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Millions of protesters called "terrorists"

Book review written by Nina Trige Andersen
Light and Candle, Write a History – Candlelight Revolution
Regissør: Nungcool
( Sør-Korea)

South Korean citizens created history as they – armed with candles and demands of justice – caused President Park Geun-hye and her Conservative party to fall into 2017.

(THIS ARTICLE IS ONLY MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)

Many were horrified when Park Geun-hye took office as South Korea's president in 2013: How could a dictator's daughter come to power in a democratic era? Geun-hye's father, Park Chung-hee, seized power in the country through a military coup in 1961 and ruled with authoritarian methods until he was assassinated by his own intelligence chief in 1979.

However, in addition to military state of emergency and unscrupulous repression by political opponents, Park Chung-hee had also brought economic growth to a South Korea that was still struggling to rise after the Korean War. Many therefore hoped that his daughter – who, because of his mother's early death, had become the first lady under his father – could restart the country's economy.

30 000 South Korean participated in the first so-called Candlelight Demonstration 29. October 2016, and finally 2 millions attended.

Instead, Geun-hye ended up as the centerpiece of one of the biggest political and economic scandals in South Korea's history and is now serving a 24 year in prison at the Seoul Detention Center for abuse of power, bribery, coercion and leakage of state secrets.

Although the scandals surrounding her presidential office began rolling already from the spring of 2014, it took another three years before parliament decided to remove her from office and start a court case. And this happened only because, in unprecedented numbers, the citizens had walked the streets in protest against the government.

The latest countdown

The documentary Light and Candle, Write a History – Candlelight Revolution, which had its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival in October, documents the mass demonstrations that brought down the president. 30 South Koreans participated in the first so-called Candlelight Demonstration on October 000, 29, and until the next. . .

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Nina Trige Andersen
Trige Andersen is a freelance journalist and historian.

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