Word: chun
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Chun Se Yong sounded like the last person who would set himself on fire as a political protest. Two university students had just immolated themselves to protest the beating to death of a student demonstrator by police on April 26, but Chun, a 19-year-old sophomore at Kyungwon University, near Seoul, questioned the wisdom of adding to the growing list of martyrs, or yolsa (Korean for honorable man of justice). "We need more dedicated fighters, not more yolsa," the left-wing activist told colleagues at the campus newspaper...
...something changed for Chun in the next 48 hours. About 3 p.m. on May 3, he walked out on a balcony near the university's main entrance, doused himself with paint thinner, ignited himself with a cigarette lighter, and then plunged 15 ft. to the pavement below. Alive, but with burns covering 95% of his body, Chun was rushed to a hospital. Seven hours later, he died...
...Since Chun's self-immolation, five more protesters have turned themselves into human versions of the Molotov cocktails students throw with alarming regularity during South Korea's annual spring demonstration season. Although the suicides have failed to produce the massive demonstrations that pushed the previous regime from power in 1987, President Roh Tae Woo fired his hard-line Prime Minister last week and promised other reforms, hoping to end this season's violence. But street clashes continued, killing one more person at week...
...just why Chun Se Yong changed his mind about suicide is a mystery to those who knew him. Friends and colleagues describe him as an intense, articulate young man, well-versed in the rhetoric of his cause. Raised by his grandmother after his taxi-driver father and his mother divorced several years ago, Chun was sensitive to the social injustices he saw around...
...Chun entered this political crucible eagerly. He drew cartoons dripping with political sarcasm for the school paper. One showed George Bush in military fatigues waving an American flag while marching over a field of skulls. With no money from home, he worked at odd jobs and slept in a succession of offices and friends' apartments. But his real vocation was activism: he was part of a 60-person "torch force" that led demonstrators into battle with police by throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails...