The 2016–17 Candlelight Protests in South Korea (hereafter Korea) stood out in a sea of right-wing political takeovers of governments around the world. Donald Trump won the US presidential election. Europeans in Austria, Hungary, Poland, and even Sweden saw the entrenchment of ultraconservative governments and political gains by the far right. The political ascension of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and the continuing reign of the Bharatiya Janata Party in India linked Asia to this tide of global support for right-wing leadership that attacks and undermines democratic institutions.

Korea has already had its share of right-wing conservative rule, beginning in 2008 with President Lee Myung-bak. Conservative governance continued with the election of Park Geun-hye in 2013. Her presidential reign, however, came to an end as a result of mass Candlelight Protests. Protesters demanded her removal from office following the discovery that Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of Park's, had been illegally masterminding government policy by making key decisions in the president's name. Starting in late October 2016, thousands of Koreans gathered in the center of Seoul and other cities to demand Park's removal. By December, millions of protesters were assembling in Seoul each week, peacefully calling out Park and pressuring the National Assembly to impeach her. The National Assembly finally did so on December 9, 2016. She was removed from office when the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment vote in March 2017.

Global media coverage zeroed in on the festive atmosphere of the protests. In Seoul, the site of the largest demonstrations, different generations of Koreans, including young children, joined together once a week, usually on Saturday, for a day of collectively voicing their anger against President Park. The day began with a simple march, during which citizens picked up litter. Along the way, they left stickers and notes on police buses to explain that their anger was directed at the president and not at the young conscripted police. Protest activities also included dancing to traditional drum sounds, eating food sold by nearby vendors, and listening to speakers. Finally, in the evening, protesters lit candles in Gwanghwamun Square, across from the Royal Palace. The mass lighting of candles represented a wave of solidarity against the president and, according to candlelight holders, “gave light to darkness.”

The festive atmosphere of the protests expressed more than just disgust at Park's corrupt and increasingly authoritarian rule. Protesters also vocalized growing popular anger at mounting economic and social inequality, which had soared since the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. People were angry that the conservative government had done nothing to address inequality and the corrosion of social welfare. They were furious that nothing was being done to take on the gargantuan might of the chaebols, especially Samsung, that fueled the country's growing oligarchy.Footnote ¹ The protests became a lightning rod for building collective affect—“nonconscious intensities variously activating and deactivating bodies” (White Reference White2017, 177)—among the protesters. This collective affect from the protests disrupted everyday routines; it opened up citizens to dynamic modes of being, allowing them to confront the normative order of the Korean political economy. The gathering of hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens from all walks from life in Seoul and elsewhere in the country was a powerful mechanism for community building and challenging political authority. It also turned into a formidable instrument to publicly pressure political parties to remove Park from office.

The success of the people's drive to take down corrupt rule in the name of democracy immediately invoked the memory of mass protests for democracy during the 1980s that had helped end military authoritarian rule. During the Candlelight Protests, participants connected their activity to what had happened in the 1980s, and to earlier Candlelight Protests in 2004 and 2008. However, they quickly distinguished their ways of protesting from older modes. The “old” protests had been violent and confrontational, whereas the “new” protests were peaceful and respectful of authorities on the ground. In 2016–17, a “family-friendly” atmosphere was inclusive of all segments of the population and did not involve any fierce clashes with police. Protesters and observers declared that the “new” had arrived and the “old” was no longer. “Old” and “new” became a dichotomous way to organize and interpret experiences and developments in real time. Successfully catalyzing the impeachment of Park only confirmed the protesters’ belief that “new” targets and approaches were far superior to anything from the past. Marking a rupture that ushered in fundamental transformations, the media, scholars, and observers of the protests quickly labeled them a “Candlelight Revolution.”

Despite the “revolutionary” side of the protest, the public placed its hopes in the establishment for political, economic, and social transformation when the majority voted for Moon Jae-in, a progressive, to succeed Park as president. Voters saw a pathway to change in an established, conventional, “old” way—capturing state power by electing a new president and empowering the new leader to carry out top-down reforms. President Moon entered office with plans to shake up the political and economic order and create a “people's economy.” Yet, his efforts to decentralize the economy by limiting the powers of the chaebols have mostly stalled. In fact, economic and social inequality has only increased, and the chaebols have captured an even larger share of the economy. Dissatisfaction with Moon's presidency has grown. Moon has been weighed down by political scandals, including the 2021 LH Scandal,Footnote ² and his unwillingness to structurally attack the neoliberal economic system that drives economic inequality and the consolidation of economic power by the chaebols. Nearly four years after Moon's inauguration, any hopes for the rise of new economic structures to provide welfare, stability, dignity, and control over people's everyday lives have simply faded away.

