It was almost a year ago since ‘How are you all doing nowadays?’, which was posted by Joo Hyun-woo on the Korea University bulletin board, became a big issue in universities. This post, which started by asking for people’s regards, criticized about the clashes about a transmission tower in Mil-yang, railway privatization and the presidential election scandal by the National Intelligence Service(NIS). This post’s relaxed and non-inflammatory words demanded people to participate in politics, and answering posts were posted around many universities. At that time in CBNU, there were more than 10 posts on the Central Library and New Student Building.

University students and university students’ politics

  Because of the downfall of activist students since 2000, direct political participation of university students was lowered. Also, because of the recession, students had difficulty getting a job, and their interest in politics continuously receded. However, direct problems to students such as the half-tuition problem, the university restructuring, the national university finance accounting law and saved money by private universities are still the focus of students. Those problems are seriously related with the National Assembly and the Ministry of Education(MOE), so damages from them will have an influence on the students if students don’t pay attention to them. Nowadays, people who are gathering the students’ opinions are each university’s General Student Association(GSA). If a university’s GSA regards that the problems are related with students, the GSA gathers the students’ opinions through various events and sends their opinions to the National Assembly or the MOE.
  In the case of CBNU in 2011, CBNU was selected as a restructuring university by the MOE, so The PLUS, which was the GSA in 2011, held a Student General Meeting to gather opinions of students in a small playground and interviewed with an MOE minister. In 2012, GIANT GSA participated in the 2nd round lawsuit of refunding school-supporting association dues with other national universities. Also, Response 3057 in 2013 condemned NIS’s presidential election intervention with members of the GSAs’ Gathering.

Thoughts about students’ participation in politics
   Choi Jeong-hwan, the GSA president, said about students’ participation in politics, “GSA sometimes shared information with other universities about political incidents. However, in the case of GSA, we are in the middle of it. We are politically neutral, because we don’t want to distort the original purpose of politics.”
  When the “How are you all doing nowadays?” post spread, Jeong Jong-hyeok(’09, Dept. of Mathematics Education), who put up a hand-written post, said, “I don’t know who made the word ‘political neutrality’; that is just mumbo-jumbo. Political neutrality is an irresponsible expression. Also, there are many problems which are relevant to students, and students have to reflect their own opinions about these problems. I think the meaning of keeping ‘political neutrality’ is not different from saying just ‘Sitting and doing nothing.” Prof. Chung Tae-il(Dept. of Political Science and International Relations), said about students’ political participation, “Having an interest in social issues is the responsibility of intellectuals, and university students are this age’s intellectuals. That is why university students can participate in politics. As intellectuals, university students can bring up society’s problems. However, when they bring up the problems, they are persuading other people who have different thoughts from them to follow their fair view.”

By Kang Ill-gu

ig33@cbnu.ac.kr