or subconsciously since I was a teen - a political decision. That same thing applies to everyone who seeks out content not from their own culture. 

I also meant it more because in general art is political. It always has been, even when it isn’t intended to do so, because art and culture are intertwined, and those things relate to identity and identity relates to politics. Anyone who says otherwise is probably at the top of the privilege food chain, or wants to be, and sees themselves reflected not in art but in the world around them.

The communality of K-pop lightsticks

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Notes on K-popTamar Herman

People connect with art in part because it may tick off all their aesthetic and sonic preferences, but also because we are searching for creative spaces, perspectives, communities that reflect our values and mindset.

Which is why I feel like it was so expected that the protests to impeach Yoon in Korea turned into a fandom and counterculture movement. Light sticks joined candles, which were a marker of the last major democracy protests in South Korea back in 2016-17 against then-President Park Geun-hye, and communities joined together under flags that varied from realistic communities like clubs or unions, to meme-centric ones like “Procrastinators United” or “People who buy too much merch”.  (Similar groups came together at the 2016-2017 protests as well, for anyone interested in some further reading.)

These lightsticks expressed the communal coming together of people who had one thing to say: "change". And they said it in many different ways, often with a sense of humor, but always demanding South Korean President Yoon's impeachment or resignation after his 6-hour attempt at a military law coup earlier in the month.

It was a gathering place for pop culture and counterculture, and people who feel not represented by Yoon and at risk from his attempt to deploy martial law and put a halt, or end, to Korea’s democracy. 

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Singing K-pop songs, particularly ones like G-Dragon's "Crooked" and Girls' Generation's "Into the New World", and parodies of seasonal tunes as protest anthems was commonplace. 

The protesters also were absent of MZ men, with MZ referring to a combination “Millenial” and “Gen Z” in South Korea, more or less meaning 20 and 30-somethings (I've heard Korean speakers use both MZ or 2030 to refer to this combined generation group). Those men notably are Yoon’s primary supporters. The protesters were mostly younger women and older citizens, many of whom lived through previous military law dictatorships in South Korea, whose current form of democracy is only a few decades old. 

While supporters who couldn’t attend the protests, including some K-pop idols, bought food and items to keep the protesters warm in Seoul’s frigid weather, there are reports that some men not only denounced the protests online but even pretended to be protesters to benefit from the donations and pick up food earmarked for the protestors. 

It feels like the gendered politics of the protests come in a shock to many outsiders, who don’t see how politics have become immensely divided along gender lines in South Korea. Art, particularly pop culture, is always considered in modern times as a more feminine entity, so a protest to save a democracy teetering towards devastation while protecting the patriarchy and the rule of anti-progress would almost inevitably turn into a celebration of joy around the fandoms dominated by women. (It's not dissimilar perhaps, to how straight men across many western societies are moving away from traditional art and entertainment forms, such as reading, in order to focus on patriarchal, capitalist ideas, such as productivity being more important than downtime.)

If you turn away from light during times of darkness, it feels like you must be okay with that darkness continuing to spread. But at the protests this year, hope for a better future, not hate aiming to keep the past the present, reigned. And light sticks, an innately celebratory tool, lit the way. I hope the light, and lighsticks, continue spreading in months and years to come.