GYOPO presented Protesting Seoul, a lecture on protest cultures in Seoul, Korea, researched and performed by Jennifer Jihye Chun, labor sociologist and associate professor in Asian American Studies at the University of California Los Angeles and Ju Hui Judy Han, cultural geographer and assistant professor in Gender Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

This immersive lecture drew from long-term field research and presented some of the most remarkable stories, sights, sounds, forms, feelings, and infrastructures of grassroots protest-making. Images of protest from Seoul rarely make headlines in English-language press, despite Seoul’s immensely active protest culture. However, actions involving millions of protestors, such as the 2016-17 Candlelight Protests demanding the impeachment of former President Park Geun-Hye, commanded international attention and awe. This program provided our audiences in Los Angeles with a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics between activist groups championing a variety of causes within large scale protests. Chun and Han contextualized Korean protest histories and “structures of feeling” into the protest forms of high altitude occupation, samboilbae 鳴爾橾寡, och’et’uji 螃羹舒雖, and Jong-gyojibhoe.