SADD Stages Rooftop Protest Atop Hyehwa-dong Cathedral, Demanding Right to Live Outside Institutions
(Image provided by Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD))
SEOUL, May 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Two disability rights activists affiliated with the Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD) underwent a pretrial detention hearing on Monday after staging a 15-day rooftop protest atop a Catholic cathedral in Seoul’s Hyehwa-dong neighborhood.
They were arrested earlier this month on charges of violating assembly laws after descending voluntarily from the church’s bell tower.
The demonstrators had climbed the tower on April 18 to demand that the Catholic Church explicitly support the right of people with disabilities to live independently, outside of institutional care.
The protest drew attention not only for its cause, but also for its form — a gogong nongseong, or high-rise protest, a tactic deeply embedded in South Korea’s history of resistance.
While rare in most countries, high-rise occupations in Korea have long been used by workers and activists who feel cornered, both literally and politically. These dramatic demonstrations — often unfolding atop cranes, factory roofs, or billboards — aim to expose injustice by physically elevating the struggle.
A scene from the 2011 high-rise protest atop a Hanjin Heavy Industries crane, which lasted an astounding 309 days. (Yonhap)
South Korea’s first documented high-rise protest dates back nearly a century, to 1931, when factory worker Kang Ju-ryong climbed atop the Eulmildae Pavilion in Pyongyang to protest wage cuts.
Modern high-rise protest culture, however, is often traced to a 1990 labor dispute at Hyundai Heavy Industries, where union members climbed an 82-meter-tall Goliath crane at the company’s Ulsan shipyard. That protest drew nationwide attention and ended after 13 days.
Among the most powerful examples remains the 2011 protest by Kim Jin-sook, a fired worker from Hanjin Heavy Industries. She occupied an 85-meter crane at the company’s Yeongdo shipyard in Busan for 309 days, sparking national solidarity movements like the “Hope Bus” campaign and ultimately pressuring the company into offering reinstatement.
High-rise protests persist today. As of 2025, Park Jeong-hye, a dismissed worker from Korea Optical High Tech, has spent over 480 days occupying the factory rooftop in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. Other ongoing protests involve laid-off hotel staff, subcontracted shipyard workers, and labor rights advocates across the country.
The choice to climb is often made under duress. “The company tried to demolish our union office with an excavator,” said a representative of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union in Gumi, adding, “It felt like we were being pushed into the sky.”
Norwegian-Korean scholar Pak No-ja once described Korea’s rooftop protests as “doing everything short of dying” — a tragic reflection of labor’s weakened leverage.
Yet the emotional and political impact of such demonstrations may be fading. Public perception has shifted. What was once seen as heroic resistance is increasingly viewed as a symbol of militant protest, diminishing broader sympathy.
“In an era where flash-mob rallies and ‘cheering-stick protests’ are more inclusive and widely accepted,” said Ku Jeong-woo, a sociology professor at Sungkyunkwan University, “high-rise protests struggle to draw the same level of public engagement they once did.”
As the cathedral protestors await legal judgment, their actions reopen a difficult question: in a changing Korea, do rooftop protests still rise above the noise — or simply disappear into it?
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
