By The Straits Times | Created at 2024-12-14 05:52:18 | Updated at 2024-12-14 08:56:12
3 hours ago
SEOUL – While calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s removal, tens of thousands of South Korean protesters have danced to traditional percussion, sung a pop genre called trot and blasted “Whiplash”, a hit by girl group Aespa.
They’ve also left rallies with the melody of “Feliz Navidad” stuck in their heads. The adaptation’s repeated opening verse: “Impeachment is the answer”.
The day after Mr Yoon’s short-lived declaration of martial law last week, the protest anthem’s creator Baek Jae Gil, performed it for thousands outside the National Assembly in Seoul. A recording has received 9 million views on the social network X, and the song has spread on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. On the Chinese app WeChat, it has been translated into Chinese, he said.
“If Yoon Suk Yeol gets lost, it’s a merry Christmas,” the crowd sang along to the tune of the 1970 Christmas classic.
Mr Baek, 52, a professional musician known as Baekja, has been protesting for decades. He has seen demonstrations become more peaceful and the mood lighten since his first rally in 1989. That was during a brutally suppressed teachers movement that led to the formation of a national union.
“It was scary,” he said of those days in an interview on Dec 7 during protests at the National Assembly. “It was the time of tear gas and violent repression.”
Growing up as the youngest of six children in South Korea’s southwest, Mr Baek said he often heard stories from his older brothers about how soldiers suppressed pro-democracy protests in the nearby city of Gwangju in 1980, the last time South Korea was under martial law.
“My brother was almost killed,” he said, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses.
In middle school, he moved to Seoul at his brothers’ recommendation to find better opportunities. In high school, he wrote poetry, some of it political. He kept writing poems as he studied business at university, and a friend from high school turned them into songs.
He took the stage as a singer for the first time in 1990, the year he started college, at a pro-democracy protest on campus.
Mr Baek also learnt to play the guitar. In 1991, he performed it in the alleyways of Seoul among crowds of students and workers whose demonstrations were set off by the killing of a student activist. About a dozen protesters died setting themselves on fire.
“I sang in the midst of tear gas every week,” he said.
In the past two decades, police tactics to suppress demonstrations have become less violent. He said that protest culture changed significantly during candlelight vigils in 2002 in response to the deaths of two schoolgirls fatally struck by a US Army vehicle. A US military court acquitted two soldiers in the crash, sparking anger, but the protests remained largely peaceful.
Mr Baek also saw the mood at demonstrations become brighter after the protests against former president Park Geun-hye, some of the largest the country has seen, led to her impeachment in 2016. People were jubilant, he said: A peaceful protest had toppled the country’s leader.
“Protests in South Korea went from being dark and depressing to being fun and exciting,” he said. “There was a sense of pride in democracy.”
Those demonstrations provided the inspiration for his “Feliz Navidad” adaptation. A protester performed a version of the song, originally written by Puerto Rican singer José Feliciano, titled “Geun-hye Is Not the One”.
Feliciano did not comment directly on the latest adaptation. His wife, Susan, said in a statement that the lyrics have been repurposed often and that it was gratifying to see the melody endure.
Mr Baek wrote his version in 2022, after Mr Yoon had become president. Protests calling for his removal grew after a crowd crush in Seoul around Halloween killed more than 150 people. Mr Baek wanted to come up with a song fit for the run-up to Christmas.
“The response has been great,” he said. “It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s a Christmas carol.”
Mr Baek has run into trouble with other satirical songs. A government-run broadcaster accused him of copyright infringement earlier in 2024 after he used portion of its footage in a YouTube video satirising the material. At the broadcaster’s request, YouTube deleted his video, and police launched an investigation.
Mr Baek said he was fighting the case, calling it a targeted infringement on his free speech rights.
Last week, the day after hundreds of soldiers stormed the National Assembly, he sang his anthem and several other songs there to an energised audience that was younger than those he had seen at previous rallies.
“Let’s make Yoon Suk Yeol’s arrest our Christmas gift this year!” he shouted before performing for a crowd of protesters.
Mr Baek, who sang it again on a stage at Dec 7’s protests, said that he liked to lift people’s mood.
“The wind is biting, isn’t it?” he told thousands of protesters as wind swept his brown-highlighted perm. “If you’re cold, get up and dance!”
The crowd rose and cheered. NYTIMES
Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
