Anonymous posters raising government ire
A bulletin board at a school filled with student posters, called daejabo. Posters, especially anonymous ones, have recently seen their popularity revived, but the Ministry of Education disapproves of the trend. [JoongAng Ilbo]
Fearing getting in trouble, stu-dents are increasingly putting up their posters anonymously. But for those against daejabo, anonymous posters are even worse, lacking credibility and only churning up rumors, rather than serve any genuine freedom of ex-pression.
For Han, a 17-year-old student who did not want to give her full name, anonymity takes nothing away from the importance of daejabo.
“Even anonymous daejabo are an effective way of raising issues,” she said.
For many students, fear of being disciplined was cited as the main rea-son for writing anonymously.
Educational officials at one for-eign language high school say that they agree that students need to be able to express themselves, however, the anonymity of the daejabo is a problem.
“Anonymous posters can’t lead to additional conversation and because they are anonymous,” said the school official. “Lack of credibility is a prob-lem, too. If students want to talk with the school, the school can open the stu-dent council for proposals, and open a debate for the students who want to share their ideas realistically.”
Daejabo have a significant history in Korea, especially in the authoritar-ian era of the past. But after 1990, as the democratic movement declined, dae-jabo seemed to disappear.
Recently, however, daejabo have made a revival, as social problems such as the privatization of public companies and media control have come into question.
The big turning point for daejabo came in December, after a student at Korea University put up a simple sign asking “How are you doing?” The poster went viral, and soon university and high school students all over Ko-rea were putting up posters again.
However the Education Ministry has spoken out against the posters. It recently sent out guidelines “for creat-ing an academic atmosphere,” which requested schools manage the post-ers.
In an informal survey of about 100 students around Seoul, 64 percent said that the government was going too far in telling schools to take the anony-mous posters down.
Daejabo are a historical method that students have long used when that mainstream media does not ex-press their voice. Anonymous posters are not a perfect solution, however the education ministry has regrettably overreacted by telling schools to take them down altogether.
Awakening the social conscious-ness of students is important for devel-oping Korea’s future. So it is important for schools and the government to al-low students to continue to express their ideas, even if they do so anony- mously.
BY KIM HEE-JU, CHOI SEO-WON [estyle@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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