South Korea: Students Voice Dissent Against Korea Railroad’s Mass Layoff · Global Voices
Lee Yoo Eun

South Korea's state-owned railway operator, Korea Railroad Corp. (KORAIL), has laid off an unprecedented number of more than 7,600 workers [ko] within a week as it decided to set up a subsidiary for new high-speed train operations, which critics call ‘a prelude to privatization of the nation's rail system’. Inspired by a student at Korea University in Seoul who posted on his school's offline bulletin board a message– a longtime symbol/traditional way of voicing students’ dissent– criticizing the government's such decision, many universities have started posting similar messages on their respective school bulletin boards. A Facebook page entitled ‘안녕들하십니까?‘ [ko] (formal way of saying ‘how are you?’ in Korean) was set up to share images of messages posted across various universities’ bulletin boards. In less than two days, the page has already received more than 41 thousand likes.