Decision-making processes for public memorials in Seoul: How well do they reflect and contribute to South Korea’s democracy?

Abstract

This paper examines public planning processes for a very specific element of the urban environment: memorials that are placed within the public realm. It explores how the decision-making processes for these installations shape and approve their themes, forms, and placements, through interviews with the key protagonists of a series of public memorial projects that have been created in Seoul over the past 15 years. It focuses on evaluating if and how these decision-making processes are democratic.

Keywords

Planning decision-making democracy memorials South Korea

Introduction

The aggregate commemorative landscape of a capital city such as Seoul makes a prominent contribution to a nation’s understanding of its history, identity, and values (Gordon, 2006; Vale, 2008). Seoul’s commemorative landscape is dynamic, continuously being transformed by national, city, and local governments, and by civic groups and individual citizens, who all seek to reshape collective identity and memory (Jager, 2003; Kal, 2011; Podoler, 2011). While much research into memorials and other forms of spatial commemoration focuses on discourse analysis of how their visual symbolism communicates history and contemporary social values, this article focuses instead on the social values that are expressed, performed, and developed within the processes that have led to memorials’ erection. The article examines decision-making processes about the subject matter, location, and design of a range of public memorials erected in Seoul over the past 15 years, to identify how these processes contribute to the expression, perception, debate, and management of South Korea’s collective identity and memory, and in particular, to its democracy.

This article seeks to extend existing Western-centric international scholarship on memorials and collective memory, to identify what decision-making processes for public memorials in Seoul can contribute to current research into the politics of urban heritage in newly democratic national contexts in East Asia, and in particular, into how planning and governance approaches for heritage in themselves enable the transformation of collective identity, by increasing social inclusion and accepting contestation (Chung, 2011; Esposito and Fauveaud, 2019). The article shares Chung’s (2011: 975–76) focus on governance, as “the idea of power sharing in decision making,” and on “people’s increasing interest in … reconstruct[ing] a new identity from the bottom up.” This research into decision-making for public memorials provides an opportunity to explore the contribution that urban planning processes can make to “bottom-up” democratic practices. Seoul can provide unique and valuable answers to these questions because South Korea is ranked the most democratic nation in Asia (EIU, 2019). Seoul’s dense, urban, democratic context, and the complexities of South Korea’s political history over recent decades provide a particularly rich and dynamic context for decision-making about public commemoration (Pai and Tangherlini, 1998).

Existing research on Seoul’s memorials has typically analyzed a small number of memorials that illustrate one key patriotic theme, such as the independence struggle against the Japanese colonialists, or the Korean War (Bae, 2002; Jager, 2003; Podoler, 2011). It also often concentrates on major commemorative buildings, rather than smaller public artworks, which a wider range of sponsors can muster the political and economic resources to erect. The research reported here broadens the study of public memorials in Seoul, to include memorials to civic leaders, civilian victims of tragic events, memorials to foreign persons, and “unofficial” memorials erected by nongovernment groups, which are of growing interest for researchers in other democratic nations (Doss, 2010; Margry and Sanchez-Carretero, 2011).

Background

To analyze a potential “democratic turn” in decision-making practices for public memorials requires drawing together diverse conceptual threads. This includes recent “future-oriented” memorial practices that have pursued political aims of transitional justice and reconciliation in postcolonial and post-dictatorship contexts (Buckley-Zistel and Schaefer, 2014; Gutman et al., 2010; Walkowitz and Knauer, 2004). It also embraces the principle of making commemorative outcomes more inclusive, in terms of which people, events, and values they represent (Doss, 2010).

While some research has investigated public engagement in heritage decisions (Chung, 2011), there has been little research worldwide specifically examining public participation in the decision-making processes for newly proposed memorials. What research exists largely focuses on administrative frameworks and on negotiations among empowered bureaucrats, experts, and wealthy patrons; a decision-making culture of authorization rather than negotiation (Burling, 2005). Benton-Short (2006) and Savage (2009) have shown that the National Mall in Washington, which is presented as an exemplary democratic space in terms of both symbolism and use, has lacked broad public input to decision-making about its memorials. Washington’s more controversial and partisan memorials are relegated to less-prominent locations. Existing research into decision-making for public memorials often highlights differences of opinion and conflicts (Bogart, 2006; McLeod, 1989; Young, 1994), but little attention has been given to if and how broad public views are brought into these decisions and outcomes. This is problematic, given that public memorials shape the symbolism of the urban public realm for many decades, and ostensibly communicate collective values. Much recent work has focus on the democratization of memorial making through unofficial, informal projects that evade regulatory processes altogether (Margry and Sanchez-Carretero, 2011; Santino, 2006). These provide limited insight into how formal memorial decision-making can be inclusive, transparent, and fair.

Rose-Redwood et al. (2010) note that critical analysis of the democraticness and justice of commemorative place-naming requires examining the procedures and performances that produce them, and that this necessitates an ethnographic methodology. Alderman and Inwood (2013) observe how the procedural aspects of decision-making about commemorative place names shape both participation in these processes (procedural justice) and the resultant geographical prominence and distribution of these commemorative places (distributive justice). Blair and Michel’s (2007) study of the 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington similarly identified three ways that the medium of public memorials might contribute to a more inclusive and democratic society: by engaging people in the processes of memorial planning and procurement; by broadening the range of subjects commemorated; and also through physically open memorial settings and designs that allow a broad public to engage with the memorial and with other visitors. Subsequent examination of memorial decision-making processes in several democratic capital cities has confirmed that government planners, civic actors, and policy documents consciously treat the themes, decision-making processes, and locations of public memorials as opportunities to both represent and enact the democraticness of a nation (Stevens, 2016; Stevens and Franck, 2015). Research into inclusive memorial practices in Germany since the 1980s has emphasized the importance of the highly political processes of memorial design, decision-making, and management as opportunities for understanding and improving collective memory and social cohesion (Young, 1994). A recent exploration of future memorial practice directions led by two US government agencies identified “creat(ing) memorials with the public as well as for the public” as one of the eight key challenges (NPS et al., 2016). This article seeks to contribute to these emerging research directions by examining how decision-making for public memorials might enable specific ways of expressing, experiencing, and developing a more inclusive and democratic society.

