Image Credit: IKP News

Translators’ Note: From December 16 to 21, 2024, the “Jeon Bong-jun Struggle Group,” a coalition of eight agricultural and food-related organizations, drove tractors and other vehicles to Seoul from the southern regions in protest, calling for the arrest of impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol. Upon their arrival at Namtaeryeong—the border between Gyeonggi Province and Seoul—in the late afternoon of the 21st, protesters encountered police barricades blocking their march to the presidential residence in Hannam-dong, Seoul.

As news spread that the farmers were trapped for hours in the record-breaking cold, countless pro-democracy protesters rushed to join them on site. Most of them, holding lightsticks, arrived immediately after the day’s long rally in downtown Seoul. In support of those at Namtaeryeong, citizens—both online and offline—went beyond advocacy and actively redistributed resources: food, water, blankets, hot packs, first aid supplies, and even warming buses to provide shelter from the cold and fatigue. That night, the majority of those who stood in solidarity with the farmers were young women, many of whom identified as queer.

This unprecedented alliance—transcending age, gender, culture, and regional boundaries—proved stronger than ever. At Namtaeryeong, young protesters not only created a sanctuary for the farmers but also physically intervened, using their bodies and time to resist police suppression. This act of solidarity opened the eyes of those engaged in agricultural activism, a space that had long overlooked gender inequality in rural areas. Meanwhile, young protesters gained a deeper understanding of the need to protect farmers’ rights and strengthen local food sovereignty.

The bond forged at Namtaeryeong did not end that night. A few days later, the Jeon Bong-jun Struggle Group sent 10,000 pieces of rainbow rice cakes to pro-democracy protesters in Seoul. Despite the technical challenge of incorporating all seven colors into each batch, the farmers took great care to show their solidarity with those whose lives have been shaped by social exclusion and discrimination.

Translated below is a short essay by Kang Kwang-seok, secretary-general of the Gangjin County Farmers’ Association in Jeollanam-do, who witnessed the power of solidarity firsthand. Originally published on his Facebook under the title 28 Hours at Namtaeryeong, his piece has since been widely circulated online and republished by Hankyoreh. With his permission, we have translated it for English-language readers.

*** 

On December 21, the morning in Suwon was bitterly cold. A tractor from Gurye, Jeollanam-do, overturned while descending a steep, snowy slope. Luckily, no one was hurt. Before setting off again, someone at the front shouted, “Let’s go to Seoul, arrest Yoon Seok Yeol, and reclaim the farmers’ rights in the constitution!” From the back, another voice added, “If the police try to stop us, it’ll probably be at Namtaeryeong.”

There were 37 tractors in total. I felt less like I was following the front tractor and more like I was being pushed forward by the ones behind me. We took a quick break along the way and shared a few raw chestnuts. When the tractors slowed and police officers began appearing sporadically near Namtaeryeong, I thought: Now they’re going to stop us.

Some citizens held up sketchbooks with messages like, “You’re amazing! Keep up the good fight!” People took photos as we passed by, and I tried to look determined each time. Some waved from their cars, some clapped, and some raised their middle fingers. Those watching from the sidelines were strangers, people I would never meet, but somehow, they felt like neighbors from my town.

The police blockade was set beyond Namtaeryeong on a slope. It was 2 p.m. Only low archer barriers seemed to separate the lanes leading into and out of Seoul. So one of us veered over the curb into the opposite lane, followed by three others breaking through the police line. The police scrambled to block the opposite lane with a barricade, but by then, four tractors had already passed through and were heading toward Dongjak Bridge and Banpo Bridge. Later, they returned and said, “Once we left the formation, the police didn’t stop us, but there was nowhere to go. They had already blocked the gate to Seoul. It was too exhausting.”

A Night at Namtaeryeong

Both directions of the Namtaeryeong road were now completely blocked. We were surrounded by mountains, cut off from all support, with no way forward and no retreat. We were being isolated and left helpless. The afternoon sun set steeply. The ridge sat between two towering peaks. It was the gateway to Seoul, shadowed by the imposing barbed-wire fences of the Capital Defense Command. The fact that in 1980, Roh Tae-woo had commanded a division here, or that Yoon Seok Yeol sought to capture and detain opposition party politicians in underground bunkers—all of it faded in the face of a more immediate concern: hunger.

We were starving. Some bread and rice cakes were passed around, but they quickly ran out. There were no shops nearby. The wind howled over the ridge, forcing people to stay inside their tractors with the engines running for warmth. My tractor had no heater. There’s a class hierarchy to cold and hunger here, too, I thought.

Around 7 p.m., word spread that ten police companies, along with tow trucks and forklifts, were coming to remove us. So they’re going to clear us out. Of course, they would. But it didn’t feel right to give up our struggle like this.

One of us said, “To tow a tractor, they need to put it in neutral. What if we turn off the engine and remove the keys? Then the wheels won’t turn, and they’ll have to drag them away, tearing apart the clutch box and transmission in the process.” Others agreed—this was how we would hold our ground. 

One by one, we turned off our engines and pocketed our keys.

The Turning Point

Soon, we held a meeting to make a decision. While the road forward was blocked, retreat was still an option. The group leaders debated like hawks and appeasers. But then, voices rose—not from those higher up, but from those who rarely spoke, from people who had joined the protest for the first time in a long while.

“If we leave now, what’s the point of coming all this way?” one of them asked. “Wouldn’t it be too humiliating to stop now?”

They were right. Our action was not just about political strategy or ideology. It was about dignity and conscience. We finally decided to hold the line, no matter what awaited us.

Then, warm tteokbokki arrived. I was told that our supporters had sent the food. I had two bowls, then some kimbap. Eat while you can, I thought, and ate again. Hand warmers arrived, each printed with an image of a soldier standing watch. This ridge is like the high ground they defend, I thought. While the support moved me, it was not difficult to see how this would end: the police were waiting to move late at night to avoid any public backlash over their violent suppression of our protest.

However, after 8 p.m., a rumor spread among us: “People from Gwanghwamun [pro-democracy protesters who had already gathered in downtown Seoul] might be coming to join us.” That would be huge, but was it really happening?

By 9 p.m., small groups began gathering near the tractors. The crowd grew. Someone asked those at the front to sit down. Someone else said they were bringing a larger speaker. Then, the music started. People cheered as it played on. By 10 p.m., the crowd had grown like a giant snowball.

There were 5,000—no, 10,000—maybe more. It was impossible to count the heads. Like an unstoppable tide, they kept surging in. I hadn’t even known there was a subway nearby. “It stops running at 11,” someone said. But still, the young protesters stayed with us, braving the cold on a ridge where even soldiers would struggle to stand watch.

Past 10 p.m., the emcee—one of the leading farmers—spoke with concern: “Once the subway stops, this place will be cut off. What should we do? Should you leave before it’s too late?” 

Someone took the mic and said, “You [farmers] came from far away to protest. How could we leave you alone here?” 

The crowd erupted in applause, making a unanimous decision: an all-night sit-in.

From that moment on, a sea of lightsticks lit up the night. They came in every shape— square, round, triangular—and every color—blue, red, yellow. Some had long handles, others short. Out of curiosity, I asked about the prices, though some laughed. The cheapest was 30,000 won, and the most expensive was 100,000 won. Most of the people holding them were young women, well prepared for the cold with hats, masks, scarves, thermal shawls, mats, gloves, and thin blankets. They knew every song. They never tired.

I listened carefully. They sang Tears, Every Night, Let’s Take a Trip, Southbound Train, Dash, Into the New World, and APT—both Rosé’s and Yoon Soo-il’s versions—as well as BTS songs. And more than I could list. They sang Amor Fati too. 

What stunned me was how they chanted protest slogans between lyrics. Just a second or two between verses, they shouted in unison: 

“Impeach! Impeach! Impeach Yoon Seok Yeol!” 

“Move the cars! Move the cars!” [Note: referring to police cars blocking the road]

It felt as though those words had originally belonged in the songs. The event leader —less a rally host, more a DJ—masterfully guided these chants. It was astonishing, to say the least.

All the farmers, including myself, watched in awe, staying outside our tractors despite the freezing weather. It was more miraculous than a grain of wheat dying to produce a multitude of seeds. Protesters sang and danced, spoke and sighed, jeered and cheered. They resolved to punish those responsible and comforted each other, saying, “Don’t cry.”

They took turns stepping onto the stage, each speaking for three minutes, having waited three hours for their turn. A math academy instructor, an elementary school teacher, a graduate student studying agriculture, a Lotte Giants fan from Gwangju, a university student struggling with anti-Jeolla discrimination, a student retaking the college entrance exam, a student from a farming village, a 24-year-old woman who traveled from Busan every weekend to attend rallies, an office worker whose father had served in the military’s Capital Defense Command, a mother who had sent her son to the army, a woman in her 30s preparing for college entrance exams, a fourth-year university student worried about the lack of job security, a young gay student active in his university’s student council, a woman who had lost a friend in the Itaewon disaster, a woman from Yangpyeong who farms by herself, an office worker whose father is a farmer, Shin Uri—the daughter of the late farmer activist Shin Yong-beom, who stepped onto the stage in remembrance of her father, a young man in his 20s—a demographic rarely seen in most pro-democracy protests, a 21-year-old woman who graduated from a vocational high school and is now involved in union activism—all of them spoke.

Nothing, not even the cold winter wind, could stop them. The audience responded with fierce applause.

They spoke of their understanding of the struggles of farmers, of their outrage over the government’s veto of the Grain Management Act. They declared that police officers should stop eating domestically grown rice out of shame, that the People Power Party’s unshakable support base was finally cracking, that democracy lived in the public square, that politics must change, that they would wear Jeon Bong-jun T-shirts in solidarity. They spoke better than the leaders of democratic organizations, who usually denounced the political crisis with loud voices at rallies. Each of these young protesters had prepared their speeches on their phones. Ending their speeches with a rallying chant had become a new trend.

When one declared, “This country has abandoned women in their 20s and 30s, but we are here to save the nation,” I felt ashamed of my country.

But I also saw its future in these women.

Image credit: IKP News

A New Dawn

At 4 a.m. on Sunday, February 22, I witnessed something unforgettable.

Folk singer Choi Do-eun, who had joined us, sang like a flaming arrow. She was on fire. Without any background music, she roared Fire Moth, her voice burning with unrestrained intensity. It felt as though her pulse, her veins, would burst. The crowd joined in, singing March for the Beloved and The Farmers’ Song in unison.

As I stood there, I could not help but think of the truth held within these songs—the path taken by the dead, and the rising sun that would light the way for the living; at this very moment, we were standing together with those buried at Ugeumchi. And I could not stop thinking of Dongho’s final night at the Jeonnam Provincial Office on May 27, 1980 [Note: referring to Han Kang’s A Boy Is Coming. Dongho, a central character, is killed by the South Korean military toward the end of the 10-day Gwangju Uprising]. And I wept.

I thought of empathy and rage—the will to face the suffering of women, LGBTQ people, migrant workers, the disabled, farmers, and precarious laborers. The refusal to ignore another’s hunger and cold. The commitment to stand against discrimination and exclusion. That is what makes us human. That is what makes a community bloom.

I saw the faces of the young Sewol Ferry victims in them. I believed the students had come to join us, that the dead had paved the way for the living. I thought of their souls—now stars in the sky—the final fingernail marks they left on the ship, the phones in their pockets. I imagined them descending to earth, transformed into the glowing light sticks that filled the night. The protesters’ unwavering belief—that the world before Sewol and the world after must not be the same—had finally bloomed into flowers of rage within them. For them, enduring one winter night was nothing compared to those who had perished in the cold sea.

In the end, they embodied the truth that human history is a struggle between the most ruthless and the most beautiful.

At Namtaeryeong, at 4 a.m., I saw the dawn. I saw victory coming our way. I saw the resurrection of those who died in the Sewol Ferry. From that moment on, breaking through the police barricade, crossing the Han River, pressing up to Yoon’s doorstep—these were no longer obstacles, just the collective work of the day ahead.

If humility and conscience had saved us from retreat that night, compassion and rage paved the way for us to continue the march. 

At dawn, I sensed that the era of the corrupt was ending, and that a new era—one for those who wished to be truly human—was just beginning. 

I sought to understand their political expression—both the lightness of its form and the gravity of its substance.

And now I wanted to farm with even greater dedication—so that I could feed them to their heart’s content.

Note: The march crossed Dongjak Bridge and reached Hangangjin Station, near the presidential residence in Yongsan. The rally culminated in front of the station, where participants sang triumphant songs, celebrating their victory in breaking through the police barricades. Image credit: kakaomap