[WHY] Banners clutter Seoul streets, but do they serve a purpose?

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[WHY] Banners clutter Seoul streets, but do they serve a purpose?

Banners are installed near the Gangnam Station in southern Seoul on April 24. The top banner reads "Nuclearize South Korea," and the bottom reads "Arrest Samsung's Lee Jae-yong, the crime ring leader." [SHIN HA-NEE]

Banners are installed near the Gangnam Station in southern Seoul on April 24. The top banner reads "Nuclearize South Korea," and the bottom reads "Arrest Samsung's Lee Jae-yong, the crime ring leader." [SHIN HA-NEE]

 
The silent verbal wars happening across Seoul are getting harder and harder to miss, with words written in bold, angular typefaces acting as the bullets.
 
“Nuclearize South Korea!” reads one massive banner hung by a minor extremist party at the center of a bustling crossroads in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on April 24.
 
“Arrest Lee Jae-yong, the crime ring leader,” reads another by an individual protester, seated right in front of the first one and facing the Samsung Electronics’ Seocho office building just across the street.
 
Foreigners visiting Seoul for the first time may be baffled by the overwhelming amount of political banners hung in protest around the city’s downtown. An increasingly large number of banners, be it political, personal or anti-corporate, are vying for attention from pedestrians in the streets, with the most aggressive messages and designs possible.
 
These banners are ever-present, especially in crowded regions near skyscrapers housing the country’s largest conglomerates.
 
Korea’s banner issue has been getting even worse as of late, with even politicians weighing in on the silent chaos.
 
Banners installed by political parties hang near the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, in April. [YONHAP]

Banners installed by political parties hang near the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, in April. [YONHAP]

 
An office worker in his 50s said he has noticed the growing number of political banners installed on the streets as of late.
 
“It sometimes makes me really angry when I see some of those banners spewing blatant lies to try to get their point across,” the office worker, whose office is based in Jongno District, central Seoul, said.
 
“I think all of these banners scattered everywhere should be gathered in a single place at least,” he added.
 
An eyesore at best, it may even lead to potentially dangerous accidents in the streets.
 
But removing them is not as easy as one might think.
 
Taking a closer look at the fabric manifestos fluttering everywhere may actually give insight into the power struggles happening in every nook and cranny of the country.
 
 
What’s with all these banners?



There are largely two reasons for the constant and growing presence of banners, particularly in Seoul.
 
First, protesters against big-name conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai have been holding regular rallies near the companies’ office buildings for months, if not years, complete with a permanent installation of banners and placards.
 
The front yards of major companies have long become a battlefield of their own, with conspicuous demonstration materials accusing owners of Korea’s prominent chaebol of alleged moral hazards and unfair practice in the workplace.
 
“Take action, Chung Eui-sun ,” urged one standing banner, which was fluttering in front of Hyundai Motor’s headquarters on April 24 in Seocho District, southern Seoul, calling out the carmaker’s executive chair for allegedly shunning a whistleblower in 2013.
 
Standing banners and a tent are installed by a protester in front of Hyundai Motor's headquarters building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on April 23. [SHIN HA-NEE]

Standing banners and a tent are installed by a protester in front of Hyundai Motor's headquarters building in Seocho District, southern Seoul, on April 23. [SHIN HA-NEE]

 
Similar banners and placards surrounding the building displayed other messages related to the issue, like “Seocho District Office and Seocho Police Station should stop being a pawn of the big company” and “Address the whistleblower issue.”
 
One protester, who has been holding rallies in front of Hyundai Motor’s headquarters for over a decade, is a former employee of an independent dealership that sold Kia cars. The protester is demanding Kia and Chung reinstate her.
 
Similar scenes have been playing out in front of KT for years.
 
Bright yellow banners hang everywhere near KT’s office building near Gwanghwamun Square in Jung District, central Seoul. They were put up by a protester who was fired by the company in 2010 for assaulting a superior.
 
Banners demanding KT’s “corrupted” management resign and calling for the lawmakers to enact a new law to “nationalize the telecom service” were besieging the entire building.
 
According to the Jongno District Office, there have been 235 complaints filed in regard to the protest banners near the KT building since 2021.
 
The busy crossroads in front of the Samsung Electronics office building near the Gangnam Station was also cluttered with banners condemning the company’s Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, with phrases such as “Arrest Lee who conspired to murder.”
 
Other major companies in Korea, such as Hanwha, Coupang and HiteJinro, have also lately experienced protesters rallying in front of their company buildings.
 
As for the second and more recent reason for the increasing amount of fluttering fabrics in the streets, banners these days have been appearing more frequently even far displaced from large companies’ office buildings, as political parties are scrambling to print out banner after banner whenever a new controversy arises.
 