This study explores the potentially democratic aspects of the memorial development process outlined above in relation to a general definition of liberal democracy that encompasses the following political principles: civilized contestation between a plurality of different viewpoints; fair and accountable processes; equality of civil rights and liberties among all groups; and the existence of a civil society outside government (Coppedge et al., 2011; Schmitter and Karl, 1991). This is linked to a broader conception of a “democratized” civil society, as one that promotes these democratic values and forms of social engagement more widely throughout civil society and the public sphere (Giddens, 1998; Young, 2000).

The most numerous, varied, and prominent memorials representing collective identity and values are to be found in large capital cities of wealthy nations (Vale, 2008). Seoul is an optimal setting for examining how democratic the decision-making processes for new memorials are. It is one of the world’s 10 largest national capitals by population, and has the fourth largest gross domestic product (GDP) of any urban area. There is thus ample potential audience and budget for expressing collective values through memorials. Although South Korea only democratized in 1987, it is now rated Asia’s most democratic nation (EIU, 2019). In this context, Seoul has been the site of numerous recent requests from civil society for the erection of memorials that reflect South Korea’s heritage, identity, and values.

A growing civil society in South Korea since 1987, led by labor, students, and religious groups, has helped to advance democratic values, empower citizens, build public trust, and impact public policy (Kim, 2011). Recent analysis of the ongoing development of South Korea’s democracy (Park et al., 2018) highlights its significant progress with free and fair elections and civil liberties. But procedural problems persist, in terms of full and equal participation, and equal treatment of women and minorities. This article's analysis also emphasizes the need for South Korea’s democracy to expand beyond elections and institutional forms to become a modus vivendi, a way of living, which extends to broad sociocultural awakening and empowerment. South Korea’s population is extremely homogenous, being 98% ethnically Korean. Korea’s Confucian heritage favors consensus, stability, and reverence for authority, and there is lingering authoritarianism, nepotism, and bureaucracy within South Korea’s public sector (Kim, 2011; Neher, 1994; Seong, 2000). Kim (2011) emphasizes South Korea’s need to look beyond fair and democratic outcomes of social policy, to study how civic engagement in government decision-making processes can contribute to its democracy. More democratic decision-making increases public trust in government, accountability, and legitimacy, and builds the capacity of civil society (Seong, 2000). South Korean democracy greatly improved in its participatory and deliberative dimensions after 1987, but it still lags behind most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of the power of elected local governments, civil society participation, having an engaged society with a range of consultation, and political decisions being justified in terms of the public good (Kim, 2016).

Methodology

This study seeks to advance knowledge about democratic civic engagement in South Korea through a focus on how democratic values and processes have been enacted and developed in the decision-making for a range of memorials erected in Seoul over the past 15 years. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key decision-makers from various government agencies and civil society groups responsible for the sponsorship, development, regulation, and management of individual memorials, and for managing their formal approval processes. Recently erected memorials offered the best opportunities to access respondents who remain involved in their respective organizations and who remember the details of the decision-making processes.

The analysis is based primarily on nine expert interviews. Five interviews were with representatives of civil–society organizations that have been formed to promote and sponsor four civic-themed memorials in Seoul’s public realm since 2005: statues of garment worker Chun Tae-il (2005), the “Comfort Women” (2011), and independence leader “Dosan” (Ahn Chang-Ho) (2013), and the 18 memorials constituting the “Path to Democracy” on the campus of Seoul National University (SNU) (2009). Two interviews were with local government planners who led civic engagement processes, for a memorial to American William Shaw in Eunpyeong-gu District (2010) and for an ongoing project in Jung-gu District to redevelop Seosomun Park, a site where Korea’s Joseon Dynasty executed religious martyrs in the 19th century. These interviewees also helped to explain the general decision-making process used for memorial proposals brought to the local government by external sponsors.

The final two interviewees were from organizations with broader knowledge and influence over the process of memorializing Seoul’s democratic heritage: the directors of the policy division of the Seoul Metropolitan Government Parks Department, and of the Korea Democracy Foundation (KDF), a QUANGO devoted to “developing democracy” by conducting research and organizing commemorative discussions, exhibitions, and sites. Among the many other memorials erected in Seoul since 2005 are 65 further memorials to the 1980s democracy movement, mostly located within other university campuses (KDF, n.d.); numerous memorials to patriotic and civic themes erected by government, the military, or private companies (Podoler, 2011); and several memorials donated by international sponsors (Stevens and Sumartojo, 2019). These projects have had little role in making public decision-making processes for memorials in Seoul more democratic.

The semi-structured interviews explored the three key themes identified in earlier research about the democraticness of public memorial decision-making processes and outcomes (Blair and Michel, 2007; Stevens and Sumartojo, 2015):

what memorial subjects have gained approval, and why

the democraticness of the formal and informal decision-making processes for new memorials’ subjects, designs and locations, and whether different decision-making channels favor different outcomes

decisions about the locations where a memorial will stand, which influence how the public will engage with it, including decisions about a memorial’s spatial, thematic, and chronological relationships to existing memorials, and how the memorial’s location influenced the other decision-making processes and forums that are employed.

The analysis that follows is organized around these three main themes. The interviews were supplemented by analysis of policy documents and project documentation on individual memorial projects.

How democratic and inclusive are commemorative themes?

