Affective Protest Symbols: Public Dissent in the Mass Commemoration of the Sewŏl Ferry’s Victims in Seoul

Symbols used in the Sewŏl protests in downtown Seoul from 2014 onwards proved effective in soliciting public engagement for three years. After the sinking of the Sewŏl ferry that took 304 lives, most of them high school students, objects such as yellow ribbons gained iconic status as signifiers of the demand to investigate the ferry’s sinking and honour the memory of the victims. New visual indexes that created and articulated this emotionally laden discourse formed a common visual language of grief and anger towards the Korean authorities. This ethnography-based article explores the development of the protest’s affective aestheticism, its main agents and semiotics, and how it produced affect, which had strong cultural, social and emotional impacts. In 2016, the Sewŏl movement became the core of larger protests against the ruling elites.