Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.
Children of Sewol, girls of Chibok
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By Jason Lim
April was a tragic month for children. In Korea, over 300 passengers, mostly students from Danwon High School in Ansan City, were trapped inside a sinking ferry waiting in place with life vests on, as they were told by the crew. They drowned.
In Nigeria, more than 200 school girls between 16 and 18 years old were abducted by the Islamist armed group, Boko Haram, from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok in northeastern Nigeria. They have not yet been found.
These incidents happened on opposite sides of the world under vastly different political and social economic contexts. However, they both triggered an angry backlash against the governments of Korea and Nigeria, respectively, for their seeming failure to safeguard the lives of their own citizens.
In Nigeria, the anger is aimed at the government’s inability to protect the basic human rights of its citizens in ensuring that they have access to safety and education, as well as to find and rescue the girls before they are further victimized by their kidnappers. In Korea, the anger is aimed at the culture of embedded corruption and nepotism that allowed operators to flout safety regulations and traditional media outlets that were seen as catering to the government’s perceived attempts to control and manipulate information.
What’s interesting is how the anger was organized and expressed through the social media. And by whom.
In Korea, the most visible social media organizing effort was led by MissyUSA, which is a site that caters to married Korean American women living in America. It’s a hugely popular site, serving mostly as a marketplace for exchange of information about everything from the best local schools and housing prices to barter deals for used children’s clothing and strollers. In a way, it’s a glorified classified ad, until its members find issues that touch them as Korean wives and mothers.
The first one was last spring when Yoon Chang-jung, then the official spokesman for the Blue House, was accused of sexually assaulting a female Korean American intern. This story actually broke through a posting on MissyUSA that described the situation and asked for help in bringing the assault to light, which it did loud and clear.
The Sewol effort went further. Rather than just a collective venting about the incomprehensible loss of young lives, there was an organized effort to ask people for donations for a full-page ad in The New York Times. Over 4,000 people donated from $5 to $10 each, which resulted in a May 11 full-page ad that read: ``The Sewol Ferry sunk. More than 300 lives were trapped in the ferry. Not one was rescued.” The ad then went on to demand an ``immediate end to South Korean government’s control of the media, censorship of the truth, manipulation of public opinion, and suppression of the public’s freedom of speech.”
Powerful stuff. It’s also fascinating to note is that this effort was aimed against the government led by the first female president of Korea organized by Korean American mothers based outside of Korea. It’s also notable that the anger at the Sewol tragedy translated into an expression of collective distrust about how the 1 percent is controlling and victimizing the 99 percent in a clandestine, systemic and non-democratic way. The Sewol issue has turned into the epicenter of many socioeconomic fissures that have been cracking the foundation of Korean society in recent years, with the power to affect the results of the upcoming local elections in June.
Although the triggering tragedy couldn’t be more different, the Chibok kidnapping is similar in a way to Sewol in that the #BringBackOurGirls hash-tag campaign is serving as the bullhorn through which the anger of ordinary Nigerians against the corruption and incompetence of the Nigerian government is blasted. It’s also similar in that the main target of the anger isn’t the actual perpetrators – Boko Haram and the Sewol ferry operators – but mainly the government.
#BringBackOurGirls has gone viral, forcing the debate to the top of the international news cycle and getting everyone from John Kerry to Hillary Clinton chiming in. This effort was organically initiated within Nigeria with the goal of getting international coverage so as to force the Nigerian government to do something about it and accept the help of the international community.
The interesting difference is that while the Sewol tragedy was immediately international in its press coverage, the mobilization, expression and targets of the resulting collective anger by the citizens were largely local. Although it resulted in a New York Times ad, the debate has not found the international resonance that would push it beyond the confines of a "Korean” issue. On the other hand, the Chibok kidnapping didn’t even appear on the American nightly news until two weeks after it happened, but has now become the center of an international focus.
True, the Chibok kidnapping is still an ongoing situation while Sewol is already something that’s occurred. However, it’s still curious to see how different tragedies focus similar anger in different ways in unpredictable online and offline permutations. And it will be more curious still to track which expressions of anger better achieve their goals of forcing accountability from their governments.
Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. He can be reached at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook.com/jasonlimkoreatimes and @jasonlim2012.