South Koreans are repurposing flower wreaths and K-pop light sticks as political protest tools amid the nation’s deepest political crisis in decades, sparked by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s short-lived martial law declaration last month.
Hundreds of wreaths, predominantly directed at Yoon himself, have been sent to his residence and government buildings connected to the impeachment proceedings, with some targeting other officials involved in the martial law controversy. Local media estimate the number of wreaths delivered to government offices as several thousand.
While many wreaths carry moderate messages supporting Yoon or opposing impeachment, several contain extreme rhetoric directed at recipients. The black-ribboned funeral wreaths with white chrysanthemums and celebratory wreaths with vibrant roses and orchids, costing as much as US$75, carry messages reflecting South Korea’s deepening political divide.
Photo: AFP
The protest method has gained traction, with media coverage increasing in tandem over the last few years. A search on Big Kinds, which collects and analyzes articles from more than 100 local news outlets, shows wreath protests received four times more media coverage last year compared with 2023, reflecting the method’s growing popularity.
News articles about these protests started to appear in the early 2010s, though experts cannot specify their exact origin.
While dozens of flower shops say they have not received protest wreath orders, and a handful of online blogs promote wreath sales emphasizing political neutrality, certain shops have become focal points for the movement.
Photo: Reuters
Yoon Miyoung, of Seoul-based Dongsung Flower, said she has delivered more than 1,000 wreaths since last month, exclusively for pro-Yoon supporters.
“We’ve sent out so many wreaths that Seoul is running out of flowers,” she said, adding that more than one-third of her customers are in their 20s and 30s, with orders coming from outside South Korea including Japan, US and the Netherlands.
“Even though the form remains the same, the types of flowers or the messages differ,” Kookmin University sociology professor Choi Hang-sub said. “While wreaths avoid physical violence, the messages on funeral wreaths have evolved into a form of offline hate speech, similar to malicious online comments, but now decorated with flowers.”
Wreath protests remain “an isolated form of demonstration limited to certain political groups,” making it difficult to gain broader public support, Jungwon University professor Kim Hern-sik said.
Experts also raise concerns about wreath protests’ environmental impact.
“Most wreaths use cheap, non-environmentally friendly materials that neither help flower farmers nor the environment,” Kim said.
However, Kim sees promise in younger generations’ protest methods.
“K-pop fandom culture, especially centered around young women in their teens and 20s, is now being applied to political rallies,” he said.
Last month, outside the South Korean National Assembly where lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon, thousands of people wielded K-pop light sticks costing about US$50 from popular bands like BIGBANG, NCT and Epik High during pro-impeachment rallies.
“Even though these idol light sticks are expensive ... people are bringing their most precious possessions to express their opinions,” said Hong Gayeong, a 29-year-old protester at a Dec. 13 protest calling for Yoon’s impeachment.
The phenomenon has sparked a protest coalition, with some offering free shipping and light-stick rentals through popular resale apps.
‘DISCRIMINATION’: The US Office of Personnel Management ordered that public DEI-focused Web pages be taken down, while training and contracts were canceled US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off. The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It is using one of the
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
In Earth’s upper atmosphere, a fast-moving band of air called the jet stream blows with winds of more than 442kph, but they are not the strongest in our solar system. The comparable high-altitude winds on Neptune reach about 2,000kph. However, those are a mere breeze compared with the jet stream on a planet called WASP-127b. Astronomers have detected winds howling at about 33,000kph on the large gaseous planet in our Milky Way galaxy approximately 520 light-years from Earth in a tight orbit around a star similar to our sun. The supersonic jet-stream winds circling WASP-127b at its equator are the fastest of their kind
RSS