Festive Resistance: From K-pop to Democracy

On 3 December 2024, South Korea declared martial law?only to rescind it six hours later after a torrent of public outrage. When citizens returned to the streets, they no longer carried candles; instead, K-pop light sticks painted the night in neon hues. Objects once reserved for cheering at concerts instantly became political beacons, and a new form of festive resistance emerged, mixing pop songs, satirical banners, and collective defiance. This book documents and interprets that cultural revolution. Drawing on more than two thousand news reports, I employed topic-modeling techniques to uncover the hidden patterns of discourse that shaped the 2024 protests. Behind the statistics lay a photograph, a lyric, or a prepaid bowl of gimbap?micro-stories that rewrote the traditional grammar of protest. Yet a festival is never merely a party. Beneath the music and humour lie democratic crisis, generational friction, artistic censorship, and the amplified voices of women and marginalised groups. ‘Festive Resistance’ weaves these threads together: the social capital of K-pop fandom, the institutional resilience enabled by Korea’s famed “ppalli-ppalli” (hurry-hurry) culture, and the transnational solidarity that rippled far beyond Seoul’s plazas. I hope the pages ahead offer two sparks of inspiration. First, they show how colourful democracy can become when culture meets politics. Second, they suggest ways our everyday tastes and digital tools can metamorphose into public action. In the smile of a stranger holding a glowing light stick, we may glimpse the future of protest culture.