A scene at the Sept. 21 Climate Strike in Seoul / Courtesy of Austin Headrick





By Jon Dunbar









International attention focuses a great deal on Korean cultural aspects, but one area where understanding is less advanced is in Korea's many activist movements. The

aims to change that.







"While there are many Korean language podcasts covering contemporary political and social affairs, there are few if any in English and there isn't any other podcast covering South Korean social movements," said Tom Rainey-Smith, one of the team members on the podcast. "So we hope to eventually reach a global audience and communicate how dynamic and vibrant South Korean social movements are."







Rainey-Smith, a foreign resident of Korea originally from New Zealand, began a year of paternity leave recently, and with the extra time he decided to start the podcast. He put out a call on social media looking for others to help him, connecting with Anastasia Traynin, a researcher and writer, and Austin Headrick, a sound engineer.







"All of us working on the podcast are in some way involved in social movements," he said, "either as individual activists or through organizational affiliations, meaning that we have a stake in the game so to speak."







"We have all been in Korea for several years and have our own and overlapping networks within Korean social movements," Traynin said, "and we have writing, interviewing, language and research skills as well as flexibility to attend events."









They have already

.









"We decided to start with the environmental movement to capture the new momentum here around the

," Rainey-Smith said.







"The Korean environmental movement has a long and complex history that intersects with problems that include, among other things, eviction, labor and farmer rights, and many other pressing issues that are not isolated but are taking place all over the world," Traynin said.







"Contemporary Rebellions" podcast producers, from left, Anastasia Traynin, Sam MacDonald and Tom Rainey-Smith / Courtesy of Contemporary Rebellions







Episode 1 was a mixture of in-studio lectures and discussions, on-the-street interviews and musical interludes. One of the interviews was with Choony Kim, one of Korea's most experienced environmental activists and a member of the

almost since it began in the 1990s.







"Listeners can learn about the origins of the environmental movement in small, localized anti-pollution struggles through to the modern movement now tackling a range of issues including concern over the risks posed by nuclear power generation, opposition to state-led mega developments and the recent Climate Strike which united a range of groups from across the social movement spectrum," Rainey-Smith said.









The episode's soundtrack includes

who has been involved in the podcast's making, and

, gaining permission to use the song after a chance encounter with the band's lead singer at the Climate Strike on Sept. 21.







"We want to represent local working musicians, especially within the indie scene, who have played and/or continue to take part in social movements," Traynin said.







To make the episode, they rented a podcast studio in the Hongik University area to record the show and some of the interviews.







"It's produced as a labor of love out of our own pockets but we hope that we will be able to secure some funding so we can purchase our own equipment for future episodes," Rainey-Smith said. "We have ambitions to cover a wide range of social movements, beginning with the larger more obvious ones like the environmental and labor movements, and then take a look at smaller movements that may also be less well-known within South Korea."







They're gearing up to release episode 2, this time looking at the labor movement, in time for the 49th anniversary of Jeon Tae-il's self-immolation death on Nov. 13, 1970.









Regarding

, the infamous but often-misinterpreted law prohibiting foreigners from engaging in political activities, neither is concerned.







"We all continue to be involved in solidarity work to some degree even without the podcast so it's doubtful that this particular project would cause a problem for us," Traynin said.







Rainey-Smith points out the law does not clearly define political activity, and he doubts podcasting were to fit its definition.







"It would not be an exaggeration to say that I've been to hundreds of demonstrations here over the years and do find it sad how often this provision has had a chilling effect on other non-citizens who feel too afraid to exercise their own rights because of it," he added.









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