Three interviewees from different branches of local government all confirmed that in Seoul, anyone can, technically, propose a memorial for a public place, and many new memorial proposals come from private and civic organizations outside government.

The director of the KDF noted that recent monuments in South Korea have addressed four main social themes: the Donghak peasant movement, the independence movement, the Korean War, and the democracy movement. These differ “in terms of the historical background, the subject who installs the monument, their goals, and parties that manage budgets for building and maintaining the monument” (Yang, 2016). These four key commemorative themes are each sustained by related nongovernment organizations and national government agencies. The KDF has a shorter history, less social influence, and less resources than the other three main organizations, and so it has only been able to carry out research about democratic movements, but not install and maintain any democracy movement memorials itself. While early government-sponsored collective commemoration of the democracy movement focused on the site of a notorious massacre in the regional capital Gwangju (Yea, 2002), many small, privately sponsored memorials to democracy movement events and individuals have been erected in Seoul by those individuals’ families, friends, and colleagues (Cho, 2016; Yang, 2016).

Beyond commemoration of specific historical events that led to South Korea becoming a democratic country, the themes of recent memorials in Seoul have also started to become more democratic in terms of broadening the scope of the events and actors they remember. The competition-winning redevelopment plan for Seosomun Park, which had originally only focused on commemorating the past execution of Catholic Martyrs, illustrates a growing sensitivity to inclusiveness in commemorated subject matter:

After the result of the competition came out, we got complaints from other religious groups … many people were persecuted there in the late Joseon period [the Nineteenth Century]. It was obvious that most of those who got killed were Catholics, but at the same time there were also non-Catholics who died there. Donghak is an indigenous religion and association. People who belonged to that group claimed their people had been persecuted at that place back then, too … now that we know they are also relevant, we are trying to reflect their opinions as much as we can … Fortunately, the selected design was not made one hundred percent from the perspective of the Catholic Church … the design considered not only the Church, but also the [wider] public. Thanks to that, it has been relatively easy for us to reflect what’s been newly found within the initial plan. (Jung-gu, 2016)

In this case, publicity around the constrained theme of the original commemorative proposal, which had been initiated by the Catholic Church, stimulated the engagement of other civic groups who shared the perspective of persecution.

Two other key recent memorials that show the broadening of commemorative themes are those to Chun Tae-il and the Comfort Women. With the Chun Tae-il memorial proposal,

members of the [city] cultural committee had been opposed initially. They were quite conservative. [But] there was huge public support for the project … No one stood against our project … Generally public sentiment toward martyr Chun is favorable … Conservatives [also] make little criticism of martyr Chun … Politicians, intellectuals, and workers were all affected by his death. (Park, 2016)

The Korea Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (hereafter KCW) similarly suggested that “there was a general consensus … among the public, that the issue of the comfort women was one of those problems that should be solved soon.” They argued that the 2011 Comfort Women memorial has helped democratize memory and identity by broadening popular perceptions of what topics can be memorialized in South Korea:

The usual meaning of the monument in Korea – that of Admiral Lee, King Sejong … or even [dictator] Park Chung-hee – is different from ours. We think our statue has even changed the general meaning of such monuments. So the [Comfort Women statue] is a materialized form of aspiration for solving this problem. It’s deconstructing the conventional meaning of the monument in Korea. (KCW, 2016)

These examples highlight that the democraticization of commemorative subject matter in Seoul has initially focused on individuals who were oppositional within their own historical context (respectively, to the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, and to the current Japanese Government’s inadequate acknowledgment of mistreatment during the occupation), but who had, by the 2000s, been broadly accepted by mainstream South Korean society. These memorial themes democratize memory in South Korea not just because they remember a wider diversity of individuals and events within society, but because they express the importance of individual and collective protest against the oppressive use of power. These memorials all promote transparency, democratic processes of contestation, and restitutive justice. Because South Korea is a young democracy, these themes are important to the many individuals within its civil society organizations who have personally been involved in the nation’s recent struggles for democracy and justice. Public commemoration of the 1980s democracy movement itself has, however, been relatively slow in beginning and had less broad political support, partly because it involves events where many living Koreans still have personal memories and opposing viewpoints:

It’s really difficult to form a social consensus. Regarding democratic movements, our society has more or less reached a consensus on the 4.19 [1960] Revolution, the 5.18 [1980] Gwangju Uprising and the 1987 ‘June Struggle’. In many cases, people feel proud of those events, and they build monuments to commemorate the past. However, public sentiment toward [other democracy-movement] events is often extremely hostile … It’s never easy to reach an agreement, and that’s why the number [of democracy memorials in public spaces] is not that big. (Yang, 2016)

Because of their thematic focus on contestations of authority, the Chun Tae-il, Comfort Women and democracy movement memorials all symbolically frame Seoul’s public realm as a forum for democratic debate between competing actors. This is different to larger, government-led commemorative projects like the 2012 National Museum of Korean Contemporary History, which seek to advance historical reconciliation between conservative and progressive perspectives within South Korean society (Podoler, 2017).

Two sponsors noted a second, different way that democracy is also represented in their memorials, through the specific design approaches that have been used. The sponsor of SNU’s “Path to Democracy” explains a recommendation from the designers:

Regarding the [memorial’s] size, I suggested to build it in a larger scale than what had been initially suggested, and [the professor in charge of design] said that democratization starts from the bottom. He continued to argue that if I expect people to pay attention to it, building a monument at a small scale is actually the right way …. these monuments are not to advertise the movement to the wider public, but rather symbolize the fact that ordinary people had fought for democracy … The democratic movement is about ordinary people … in the lower strata of society. These memorials should not be tourist attractions. Instead, by building memorials at a small scale, visitors would guess the reason why they are so small … we believe that is meaningful. (Cho, 2016)

With the Comfort Women statue, discussions within the local government approval process also made the sponsors rethink their memorial’s design, in terms of its performative aspects:

to get approval … we met the head of Jongno-gu District office. It was his idea to set a chair next to the [seated] statue, so that people can sit there, too. He majored in architecture … This chair means ‘togetherness,’ in other words, ‘solidarity.’ It suggests people to sit there, and hold hands with the statue of the girl. (KCW, 2016)

2. Decision-making processes for memorials in Seoul

This section moves beyond the distributive justice of memorial themes to examine the procedural aspects of participation in memorial decision-making. The Heung Sa Dahn Foundation’s experience erecting a memorial statue of its founder, Dosan, in 2013 adjacent to the sidewalk outside their offices indicates that Seoul’s formal memorial approval processes are similar to those in many other democratic countries (Stevens and Franck, 2015; Stevens and Sumartojo, 2015). The Foundation formally applied to the district office; at an ensuing in-camera question-and-answer session, they explained the significance of the memorial’s subject, design, and proposed location. The design was evaluated on functional and aesthetic grounds by the metropolitan government’s “Monument Deliberative Committee … composed of historians and sculptors and artists” and by “different administrative bodies [including] the construction and maintenance division and the cultural project team in Jongno-gu District office, and the culture and design division in the [metropolitan] government” (Moon, 2016). The practical steps within these approval and development processes are essentially the same whether a memorial is erected within a democratic or autocratic state. The two key differences revolve around who promotes and supports such proposals, and how decisions are made about them. The following analysis thus focuses on how the decision-making for recent memorials in Seoul has been transformed in these terms by South Korea’s democratization since 1987.

How sponsor groups engage other actors with their memorial proposals

Interviews with civil–society groups who sponsored memorials to diverse themes illustrated various ways they developed channels to cultivate wider discussion, inclusiveness, and support around these proposals. This illustrates the important role of civil society organizations in developing South Korea’s democracy, and specifically in developing its commemoration, by developing forums where people can engage, discuss, and participate. The Park Jong-cheol Memorial Foundation, commemorating a murdered student democracy activist, sought to broaden their commemorative subject to incorporate a wider support base:

since martyr Park Jong-cheol was the iconic figure, we were worried that others might not be able to set up their own monuments once we built one for Park. So we planned to build a single monument to commemorate all those martyrs together. They numbered almost twenty. We delayed the project to embrace all groups of commemorators. (PJMF 2016)

Two sponsor groups emphasized the importance of organizing broad public financial support for memorial projects, which reflects the memorials’ democratic credentials (KCW 2016). For the Chun Tae-il Foundation,

The donation event was more like a national movement. From renowned political figures such as [former progressive presidents] Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun, and Kim Young-sam to ordinary citizens, people contributed [sponsorship] plaques. There are more than two thousand of them. The monument was established thanks to citizens’ active participation. (Park, 2016)

These plaques also recognize donations from many labor unions, companies, and civic organizations, and Seoul’s conservative then-mayor, Lee Myung-bak. The progressive professors who led the “Path to Democracy” on the SNU campus emphasized the necessity of winning over the university leadership to the project. They cultivated the university president’s support by in turn supporting him against his conservative opponents, who had associated him with the pro-Japanese sentiments of his historian grandfather (Cho, 2016). Enhancing the democraticness of South Korea’s commemoration thus involves finding approaches that overcome conflict.

Sponsor groups had diverse perspectives on who the constituencies for their memorials were, how these publics could be engaged in supporting or shaping the memorials, and how to address any concerns or opposition. The Chun Tae-il Foundation promoted their project widely through media coverage (Park, 2016). The KCW’s secretary-general argued that providing broad channels for people to express opinions about the Comfort Women memorial proposal would not have helped its development:

Once you have that kind of channel in the Korean context, too often the project goes in a far different direction. So instead, we promoted our plan to the general public: “We are going to build the statue that looks like A at the place B” … We didn’t hold hearings or such events just to get their opinions. (KCW, 2016)

By contrast, with the Path to Democracy, the project committee had to engage extensively with many specific stakeholders:

I had to get permission to relocate each one of those monuments, either from the martyrs’ friends or from their families. Those people … argued back at us, saying “we’ve built the monument in a place that we have a special association with. Why are you trying to move it?” … We contacted every single bereaved family and tried to convince them … We finally persuaded the families, but it took quite a long time. (Cho, 2016)

Engaging a broad public in decision-making about memorials in Seoul has thus involved sponsors soliciting support for already formulated proposals – to seek harmony – but avoiding conflicting views. Cho’s comments highlight that the memorials discussed in this paper are ones which succeeded in being erected, because they are projects that had little opposition. Sponsors of both the Chun Tae-il and Comfort Women memorials emphasized the broad social consensus and lack of criticism within South Korea around their projects’ themes. The only opposition to the Comfort Women memorial was political pressure from outside Korea:

once our project went public, there was significant pressure from the Japanese government. There are clauses in the 12.28 agreement [from 2015] between the Korean and Japanese governments which state that efforts will be made to abolish the statue. (KCW, 2016)

The Path to Democracy had to combat internal opposition, from “conservative professors [who] complained that I’m trying to turn the campus into a graveyard” (Cho, 2016). The KDF’s director suggested there has also been some internal resistance from democracy-minded actors to public memorials that commemorate the history of democratic struggle in South Korea:

With the growth of the democratic movement … while the [external political] situation has dramatically changed, … we still can’t set up monuments outside the universities … because of disagreements over priorities. Within the democratic movement, some argue … that it’s time to fight, not to commemorate, and it’s inappropriate to build monuments. (Yang, 2016)

This highlights that democracy necessarily recognizes conflicting viewpoints and conflicting priorities for allocating limited resources. It also suggests that perhaps democracy prioritizes social action over representation, and that democratic South Korea places less emphasis on creating large, expensive, didactic symbols than the authoritarian regimes that preceded it.

