Korea’s political crisis has spurred a host of commentary and reflection in China despite censorship. While state broadcaster CCTV issued minute-by-minute updates on the crisis, censors have taken down translations of articles from The Atlantic and The Guardian that were published to WeChat. “South Korea’s Warning for Washington,” by Bryan Klass in The Atlantic and “Democracy Isn’t Supposed to Work Like This” by Raphael Rashid in The Guardian have both been censored on WeChat. The former argues “one person—a power-hungry politician or a self-serving general—could destroy decades of progress in an instant” and the latter touches on the government’s brutal repression of the Gwangju pro-democracy movement that left hundreds dead in 1980. Potentially sensitive comparisons to Xi Jinping and June 4 aside, it is impossible to ascertain why, exactly, censors removed the two articles. Bars on citing or republishing foreign media coverage or orders to restrict coverage to republication of content from central state media are common approaches to handling potentially sensitive stories that are not completely silenced, however.
Images of Korean citizens blocking the military’s advance on the National Assembly in a manner reminiscent of the 1989 Tiananmen Tank Man were shared widely on Weibo. A dark strain of commentary accompanied their spread: namely that the South Korean military was risibly weak for not opening fire on demonstrators. (Tank Man himself was not harmed during the iconic confrontation, though his subsequent fate remains uncertain.) One WeChat author collected these messages in an essay titled, “Know-Nothings Mock the Korean Military for Not Opening Fire on the People, How ‘Low.’” Though the article was later deleted by the author—possibly in an effort to avoid political repercussions—CDT preserved an archived copy. In its closing lines, the author references an apocryphal anecdote popular on the Chinese internet about a question posed by a German judge to the last East German guard convicted of shooting someone fleeing over the Berlin Wall: “Couldn’t you just have aimed your rifle one inch higher?” The phrase is often used on the internet to both mock idealists and, more sincerely, to convey the difference between democracy and autocracy:
One netizen wrote, “Is it wrong to be gentle towards civilians?”
Then the entire comment section mocked them!
Another commenter responded, "You’d like the machinery of violence to be a bit more gentle?"
Their point was that the tools of violence are meant to be ruthless and violent. Even when dealing with the public, there should be no qualms about opening fire.
When you mock the Korean military, take a moment to ask yourself: Where does the phrase “aim your rifle one inch higher” come from? Then think about why South Korean citizens were willing to stand up for themselves while facing down the barrel of a gun. [Chinese]
Chinese cartoonist Badiucao paid tribute to another iconic figure from the South Korea protests, an opposition spokesperson who had grasped the barrel of a soldier’s assault rifle while asking if he felt ashamed:
🇰🇷Ms. Ahn Gwi-ryeong （former news anchor/ now politician ）was among many other brave people last night in South Korea to confront solders who forced martial law.
This drawing is my salute to those who stand up to defend democracy.
漫画，为昨晚在南韩对抗戒严，维护民主的公民和议员们喝彩！
作品首发 大声媒体 @dashengmedia.bsky.social— Badiucao巴丢草 (@badiucao.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 8:59 PM
Ahn later told reporters that "I don’t think my actions were particularly special" compared with those who had stood in front of armored vehicles.
Although not directly related to the protests, Korean films about democracy have become popular—even as they remain underground—in China. In February 2024, the popular WeChat account “Basic Common Sense” wrote about the emotional pain of watching the historical drama “12.12: The Day,” that documented the 1979 coup that brought Chun Doo-hwan to power. After South Korean President Yono Suk Yeol declared martial law, many netizens said they felt they were watching a real-life version of the film. Netizens also began sharing an old essay by Liu Yu—a professor of political science at Tsinghua, noted “America Watcher,” and Chinese liberal—that examined the spirit of democracy present in Korean film and argued that naive belief in the power of a moral justice can, in fact, help bring about democracy:
Why do I say that these films can help us understand the origin of the ideas that drove [South Korea’s] institutional transformation? First we must examine who the “revolutionaries”in the films are. Even though the protagonists of each film differ—they are lawyers, taxi drivers, and prosecutors—they all aim to protect the same group: students. The student movement is the backdrop to all of these films. Although they are in the background, the students are omnipresent, glimpsed en masse through windows, out on the street, on television screens, or in the newspapers, captivating our attention.
[…] The South Korean democracy movement grew out of the cracks in the system. On campus, the student unions were for the most part self-governing (apart from the Yushin Constitution years). Elected student-union leaders became protest organizers. All types of “study groups” and “interest groups” sprang up. South Korean religious freedom led to the rapid growth of churches, which later became important allies to the democracy movement—hence the presence of pastors in all the films. Labor unions and farmers’ associations were also granted space to exist. This is to say, democratic consciousness spread slowly throughout South Korea: a one-inch crack was pried ten inches wide, a one-yard hole became ten … until a new system broke out of the cocoon of the old.
There is a scene in “1987” when a young woman implores her crush, a college student, not to attend a protest march. She says, “You think joining a protest will change the world? Stop dreaming, wake up!” The young man responds, “You’re not wrong, but I must. My heart hurts too much.” That one phrase—“the heart hurts too much”—reveals the true origin of Enlightenment ideas. Of course, the young woman didn’t manage to dissuade him, but as a social scientist, I can think of hundreds of arguments I could have used to refute the young man’s ideas: Have you not considered the economic conditions needed for democracy? Or how such a transformation will create rifts in the movement? Or whether this is the opportune time and appropriate strategy? Have you compared the resources of the state versus the power of the people? But in the end, I realized that justice based on moral righteousness is an admirable naivete. You will find that despite all the sediment of politics, the calming power of theory, or the popular analysis of the past, in the end unparalleled innocence will rise from the depths. Its radiance will entice you to reach out and grasp it. [Chinese]
