THE taegukgi, South Korea’s national flag, has rarely been as present on the country’s streets as it is today: swung by demonstrators, plastered on trucks and pitched outside big buildings. Yet 42% of South Koreans feel “uncomfortable” when they see it, according to a recent survey. Fifteen years ago, 90% said they were proud to brandish it. That was during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, as crowds decked out in taegukgi-patterned bandanas spurred the national football team on to the semi-finals.



Now those bandanas are worn by a crowd with a different chant: citizens railing against the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, which was upheld by the constitutional court on March 10th. At these “taegukgi rallies”, participants wear taegukgi masks, capes, hats and armbands, and demand the arrest of the millions who have rallied in support of Ms Park’s impeachment. They call her detractors “pro-North Korean leftists”, drawing on the long-standing conservative fear that anti-government Southerners must be conspiring with the North.



To many older conservatives, the taegukgi is a talisman against communism, even though North Korea also used it for three years after the peninsula’s division in 1945. It was also used by the kingdom of Korea before its annexation by Japanese colonialists in 1910. In 1972 Park Chung-hee, Ms Park’s father and a former dictator, made it compulsory for all schoolchildren to recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag. That year he imposed martial law, citing security threats.



Many today resent these associations. “The taegukgi is not just for them,” says a citizen supporting impeachment outside the constitutional court. It is not the first time that political groups have fought over the flag. In 1980 government soldiers massacred hundreds of citizens protesting against military dictatorship in Gwangju, a city in the south-west. Their coffins were draped with taegukgi, and shops in the city are said to have run out of flags ahead of the mass funeral.



Now, the anti-impeachment protesters have claimed the flag for their particular take on patriotism. In response, the city of Gwangju broke with tradition and did not hand out the taegukgi at celebrations on March 1st commemorating Korea’s independence movement. On that day in 1919, independence fighters waved the taegukgi in defiance of the colonial authorities, who had banned it. In the aftermath, thousands of Koreans were tortured and killed. But officials in Gwangju this year said that they did not want to appear to oppose Ms Park’s impeachment.



Some are trying to reclaim the symbol. Thousands brought it to pro-impeachment rallies in Seoul on Independence Movement Day, as well as to the constitutional court to hear its verdict on Ms Park. Others want to put the flag above politics. Kwon Eun-hee, a member of the National Assembly, has proposed a law that would prevent the taegukgi from being used in political protests. Opinion polls suggest, predictably, that slightly more than half of South Koreans disagree with the idea.