How are memorial proposals actually regulated in practice?

Under the dictatorships of Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan between 1948 and 1988, public memorials were mostly government-led, and focused on struggles for national independence from the Japanese and against North Korea (Chin, 2006). The earliest memorial in Seoul to South Korea’s democratic movement, the 4.19 Monument to the student-led revolution that toppled Rhee in 1960, was erected on SNU’s campus in 1961. The actual starting point of the 4.19 revolution in the city center was only first marked with a plaque in 2010. As the KDF’s Director noted, “Not a single [civic] monument was set up [in public] during the era of dictatorship. Police or military forces were brought in to eliminate [any such] monuments” (Yang, 2016).

Early public memorials thus avoided applying for government approvals which would inevitably be denied. Even today, government officers involved in regulating and managing public memorial development in Seoul appear to tend toward preventing rather than encouraging and facilitating citizen-initiated commemorative projects. This opposition is not overtly ideological, but is argued on four pragmatic grounds. The first two reasons are memorials’ lack of relevance and negative impacts for their proposed locations. To be approved, “the monument has to have some sort of connection to the place where it is planned to be installed,” but “most of those locations are private properties” (Jung-gu, 2016).

Memorials are therefore usually proposed for parks, although park managers do not typically see memorials as adding amenity to the parks:

many organizations want to set up their own monuments inside the park, for reasons we don’t understand. But from our point of view, as a division in charge of maintenance of parks and squares, there should be appropriate reasons for setting up the monument inside a public area. If not, then we can’t approve the proposal. (Eunpyeong-gu, 2016)

Furthermore,

committee members scrutinize how much the monument is related to the local community … not that many people [proposed for commemoration] have a connection with Seoul. Even when you manage to find the connection between the figure and the area … the monument does not usually fit with its [proposed] surroundings. That’s why proposals are hardly ever accepted. (Choi, 2016)

The Seoul Metropolitan Government parks office noted a third reason memorials are often rejected, on grounds of design quality: “Applicants are advised to procure a high-quality design through a public competition … but they usually don’t because they have already had a design developed by someone they know.” Such designs are often “below average” (Choi, 2016). Competitions and design standards significantly increase costs, and so the democratization of public memory is inhibited by inequalities in resources.

Fourthly, officers from Eunpyeong-gu District explained that memorials proposed by specific civic interest groups might not succeed due to opposition from other civic groups. Planners from both Eunpyeong-gu and Jung-gu Districts emphasized that they were committed to actively pursuing community inclusiveness and participation around memorial proposals, particularly within the context of redeveloping local public parks. Eunpyeong-gu (2016) noted that while memorials in their district reflected social consensus, other districts had cases of conflict, where decision-making processes for memorials were not able to democratically address genuine differences within public opinion:

A certain religious group had set up a monument. It was huge, and that was confronted with a backlash from other religious organizations. Another case is where descendants of independence patriots stood against the proposal to build a monument commemorating Imperial Japanese sympathizers during the colonial era.

Civic actors who have succeeded in erecting memorials all noted that they already had good communication and trust with local government and were well-advised on how to apply (KCW, 2016; Moon, 2016; Park, 2016). But this is a small, perhaps unrepresentative sample. Some local government officials themselves doubted whether Seoul’s memorial decision-making processes are transparent and impartial:

My personal opinion is … government agencies say that cultural contents are important, and furthermore express their pride in preserving … historical and cultural significance. However, when it comes to the [memorial] review process, government reviewers are not enthusiastic about doing these projects. They say you can install a monument based on such-and-such regulations, but in fact those regulations … pretty much prevent installations, so therein arise many problems. (Jung-gu, 2016)

Lightly regulated memorials

This analysis of the decision-making processes for memorials in Seoul began by describing a relatively unproblematic case of a small memorial statue to a popular national independence hero, Dosan, proposed for a discreet street-edge location within a precinct that already contained several other recent memorials. I noted the increasing number of public memorials sponsored by civic groups since South Korea’s democratization in the early 1990s, and queried how these processes were different in a democracy compared to a dictatorship. The answer, illustrated by the three other civic-led memorial examples examined here, is that in the democratic context of contemporary Seoul, civic actors have a considerable latitude for action vis-à-vis the formal public regulatory processes for memorials. There is no clear single path to achieve democratic expression of history.

The Path to Democracy at SNU best illustrates a freedom of action won through democratic activism, rather than having been bestowed by a governing body. This project consolidates a range of memorials, including one that already stood during South Korea’s dictatorships: the 4.19 memorial, commemorating the student protesters who precipitated Syngman Rhee’s downfall in 1960. This had been erected on SNU’s original downtown campus in 1961, during a brief year of democratic government, and relocated to the new suburban campus in the 1970s. In terms of process, the other 17 memorials on SNU’s Path to Democracy, all erected after 1987, illustrate grassroots, unsanctioned, oppositional activism which is in keeping with those memorials’ oppositional subjects. The process of erecting these memorials reflects democratic freedom of expression and action. The lead organizer of the 1997 memorial to murdered student democracy activist Park Jong-cheol noted:

At that time, building a memorial within the campus did not require paperwork … I met with the university administrators … [but] there was no reason for getting an approval in paper form … We are not an organization that asks for a university’s approval … [bypassing the university’s approval] was considered natural at that time … It wasn’t something that the university had the right to decide. How dare the university ‘permit’ our plan when we say that we are going to build a monument with students?! It has no say in the matter … we asked them for cooperation. It wasn’t permission, but cooperation. (PJMF, 2016)

These memorials arose within the relatively liberal and tolerant context of SNU’s internationally engaged university community.

