[Book review] The extraordinary resistance of extraordinary Koreans on Dec. 3

 
On Dec. 3, 2024, hundreds of Koreans descended upon the Nationwide Meeting and into the road of attainable fireplace, realizing that they may very well be headed to their deaths.
 
With out these individuals, who stopped armed troopers with nothing greater than their our bodies, South Korea’s democracy and the nation as we all know it might have been toppled by the insurrectionists. All Koreans are indebted to those courageous folks.
 
A month later, in January, when everybody watched with bated breath the arrest of Yoon Suk-yeol and the following trials of him and his conspirators within the revolt, a gaggle of individuals quietly started to create a individuals’s historical past of how Koreans felt and what they witnessed on the fateful December evening.
 
“The Evening of Rebellion, Recorded by the Individuals” is a compilation of testimonies from 313 of the roughly 9,000 to 10,000 extraordinary Koreans who crammed the streets in entrance of the Nationwide Meeting on Dec. 3. The e book was created by asking and recording why individuals went to the Nationwide Meeting, what spurred them to motion, whose they fought for, and what they wished to see from the society that they went all out to guard.
 
“That f*cking asshole!” Individuals deserted their late-night snacks, their English homework, their exercises, their karaoke spree to leap onto the closest taxi, bus or subway to get to the Nationwide Meeting. The reminiscences of the brutal Gwangju bloodbath in Could 1980 by martial regulation forces flashed previous everybody’s eyes. Some grasped the driving wheel with unsteady, trembling fingers. Every new flip of the web page brings a brand new heartbreaking testimony.
 
One taxi driver, who was ready to get a request to go to Yeouido, cried as they apologized for “leaving younger individuals with a rustic on this state.” Many taxi drivers refused to take fee, dropping individuals off fare free. Individuals who had been anxious whereas touring to the Nationwide Meeting subway station, terrified that they might be alone, felt relieved by the truth that they had been surrounded by strangers in stuffed subway vehicles all headed into the identical unknown. Think about how you’ll have seen the barricades stopping troopers and law enforcement officials from getting into the Nationwide Meeting, fashioned by extraordinary residents, as you stood on the escalator taking you exterior the station.
 
The e book additionally sheds new gentle on and questions the narrative {that a} passive response from the police and navy on the time helped deliver that evening of terror to an finish, so predominant as to have been talked about within the Constitutional Court docket’s resolution upholding Yoon’s impeachment and eradicating him from workplace. 

Within the e book, many attest that, save for a small minority, the law enforcement officials who had fashioned a cordon across the Nationwide Meeting that evening had been aggressive in preserving the road, and that the hesitance proven by the martial regulation forces could not have been the identical with out extraordinary individuals there exhibiting up in power to withstand them. 

Their tales go to indicate that we can not paper over the problem with compromises on the subject of the continued trials of these concerned within the revolt and social responses to the disaster.

By dashing to the Nationwide Meeting that evening, individuals did greater than save Korea as we knew it earlier than the revolt. They introduced their battle that evening to those that have been “dwelling in states of pseudo-martial regulation” of their day by day lives. We must always all be grateful for the extraordinary braveness of those extraordinary individuals.

“The Evening of Rebellion, Recorded by the Individuals,” edited by Kang Moon Min-seo, Music Search engine optimization-yeon, Cho Yong-hwan. Revealed by The Fact Basis.

By Kim Nam-il, workers reporter

Please direct questions or feedback to [english@hani.co.kr]