Both the rise of a new protest culture that helped bring the Park presidency to an end and the failure of Moon's government to bring forth structural changes call for a discussion about how appropriate it is to refer to the 2016–17 protests as a “Candlelight Revolution.” Any reflection on this issue, of course, requires a larger discussion on the meaning of revolution. It further necessitates thinking about how social movements disrupt existing foundations to produce meaningful change that gives way to new pathways of social organization and “mutuality of being” (Sahlins Reference Sahlins2013, 28). That is, what factors, beliefs, practices, and forms of organization are needed to overcome the dominance and subjugation that has been commonly sustained by lived culture—“that saturation of habit, of experience, of outlook, from a very early age and continually renewed at so many stages of life, under definite pressures and within definite limits” (Williams Reference Williams and Gable1989, 74)? Revolutions in the modern era are commonly understood “to indicate fundamental change, or fundamentally new developments, in a wide range of activities” (Williams Reference Williams1983, 273). They are known as triggering events that unleash a wave of social energy that produces enough change to induce the arrival of a “wholly new social order” (Williams Reference Williams1983, 273). The push for change erupts as a result of the events of the revolution collectively unsettling people's lived cultures, and therefore causing a temporal break between past and present. In many cases, this break temporarily suspends lived cultures and creates space for the emergence of a new world of living, working, and being.

Turning the moment and its energy into a vehicle for the long-term reconstruction of the political economy to generate social renewal has proved to be a formidable task in the modern era. Social energies fade and people's attention turns away from revolutionary aims as they return to their quotidian routines and new political leaders roll out norms to regulate behaviors and reimpose order. Even with energy carrying over into the postrevolutionary moment, it has been challenging to push ahead with sustained reforms without avenues in civil society for organizing the people into robust, democratizing forces. Revolutions in the short term have proved to be forceful events that transitorily liberate people from dominating structures and systems and open up possibilities, while revolutions in the long term have stalled in the face of developments that put a pause on change and hold back the emergent from breaking free from the shadows of the residual.

This JAS forum explores and investigates the possibilities and grounds for transformative politics in both the short term and the long term and the conditions for and limits of revolutionary change in a democracy. It does so by interrogating the ideas, practices, rhythms, and processes of the Candlelight Protests. Featuring essays from scholars in different disciplines, this forum approaches this process of examination specifically through the concepts of space, temporality, and depth.

First, in terms of space, the power and effectiveness of any political drive for structural change has often depended on how well individuals are able to establish a mass space of interconnected protest that contests prevailing forces and norms. Creating a powerful mass space for protest has required balancing different interests in ways that assure a solidarity against the subject and object of the protests. As shown by Jennifer Jihye Chun in her essay on Korean workers pushing forward a “politics of refusal” during the Candlelight Protests, the pursuit of unity has led to the shedding of historical legacies through the disavowal of established activists whose views and tactics are seen as outdated. They have been banished to the edge of this new mass political space. In any political space inside and outside Korea, how do you balance the “old” with the “new?” How do the experiences of Korean workers, the main group pushing for a fundamental transformation of the economy and society, help deepen overall understandings of how a popular political space is forged in both the short term and long term? Inside and outside Korea, how have disavowed groups—including farmers and rural inhabitants who struggle against the economic imbalance between the urban and rural, Samsung workers who fought against toxic working conditions, protesters fighting urban evictions, and the bereaved Sewŏl ferry parents—adapted to new mass political spaces? Have they responded in creative and meaningful ways, such as Korean workers during the Candlelight Protests who, as Chun notes, turned to “heightened forms of drama, ritual and suffering” in their protest repertories as part of a willful “politics of refusal” to build “solidaristic relations and communities of care?”

Second, what is the temporal emphasis of any protest? How does privileging certain temporalities shape protests and movements and the prospects for structural transformation in the present and future? Determining and narrowing the temporality of any protest movement has tremendous implications for social change, as noted in Ju Hui Judy Han's essay “Out of Place in Time: Queer Discontents and Sigisangjo,” which covers the dissenting voices of queer and transgender activists during the Candlelight Protests. Indeed, a narrow temporal approach and structure sets up boundaries and norms of exclusion. Just as queer and transgender voices were suppressed during the Candlelight Protests and have been pushed out of the political realm in the post-Park era—as Moon and his supporters have stressed the postponement (najunge) and prematurity (sigisangjo) of equal rights and protections for the queer and transgender community—any groups who are out of place in a mode of time configured by others are “denied a place in the present.” They are silenced and exiled from the grounds of dissent. As a result, the present loses powerful, solid layers of critique that, with other layers, can collectively push forward streams of social change.

