Political Implications of Candle Light Protests in South Korea

This paper atlempts to explore the characteri stics 01 participants the candle light protests that took place between May and July, 2008 in Korea. Various controversies ovcr the implications 01 the protest have σ Op야d up. In lace, some scholars and journa lists interprct these protests as a new type of political participation. They insist that these political actions wi Jl stimulate participatory democracy, which is considered as the solution to address the problems 01 the rcpresentative democracy. on the other hand, other p-olitical analysts rcgard the protest as mere p-olitical incidents. The inappropriate response 01 the Korean govemment to the pu비c protestations agains t beef imported from the U.S. agitated the Koreans, who th en took poli tical action and criticized the govemment 끼，erefore， as soon as the govemment changes its attitude and successfu lly persuades the Koreans, such p-olitical events may soon be a thing 01 the past. An empirical analysis of this paper with 3 different surveys evi-dences the fact that the protest wa5 not caused only by U.S imported beef. The Koreans had, for a long period, remained disappointed abollt the policie5 of the l..ee govemment 끼1ere-fore, the U.s. beef import i5sue was a trigger that motivated the people to go out on the 5treets to protest