On November 12, roughly one million people went out on the streets to demand the resignation of the conservative South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, in what many have called the largest demonstration in the county’s nearly seventy-year history.

The day began with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ (KCTU) rally in front of Seoul city hall, later joining up with college students, farmers, and other groups’ rallies. In the evening, the march joined thousands of school students and other individual citizens to participate in a mass candlelight vigil, a traditional form of protest common in South Korean social movements. The city pulsed with masses of people, furious at the government and the president in particular.

President Park, daughter of Park Chung-hee, a South Korean military general and dictator who ruled the country from 1961 until his assassination in 1979, has come under public scrutiny in recent months following revelations that she and her administration have been running the government in their own personal interests, enriching themselves along the way, through a secretive cabal centered around Choi Soon-sil, daughter of deceased Shamanistic religious cult figure Choi Tae-min who advised the president until his death in 1994.