Seminar on May 18 uprising: Understanding the struggle for democracy in South Korea

Commemorating glorious May uprising in South Korea, Institute for Environment and Development (IED) organized a seminar today, May 18, 2017 titled on May 18 uprising: Understanding the struggle for democracy in South Korea at HKS Arefin Hall in Dhaka. A good number of participants comprising academician, social activist, students, indigenous youths, development practitioners, and politicians attended the event. Dr. Shantanu Majumder, prof. of political science, university of Dhaka graced the event as chief discussant.

At the beginning Jyoti Chattopadhyay, project coordinator IED shared the key note in Bangla highlighting May  uprising of South Korea and its implication in Bangladesh. Afterwards the presentation, in his inaugural speech Numan Ahmed Khan, executive director of IED said, `we have similar uprising in our country but the difference between South Korea and Bangladesh are that Korean people reap the result of any movement whereas we fail to gather result after our democratic movement. He also thanked to the May 18 Memorial Foundation for sharing their experience with IED and anticipated that this discussion would create debate in our society for promoting democracy.

In this stage, a video message from greeting speech of Kim Yang- Executive Director of May 18 Memorial Foundation and one documentary namely the legacy of gwanju uprising were screened. Then Dr. Shantanu Majumder, key speaker of the event highlighted the importance of commemorating May uprising of South Korea. He pointed out two key features of May 18 uprising, one is debate of fellow actors, university students and second is quality documentation of the movement. The South Korean people take the May 18 movement as brand of progressive initiatives.

At last students and youth leaders and socio cultural activists took part the open discussion and shared their opinion and ideas.