A second way that civil–society-led memorial initiatives obtained freedom from constraint was when relatively progressive local government agencies actively assisted memorials to certain subjects to overcome conservatism, bureaucracy, and technical regulatory processes elsewhere within government. This was illustrated by the memorials to Chun Tae-il and the Comfort Women:

[Seoul’s] Department of Culture helped us to get through the review process smoothly. The proposal had to go through the review session hosted by the [Monument Deliberative] Committee, where the members were very conservative. The theme of our project was not to their taste. It could have taken us a long time and much effort. The Department of Culture helped us to overcome such difficulties. (Park, 2016)

There’s a Division of Women’s Policy in every district office. Comfort women issues are handled by that division. So, we asked for their help … to get through the review process. (KCW, 2016)

Thirdly, the Comfort Women memorial also shows how government enabled a proposal to circumvent potential constraints on commemorative expression on grounds of international diplomacy. In 2010, during the memorial’s planning, South Korea’s government still disagreed with Japan’s about appropriate acknowledgment and reparations for the mistreatment of the comfort women. The government’s decision-making process was managed so that nongovernment actors could commemorate this controversial topic in a public setting:

The Korean government gave us tacit approval for setting up the statue … Tacit approval is to say that they agreed, while providing no legal protection at all. If someone tries to get rid of the memorial, we can’t stop them doing that. (KCW, 2016)

The tacit approval provided the memorial’s sponsors with a latitude to act that would not have been available if the government had been required to formally approve the proposal, because diplomatic considerations would have required them to refuse the application.

The broad answer to the question of how democratic decision-making in South Korea has given more freedom to civil–society memorial proponents in Seoul is that some civil–society proposals have been able to avoid regulations. This implies that such regulations are more bureaucratic than necessary, and can be circumvented through government discretion. Various levels of government can choose to either tolerate nonconforming proposals, or actively support proposals for commemorative subjects that have broad social support (KCW 2016). Social consensus about desirable commemorative outcomes trumps transparent and fair processes. Several successful memorial proposals discussed here also indicate the value of obtaining high-level political backing. The Chun Tae-il memorial’s sponsors obtained bipartisan support from several past presidents and the mayor. The Path to Democracy cultivated support from the university president. I suggest this reflects the continued importance in a democratic Korea of reverence for authority, personal contacts, and consensus; values which are perhaps at odds with building public trust in open, accountable, democratic decision-making processes that can build broad-based civic capacity (Seong, 2000). The third route to more democratic commemoration, illustrated by the SNU campus, is that planners are unable to fully regulate popular expressions of memory on some public open spaces. This theme is explored further below.

Deciding on memorial locations

The memorials discussed by our interviewees were erected in three types of locations. Statues commemorating Chun Tae-il, the Comfort Women, and Dosan all stood on busy inner-city sidewalks. Memorials to William Shaw and religious martyrs guillotined during the Joseon Dynasty were both incorporated within comprehensive redevelopment plans for neighborhood parks. The 18 memorials on the “Path to Democracy” were located within SNU’s campus, mostly in garden beds next to pathways.

Choosing appropriate sites

Seoul’s Monument Deliberative Committee and its decision-making role within the local government approval process presuppose that memorials are primarily erected in parks. The Parks divisions of the metropolitan and district governments refer proposals to this Committee. The statues of Chun Tae-il and the Comfort Women were not reviewed by this Committee, because these proposals were handled by their districts’ Roads divisions. Dosan’s statue was erected on a broad landscaped strip next to a road; it did undergo Committee review.

Most memorial applicants propose placing memorials into parks, but local government does not favor this. They argue this on two democratic grounds, both of which highlight how competing claims for space and for public attention lead to the tragedy of the commons:

The park is for everyone. It’s a public place that citizens use freely … Once we give permission to a certain monument project, others who want to build a monument in the park would demand the same. There are many organizations out there, so it would be quite messy. (Eunpyeong-gu 2016)

Site specificity is very important for memorials led by civil society organizations and families, who in many cases also have strong personal links to the location, and whose current activities there also have strong links to the commemorated subject. These memorials’ generally modest scale makes it relatively easy to accommodate them at the locations where events actually happened. Additionally, the memorial “has to have relevance to the community where it is located. You can’t just build wherever you want.” (Yang, 2016). Furthermore, these locations often offered the memorials good public visibility. Combinations of these arguments about site choices were presented by most interviewees:

We have chosen [the location] because … the Pyeonghwa Market is where martyr Chun had worked before he burnt himself to death. Another reason was the accessibility. By installing the monument in an outdoor area, it was more likely for many ordinary citizens to see it and commemorate martyr Chun … there are many pedestrians passing by across the [Cheonggyecheon River] bridge. The place is also right next to the site of martyr Chun’s death. (Park, 2016)

We had been thinking what could be done in that specific place, the place where we had held demonstrations every Wednesday for twenty years. So the place had been decided before making other decisions [about] what we were going to do in that place … We decided to build the monument to celebrate our legacy associated with that particular space … The girl [statue] is staring at the Japanese Embassy [across the street]. (KCW, 2016)

These sponsor comments highlight that making memorial decision-making in Seoul democratic involves considering the distributive justice of memorials’ geographical site-specificity, prominence, and distribution (Alderman and Inwood, 2013). The comments from Eunpyeong-gu’s planners highlight that local government weighs this against another form of distributive justice, in terms of the openness and amenity of public spaces. Paralleling Benton-Short’s (2006) critique of Washington’s National Mall, Seoul appears to lack broad public input to these trade-offs. But in Seoul, unlike Washington, memorials do not dominate public space. Conversely, in Seoul, ambitions to make memorials prominent and site specific are significantly hampered by the city’s intensive and rapid development and redevelopment, property–market pressures, and the scarcity of public open space:

Korean society has undergone extremely dynamic changes through its ‘compressed development’. That’s why it’s really hard to find and to secure the actual site of events. [With] the democratic movement … there are not many symbolic sites left … most of the [relevant] places are simply not accessible. Take Namsan [Mountain], for example. We are very skeptical about the possibility to access the place where the National Security Agency was once located, where the UNESCO youth hostel is now located. Or … where the national museum of contemporary art is, which was once used by the military as a defense security office. I’m not at all sure whether we can claim a right to use those sites … there’s not enough land available in Seoul. (Yang, 2016)

Similarly, the Chun Tae-il Foundation decided to erect their memorial in the public right-of-way on a bridge, because “inside the Pyeonghwa market was the private property of merchants, so it was hard for us to secure space for the monument there” (Park, 2016).

