Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
College students in North Korea military uniform give anti-Moon performance
College students in North Korean military uniforms, holding guns and a North Korean flag, give a performance on Gwanganri Beach in Busan, Wednesday, to denounce the Moon Jae-in administration's policies. / Captured from YouTube
By Kim Rahn
By Kim Rahn
A group of college students wearing North Korean military uniforms staged an anti-government performance on a beach in Busan, Wednesday, prompting surprised vacationers to call the police.
According to Busan Nambu Police Station, Friday, they received reports at about 2 p.m. Wednesday that some people wearing North Korean uniforms and holding guns and a North Korean flag were walking on Gwanganri Beach.
The people ― seven men and a woman ― walked from the water toward the sand and handed out anti-government leaflets, police said.
According to police, they were members of the National College Students' Council, a group that gained attention in December with posters satirizing and criticizing President Moon Jae-in's policies.
The students said the stunt, which they live-streamed on YouTube, was a move to criticize the government's failure to deal with a recent incident in which a North Korean boat managed to cross the maritime boarder before docking at South Korea's Samcheok Port.
Police said the students' actions did not violate the National Security Law, according to a Supreme Court ruling in a previous similar case. “The guns they were holding were also toys,” a police officer said. “We decided not to further investigate the case.”
The student group's name was borrowed from a progressive student activists' group in the 1980s that led the pro-democracy movement. Many officials of the liberal Moon administration were from the old group, and the new right-wing group used the name for satirical purposes.
In December, the group placed anti-government posters on notice boards at more than 100 universities nationwide, satirically calling Moon a “king” and ridiculing his policies on various issues.