What were they fighting for?

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Back in the late 1980s, one of my high school classmates made me think about the cause she was then fighting for. She was a student activist taking to the street to protest the then President Chun Doo-hwan who rose to power through a military coup.

At that time, people called students like her “undong-kwon,” a member of a student activism ring. In the 1980s, the popular protests were so common that classes were canceled almost every day, particularly in the mid-1980s when the anti-government protests reached their peak.

Yes, my friend and I are part of Generation 586, an acronym of the generation in their 50s, who went to college in the 1980s and were born in the 1960s.

But the roads we took were very different. She was an activist and I was an observer. Speaking honestly, I was not convinced by Marxism-Leninism, books about class struggles which were then widely read by student protesters to boost their fighting spirit.

What intrigued me most was what she was fighting for.

My friend has a sister one or two years older than her. Her sister was a sweatshop worker ― a common job in the 1980s in the small suburban rural town where I was raised.

After graduating from high school, her sister got a manufacturing job and worked long hours to finance her younger sister's college tuition.

Unlike these days, back then student loans were not available. So children from poor families had to find scholarships or people, mostly from among their female siblings, who could sponsor their expensive university tuition, to continue their studies. My friend told me that she was fighting for “minjung” (the people) who were suffering under the dictatorship.

I didn't understand why my friend tried to find minjung outside her family; her self-sacrificing sister was part of that minjung. If she really cared about her poor sister, I thought, she should have been working hard to earn scholarships to relieve the financial burden her sister was enduring for her. She failed in several courses, disqualifying her from scholarships.

I was curious if she had ever considered ways to free her sister from her tuition fee burden. But I didn't ask her about that.

Generation 586 has been back in the spotlight after President Moon Jae-in took power in 2017, decades after the turbulent 1980s. Some became members of the political elite making key decisions. Those who took the helm include past student activist leaders.

There is a stark difference in their status between the 1980s and now. Unlike in the 1980s, they are no longer heroes.

Generation 586 is at the center of controversy. They are scandal creators. They became the epitome of “neronambul,” a Korean acronym that expresses the injustice of the way people perceive relationships. It could be expressed in English as: “It's romance if I'm involved: for others, it's an affair.”

Their troublesome comeback has reminded me of the confusion I had struggled with while observing my high school classmate who considered herself as a democracy fighter for the wellbeing of the grassroots people at the price of her sister who sacrificed her youth and own future for her younger sister.

What went wrong with them?

I think the “fish cake” theory may explain their fallacies. We Koreans use a street food analogy for someone has no substance. They are called “fish cakes.” Fish cakes look like they are made from fish but have no actual fish inside.

Generation 586 politicians proudly portray themselves as “pro-democracy forces.” Like fish cakes having no real fish inside, what they said about themselves is empty and has no content.

In the 1980s, democracy in Korea was achieved because of the coordinated efforts of the Korean public, not because of a few self-claimed “charismatic” leaders. So those who should be credited with achieving democracy here are the actual Korean public itself.

After democracy was put in place, those involved returned to their normal lives doing their parts to make the country prosper. But a small group of former student activists became stuck in their glorious past, without learning anything about what's going on around the country and beyond.

Their comeback to politics for plum jobs is unwanted.