Relocating memorials

The issues about site specificity outlined above have also shaped decisions to relocate numerous existing memorials, including the 1956 stele in Eunpyeong-gu District dedicated to the Korean-raised American solider William Shaw, who fought in the South Korean Army:

Nokbeon-ri [the battle where William Shaw died] is fifty years ago already. The original site has been changed by urban development, and the initial place where the monument had been located was not the historical site [of the event]. Also the [original] park was very small, and the monument was in a corner, hardly noticeable.

… We thought it would be better to move the monument to a better place. (Eunpyeong-gu, 2016)

Memorials that previously stood in two inner-city parks currently undergoing redevelopment, Sajik and Seosomun Parks, have no meaningful links to those locations. Memorials to Korean patriots and independence fighters have been moved from Seosomun Park and several other city–center plazas and streets to Jangchungdan Park, next to Namsan Mountain, a commemorative site first established in 1905 that now contains eight memorials.

The Path to Democracy on the SNU campus also shows grassroots decisions about memorial relocation finding a balance between land development pressures and sites that are meaningful, visible, and accessible:

Monuments were dispersed all around the campus. The campus had constantly changed with construction of new facilities, and with the initiation of the [campus] rearrangement project, controversies broke out around the monuments … Those monuments were something that martyrs’ friends and families had built in certain places for reasons … It was our job to persuade them … to gather them in one area for commemoration. We allocated monuments in four places …[including] near the 4.19 monument. (Cho, 2016)

The path of least resistance

Some cases revealed a nexus between the specific site a memorial stands on and the decision-making processes that shaped it. Several local–government interviewees noted the sponsor’s choice of location is sometimes preemptive and tactical, because the choice of site determines what decision-making processes will be applied to a proposal. When a memorial is proposed for a public park, its design has to be approved by an expert committee, and then it is reviewed for compatibility with the proposed location within the park. If it is to be built within a city-managed road right-of-way, it only needs design approval from the expert committee. If the site is a local street, the city’s district office can make decisions however they want (Choi, 2016).

This easier route to gaining approval for memorials within local streets was confirmed by sponsors of the Chun Tae-il and Comfort Women memorials. The Chun Tae-il Foundation’s Secretary-General noted that the metropolitan government’s appointed decision-making committee members typically have very conservative views. It would have required much time and effort to pursue their memorial through such a committee because of political controversy over the subject. Local road management staff are, by contrast, only interested in issues of road safety and maintenance.

The Secretary-General of the Korea Council for Women, which sponsored the first Comfort Women memorial statue (2011), contrasts their experience with that for the second Comfort Women “Place of Memory” memorial, unveiled in parkland on Namsan Mountain in 2016. The first comfort women statue was installed on the sidewalk facing Seoul’s Japanese embassy, because that was the exact location where victims had sat for 1000 previous Wednesdays to protest their forced sexual slavery by the Japanese (KCW, 2016). But the sidewalk location was also a result of extensive consultation, practical advice, and tacit approval from various departments within the Jongno-gu District office. The absence of rules and guidelines for such a sidewalk site necessitated this cooperation:

Interviewer: it seems you haven’t undergone the review process by the urban park committee?

That committee reviews only park project proposals. But since our statue was built on the road, it didn’t have to go through the park committee’s review session … The [2016] “Place of Memory,” they had had that review process.

Was there any regulation that you had to abide by when installing the monument on the road?

No, we didn’t have any regulation … the laws and regulations were not clear in terms of road maintenance. That was different [from the ‘Place of Memory’ project]. We had nothing to do with the urban park committee … There wasn’t any clear rule to follow … even if the government held a review session, they couldn’t say what’s what. (KCW, 2016)

When a 2015 diplomatic agreement with Japan threatened the potential removal of the Comfort Women memorial, internal departmental discussions within Seoul Metropolitan Government determined that the ordinance regarding the approval, erection, and maintenance of public memorials would be applied retrospectively to this example, even though it was in a roadway and was not erected through the formal process used for memorials in parks (DCST, 2016; SMG, 2010).

In both these cases, the memorials’ locations were directly related to the people and events being commemorated. Both projects also had support from the current mayor of Seoul. But the specific siting was also partly determined by the possible decision-making processes that would apply. Local streets served as paths of least resistance which avoided potential procedural challenges to these controversial memorial projects.

The Path to Democracy on the SNU campus illustrates another spatial choice that bypassed political and bureaucratic resistance to erecting controversial memorials:

… the very reason monuments are inside the campus … is that … the University had maintained a larger degree of freedom against state violence or ideological conflict than the outside … During the era of dictatorship … setting up a [democracy movement] monument outside the campus was an act of suicide. It was an act of treason. Hence, such attempts were taken secretly inside the campus … While the [political] situation has changed dramatically, the reason we can’t still set up monuments outside the universities is because … it becomes a source of conflict with local people or the municipal government. The local government needs to provide the public land to establish monuments, even if it does not allocate the budget for the project. Such decisions confront fierce right-wing opposition. (Yang, 2016)

This project shows that South Korea still has some way to go along the path to democracy, in terms of the procedural and distributive justice of public commemoration. Paralleling Alderman and Inwood’s (2013) observations on commemorations of the Civil Rights struggle in the American South being restricted to African American neighborhoods, in Seoul, memorials to South Korea’s democracy movement remain mostly spatially segregated, within universities, and thus have limited impact on the wider society and decision-making processes that the individuals they commemorate were seeking to change. Democratic commemoration remains discreet, avoiding confrontation.

The decision-making processes for the Chun Tae-il and Comfort Women memorials were not particularly democratic, in terms of having transparency or public input, or balanced representation, or following principles of procedural fairness. The main way those processes help foster a more democratic society is through their outcomes: they enable the approval of a wider range of memorial proposals, by different groups and about different themes, because they avoid refusal on technical or aesthetic grounds, and because they build and benefit from support from local politicians and bureaucrats – not broad publics. These processes illustrate ways that memorial decision-making could become more democratic.

Conclusion

This study has shown how the decision-making processes for recent public memorials in Seoul have begun to slowly democratize who is represented, both within their decision-making processes and in the sculptural outcomes they produce. The existence of civil–society actors who have successfully sponsored such projects, and their willingness to talk openly about their experiences, are strong signs of an emergent democracy, although political participation and political culture remain the areas of democratic praxis where South Korea scores lowest (EIU, 2019; Park et al., 2018). Some of these interviewees were themselves imprisoned and tortured in pre-democratic times. Participating in memorial-making activities, including for memorials that express opposition, is no longer treasonous or suicidal. But the specific processes that shaped the memorials discussed here, and which have constrained public commemoration of the democracy movement and other themes, still show limited openness, breadth of public consultation, and efforts to address conflicting views, which would help to build trust, inclusion, and civic capacity (Seong, 2000).

Like many democratic processes, those that shape memorial decisions in Seoul are imperfect. Memorials to themes that had broad popular and political support, such as opposition to Japanese imperial aggression and to exploitative labor practices, were successful, but the slowness and trepidation of publicly commemorating democratic activism – opposition to South Korea’s own government – highlight that more controversial and conflictual themes are often stymied. The commemoration of South Korea’s “Path to Democracy” barely yet extends beyond the university campuses. Supporters of Korea’s Donghak heritage were fortunate to be able to incorporate their history into the redevelopment of Seosomun Park late in the process, primarily because the design itself could accommodate additional, disparate stories. To some degree, the Comfort Women and Chun Tae-il memorials succeeded by skirting around standard regulatory processes, rather than receiving explicit government endorsement through them. Interviewees highlighted the role of some branches of government in facilitating applications that were submitted to other branches. In terms of democratic credentials, there are limits to the transparency, accountability, and fairness of the decision-making processes for new memorials in Seoul. As in many Western democracies, expert views on aesthetic quality and functional appropriateness to park locations often trump free expression of history through public memorials (Bogart, 2006); memorials seldom provide functional amenity. Statues on sidewalks and bridges show a pragmatic solution to the approvals process that also serves well the aim of encouraging broad public engagement with the commemorated subject.

The different approaches used to achieve various memorial outcomes points to a final key finding about memorial decision-making in Seoul. As former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted, “democracy is messy.” The memorial decision-making processes examined in this study show the fluidity of democracy in action. They show a range of actors from civil society and from various levels and branches of government involved in efforts to build support and inclusion, involved in disagreements and conflict, and identifying and exercising discretion around rules, even to the extent of formalizing the Comfort Women memorial post facto. This statue is also claimed to have changed the overall meaning and aspiration of public commemoration in Seoul. The landscape of decision-making for memorials, like the commemorative landscape of Seoul itself, continues to be reshaped, as the South Korean public gains experience in performing democracy.

Interviews

Cho 2016 = Cho Heung Seek, Co-chief Commissioner, Path to Democracy, Seoul National University

Choi 2016 = Choi Yoonjong, Director, Parks and Landscape Policy Division, Seoul Metropolitan Government

Eunpyeong-gu 2016 = Anonymous, Manager, Parks Division, Eunpyeong-gu District office.

Jung-gu 2016 = Kim Ji-hyun, Co-chief Commissioner, Urban Regeneration Division, Jung-gu District office – project manager of the Seosomun Park redevelopment.

KCW 2016 = Kim Dong-hee, Secretary General, The Korea Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan War and Women’s Human Rights Museum.

Moon 2016 = Moon Sung Kun, General Manager, Young Korea Academy (Heung Sa Dahn Foundation).

Park 2016 = Park Kye-Hyoun, Secretary General, Chun Tae-il Foundation.

PJMF 2016 = Kim Chan-Hoon, Park Jong-cheol Memorial Foundation.

Yang 2016 = Yang Keum Sik, Director, Korea Democracy Foundation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Yoonai Han, Ji-ae Kim, Jun-han Yon, Shanti Sumartojo, and the interviewees for their assistance with the research. All interviews were translated from Korean by Jun-han Yon and Yoonai Han.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies [grant AKS-2016-R39] and the RMIT University School of Architecture and Urban Design Research Committee [grant SRF-2017].

ORCID iD

Quentin Stevens

Quentin Stevens is an associate professor of Urban Design, with a background in both architecture and urban planning. His research has been funded by major fellowships from the Australian Research Council and Germany's Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is author of Memorials as Spaces of Engagement: Design, Use and Meaning (2016, with Karen Franck) and numerous articles on the design, planning and public reception of memorials. He is currently researching memorials in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Malaysia. His core expertise is people's perceptions and uses of urban open spaces, explored in the books The Ludic City and Loose Space.

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