Third, in terms of the depth of what to demonstrate against and change, how far should protests and social movements go? How do movements influence one another over time, and what type of changes arise from the tension between the old and new? Why has it been so challenging for protest movements to name, protest against, and challenge the real powers behind the shaping and governing of society? The targets of protests have often been symptoms of a much larger problem, such as the unrestrained nature of capital. As Hyun Ok Park notes in the essay “The Politics of Time: The Sewŏl Ferry Disaster and the Disaster of Democracy,” protests and movements in liberal democracies, such as the 2016–17 Candlelight Protests, fail to adopt a critical stance against capitalism. Therefore, capitalism's impact on political structures and cultures is muted. There is a belief that liberal democracies have the power to control capital. However, capital has been able to hide behind both the state and, according to Park, “extralegal power that operates within the liberal democratic present.” Any protest movement in a democracy, therefore, must dig deep beyond the political surface to name the real power and threat in liberal democracies—that is, capitalism. Coming up with radical mechanisms, such as “life politics,” is essential for forming new social relations to confront and overturn these powers and threats to people.

Collectively, these three essays interrogate the meaning and significance of the Candlelight Protests. They complicate standard narratives of the protests by offering critiques of Korea's political economy that go beyond standard media praise for the protests. These balanced critiques alert us to the contradictions and shortcomings of the Candlelight Protests under a capitalist democracy, as noted in Michelle Williams's essay “Contesting Market Democracy: Possibilities and Contradictions of the Candlelight Protests.” Yet, as Williams points out, the critiques reveal that the protests still “ignited a renewed democratic sensibility that has created spaces for new forms of organizing to develop, new solidarities to emerge, new material and symbolic resources to be created, and generative opportunities to be engendered.” Therefore, the value of studying the protests in Korea from 2016 to 2017 extends beyond grasping the dynamics of Korean history and politics. This forum also offers an opportunity to raise theoretical questions, according to Williams, “about capitalism and its relation to democracy, to the role and place of labor and other progressive movements for justice and inclusion in the era of neoliberal capitalism, and the limits of transformative politics in the context of market democracy.” In so doing, it offers the conceptual grounds to link struggles for democracy between different countries, as Williams does by connecting Korea with South Africa. It also allows for a reflection on theories in political economy, liberalism, affect and culture, protest, and social organization and how they can explain the sources and scales of changes in a democracy.

In contemporary Korea, there are multiple drivers creating fundamental changes and reforms in a democracy conditioned by dominant economic principles and forces. Indeed, some activists still place their hopes in the power of the revolutionary event to motivate and drive people to reform or overturn the established order through a top-down process. On the other hand, agricultural groups, such as Hansalim and the Buddhist-based Indra's Net, have organized bottom-up drives over the last three decades to build new, mutually beneficial ecological orders for nonhumans and humans to counter and gradually replace prevailing economic, social, and cultural norms; these cooperatives and groups have centered their movements on building a new culture around the principle of renewing life (saengmyo˘ng)—that all living entities draw from the same living force and therefore are linked together. For life to flow freely, an environment of harmony and care in which all living beings support and nourish each other needs to be established.

In order to advance life, these agricultural groups have set up cooperatives and centered their work on organic agriculture and rural renewal (Park Reference Park and Kim2018). Aiming to forge a network of intimacy and care between rural producers and urban consumers and humans and nonhumans, the organic agricultural groups have historically laid the groundwork for modern environmental movements in Korea. They have led campaigns against the systemization of agriculture and nature laid out by the state and pushed for ecological renewal based on mutual support and care—a process that has gradually and fundamentally shaken routines and customs and disrupted existing systems. For them, in order for ecological renewal to be achieved, there must be a process of change that tackles environmental issues in relation to challenging and reworking the existing industrial capitalist-based political economy. These agricultural cooperatives have adopted the long revolution approach that addresses the needs of both human and nonhumans. They maintain the belief that short-term events only briefly rupture and suspend existing norms and processes and produce temporary changes; achieving fundamental and systematic changes that can be sustained over time requires building a new and durable culture. Through this culture, existing ways of working and living are challenged and new values, practices, and relationships are cultivated, lived out and deeply rooted in people's everyday lives (Park Reference Park2016).

Ultimately, this forum asks readers to reflect on the pathways toward revolutionary transformations under a democracy structured by capitalism in Korea and elsewhere. Does tension between the preexisting and the emergent create a dialectical moment for rifts and groundbreaking transformations? Should revolutionary changes arrive through a singular, rupturing event? Or do fundamental changes arrive through a long revolution that challenges existing lived cultures and creates a new culture of the everyday that causes hegemonic structures to “lose their power of predominant social reproduction” (Harker Reference Harker2018)? How can a rupturing event in the short term merge with long-term reforms to produce systematic changes over time that give way to possible reforms, including the establishment of a “Parliament of Things” that justly addresses both human and nonhuman needs (Latour Reference Latour1993)? Without asking these questions, the threat of the residual wholly determining the present and recycling and reaffirming regressive residues from the past in the now becomes even more real and lessens the possibilities for shaking foundations in ways that encourage the eruption of the new in Korea and elsewhere over the short and long term.