Among all the colorful protests in South Korea after the country plunged into political chaos following a brief martial law, the most picturesque was led by a dozen army veterans shaving their heads in front of the presidential office. Surrounded by a crowd demanding the president's removal, several elderly uniformed men sat on stools and bowed their heads for makeshift barbers to shave them.
Local journalists present on that chilly Friday in Seoul did not pay much attention to the veterans' performance. Quite the opposite of foreign journalists dispatched to cover the attempted self-coup in a major democracy in Asia.
Why do these men shave their heads to protest against President Yoon Suk Yeol? "It is common in Korea. I recently covered a protest by dog meat industry entrepreneurs who shaved their heads when the sale of this meat was banned. On another occasion, I was at a demonstration where hundreds of women shaved their heads to protest the increase in spy cameras that perverts were placing in women's restrooms," explained a photojournalist from the public broadcaster Yonhap.
Searching through the archives, this practice dates back to darker times when South Korea was under the yoke of several military dictatorships. Back then, dissidents began cutting their hair as a symbol of resistance. The act itself, say South Koreans, has its roots in Confucian tradition, although many of those now protesting with clippers in hand are Christians, the majority religion in this country.
In 2015, dozens of relatives of the 300 people who died in a shipwreck the previous year shaved their heads to demand that the government conduct a more thorough investigation of the incident. In 2016, around 900 people from the Seongju region did the same in protest against a missile defense system that the United States was planning to install there after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test. The protesters argued that this defensive armament made them targets of the Kim Jong-un regime.
In 2019, the opposition leader shaved his head in front of his followers in protest against the appointment of a new Justice Minister tainted by corruption cases. In 2021, a group of students protested in the same way against Japan's plan to release radioactive water stored in tanks at the Fukushima plant into the sea.
In 2022, four officers repeated the scene in front of the National Police Agency because the Ministry of the Interior was planning to create a new police oversight office considered a political tool to control the force. Shortly after, hundreds of entrepreneurs simultaneously cut their hair to protest against the authorities' decision to maintain pandemic restrictions.
Kim, one of the army veterans who shaved in front of the presidential office, continues to participate daily in mass gatherings in Seoul. The roar of the street will not cease until the leader of the failed self-coup, cornered by an alleged treason offense under investigation, steps down from leading the fourth largest Asian economy.