Why the yellow ribbon, and what did it mean for the Candlelight Revolution? Analyzing a key aspect of the material culture of re-democratization in South Korea

The name evokes the movement’s signature candlelight vigils, whose enormous scale was made evident in iconic photographic depictions. The dramatic aerial night-shots reveal a vast expanse of lights that blanketed a broad urban thoroughfare. In these vigils that doubled as mass protests, “candlelight” also refers to the direct participation by individuals, each bearing a candle – or its smartphone-app equivalent – and adding their embodied presence to the collective action. The main site 2 During the Candlelight protests, the central stage made the scene resemble an outdoor music festival, but in addition to musical performances, the program of events also included rally speeches by representatives of various civic organizations as well as time allotted for spontaneous remarks from members of the audience. APJ | JF 15 | 14 | 5 Candlelight protest on November 5, 2016. Photo by Seong Nae Kim. Sewol Ferry Disaster of April 16, 2014, which killed 304 people, including five victims whose bodies so far remain unrecovered. During the last three years of the former Park presidency and beyond, yellow ribbons – in tandem with other things colored vivid yellow3 – have also been used in South Korea among progressive activists across diverse social movements to visually define spaces of protest and to project a personal identity of political resistance. Why the yellow ribbon, and what did it mean for the Candlelight Revolution? Analyzing a key aspect of the material culture of re-democratization in South Korea, this article seeks to shed light on the far-ranging civic movement galvanized by a broader sense of common cause that was signified by the yellow ribbon. Despite facing repeated setbacks and repression during the Park era, that movement nonetheless persisted in conveying sustained wide-scale dissent and successfully secured the achievement of Throughout the contested election campaign that ensued, Moon Jae-in as a presidential candidate signaled his personal alignment with that broad-based citizens’ movement bythorough-going political change in a peaceful wearing an emblem of personal identification with the Candlelight protesters. However, the tell-tale solidarity symbol was not a literal representation of candlelight per se, but rather a small enamel lapel pin in the shape of a yellow ribbon. Such semiotic gesturing took on an added flourish during Moon’s victory celebration on election night when someone attached to his opposite lapel a second yellow ribbon, a whimsically oversized version that was even brighter and bigger than his usual pin. Prominently visible against his dark blue suit jacket, that additional celebratory yellow ribbon seemed to put an exclamation mark on the polling outcome. Although colored-ribbon campaigns have been used worldwide for all manner of causes, the yellow ribbon in South Korea has come to hold layered meanings that can help to trace the trajectory from “post-democracy” under Park, to the breakthrough in re-democratization that was the Candlelight Revolution.

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