The recent revision to the Outdoor Advertisement, Etc. Management Act last December has opened the door for political parties to post political advertisements without any restrictions on the size, location or quantity, so long as they do not stay up for over 15 days.
 
Before the revision, banners needed to be approved by the regulators in advance, and could only be put up in designated areas.
 
Now, it is easy to spot politicians silently bantering through their own banners along the sidewalks.
 
“The politicians revised the rules, arguing that political advertisements serve a public purpose, possibly thinking that it is an extension of the freedom of speech,” Hong Sung-gul, professor of administration at Kookmin University, said.
 
“The working-level government officials and people involved in the matter warned that [the revision] would cause a lot of problems, but they were ignored,” Hong said.
 
 
Are banners in front of company buildings illegal?
 
The short answer is no, not in principle.
 
Under the current demonstration act, protesters are allowed to install banners outside the designated areas with no restriction on the number of materials so long as they have informed the local authorities in advance that they will hold a protest in that certain place.
 
Essentially, since many protesters continue to alert the police regularly and hold demonstrations even sporadically, there is no effective rule to either prevent them from installing banners in the first place, or to make them take down their existing banners.
 
“The protester [at the KT office building] notified us of the rally in advance, and the protester was always at the scene when we visited the place,” said Kim Eun-kyung, an official at the Jongno district office.
 
“In that case, the banners are not subject to the regular rules of the outdoor advertisement act, which makes us unable to remove them.”
 
Protest banners are installed in front of KT's office building near Gwanghwamun Square in Jung District, central Seoul, accusing the telecom company of corruption. [SHIN HA-NEE]

Protest banners are installed in front of KT's office building near Gwanghwamun Square in Jung District, central Seoul, accusing the telecom company of corruption. [SHIN HA-NEE]

 
Kim went on to explained that the content written on the banners cannot serve as justification for their removal under the current outdoor advertisement law, regardless of whether the messages are true or not.
 
And even in the few cases where the court ordered protesters to stop putting up advertisements with false accusations, they often continued to rally in front of companies just after replacing the phrases on the banners with different ones.
 
 
Are the banners doing any harm?
 
Constant protests near company buildings, most of which are located in the most populated parts of the city, inevitably take a toll on the employees and residents nearby. The repetitive and offensive messages displayed everywhere create visual clutter, degrading the urban environment.
 
As protesters sometimes also play loud music or shout chants in the morning or the evening during their frequent rallies, noise pollution in the surrounding areas is also a problem.
 
A group of people protesting Samsung Electronics, for example, played funeral marches in front of the company’s Seocho office building for 10 months straight, starting in May last year.
 
The proliferation of political banners in the streets may also be a cause for accidents.
 
“People often run into the political advertisements that flood every crossroads as they walk down the street while looking at their smartphones,” Prof. Hong said, adding that the banners can also hinder drivers’ visibility in the street in some cases, which led to accidents.
 
Hong also emphasized that the crude language used in the banners may lead to political phobia.
 
Choi Ho-taek, a professor of public administration at Pai Chai University, also said that the overflow of vulgar language attacking the opposing parties can make political parties lose favor from the public.
 
“The banners are being used to attack the rivals over a slip of the tongue or policy failures, not to advertise the party’s political agenda as they were supposed to,” Choi said.
 
“It gives off the impression that politics is something foul.”
 
 
How are the authorities and companies responding?
 
As protest banners are often installed in the streets regardless of whether or not there is a rally actually happening, lawmaker Suh Bum-soo of the People Power Party proposed a revision in the outdoor advertisement act to allow the banners to be installed only when actual protests are taking place, in 2021.
 
However, the proposal is still pending in the National Assembly.
  
The banners are currently stuck in a blind spot, so to say, as it is difficult for the local authorities to monitor and remove all of them.
 
Conflicts between companies and protesters have been brought to court several times before, yet the court's decisions were often insufficient to stop demonstrators from holding rallies.
 
After a series of still-ongoing legal conflicts, Hyundai Motor is hanging up its own banners through its security contractor, saying “Create a healthy protest culture” and “Protect just protests and abide by the Assembly and Demonstration Act” in response to the constant protests.
 
Meanwhile, the visual clutter created by the excessive number of political banners has prompted the government, local authorities and lawmakers to come up with tighter rules.
 
The Ministry of the Interior and Safety on April 23 announced that stricter regulations will be implemented on banners' number, location and height.
 
"Even when new regulations are implemented, the head of the local government may be hesitant to execute the regulations against their own party," Prof. Choi pointed out, suggesting that "a deliberative body should be set up to regulate the content and the number of banners in advance."
 

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]
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