Capitalism, propaganda, and the tragedy of Halloween

Courtesy of Kibock Do

Our kids were having friends over on Friday evening so I decided to stop by E-Mart on the way home to pick up some chocolates and cakes, the usual bribes that make pre-teen social interactions feel more like celebrations and less like hostage negotiations. But when I entered the country’s biggest supermarket, something felt off. The aisles were sterile. No pumpkins. No cobwebs. No cheap polyester witches dangling from shelves. Nothing.

Confused, I ventured further in. Maybe Halloween had been demoted to some neglected corner near the dog food or the discount paper towels. So I climbed floors, wandered through cosmetics and kitchenware, half-expecting to find a lone pumpkin somewhere, as if capitalism itself had misplaced its orange grin. But no. Peppero Day was ready. The Suneung exam snacks were lined up like offerings to the gods of standardized testing. And Christmas trees were already blinking.

So it wasn’t a pause on holidays in general. It was just this one. Just Halloween.

I smiled. How lovely, I thought. For once, this vast corporate organism, the same one that can put an emoji on human desire and sell it back to you for 3,000 won, had decided to show restraint. E-Mart, Daiso, Starbucks: all the titans of Korean retail had collectively removed Halloween from their marketing bloodstream.

And the reason, of course, is as tragic as it is unforgettable. Three years ago in Itaewon, 159 people lost their lives in an accident that punctured the nation’s heart. The slow, unseen physics of too many bodies sharing too little space. The videos that spread through social media that night still haunt me. The faces and expressions etched into memory. Things that people really shouldn’t see, truth be told.

This is how things can be done right. How memory, culture, and attitudes can be spread through society. A culture remembering through absence. Capitalism holding its breath for just a moment.

Except — and here’s the uncomfortable bit — it’s also what capitalism does best.

We like to think of propaganda as something they do: North Korea, Russia, China. But Jacques Ellul told us decades ago that modern propaganda needs both individuality and massness: a society of people convinced they’re making their own choices while marching, efficiently and without complaint, in the same direction.

“For propaganda to succeed,” he said, “a society must first have two complimentary qualities: it must be both an individualist and a mass society. These two qualities are often considered contradictory. In actual fact, an individualist society must be a mass society, because the first move toward liberation of the individual is to break up the small groups that are an organic fact of the entire society. In this process the individual frees himself completely from family, village, parish, or brotherhood bonds, only to find himself directly vis-à-vis the entire society. Sociological propaganda produces a progressive adaption to a certain order of things, a certain concept of human relations, which unconsciously molds individuals and makes them conform to society.”

And so there I was, thinking I’d stumbled upon moral progress, when really I’d just been handled, sedated by a well-designed absence. The pumpkins weren’t missing; they’d been strategically omitted. I wasn’t being asked to buy Halloween. I was being sold grief. Branded silence. The dignified restraint of a corporation that still expects you to buy Peppero in bulk.

In that moment, I became the very thing I thought I was critiquing, another cog spinning smoothly in the soft machine of capitalist empathy. The South Korean president flattering Trump. The once progressive journalist now resorting to resharing government talking points. The consumer interpreting a lack of products as a sign of conscience.

We all do it. We wake up wanting to remember Itaewon. And we really, truly mean it. But then the day happens: bills, commutes, lunchboxes, deadlines. The rhythm of survival hums louder than the dirge of memory. The propaganda isn’t a message; it’s a tempo.

And while that tempo plays, the media feeds us comfort food: three billionaires having beer and fried chicken, the illusion of relatability wrapped in golden lighting. “Look!” they tell us. “They’re just like you!” Except they’re not. It’s theater. A performance of equality to make inequality palatable. A capitalist bedtime story.

I bought an overpriced sushi set. It looked beautiful and tasted of nothing. I went home, listened to Kang San-ae, and got drunk, the small rebellion of a man trying to taste something real. The answers weren’t there, of course. But at least, for a brief moment, the propaganda couldn’t reach me. And I thought of Itaewon.