Posted on : Sep.24,2019 17:17 KST
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Hundreds of thousands of teenagers gather in New York for the School Strike for Climate, calling on world leaders to take more aggressive action on climate change, on Sept. 20. Kim Yu-jin (fourth from left), 17, is seen representing South Korean youth. (provided by the School Strike for Climate Change)
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“I keenly felt how far we have to go,” Kim says
On Sept. 20, three days before the UN Climate Action Summit, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets of Lower Manhattan, New York. Protesters who had gathered here from around the world called for their national leaders to take action on the climate and ecological crisis, which they describe as the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced.
One of those protesters was Kim Yu-jin, a 17-year-old girl from South Korea. Wearing a blue T-shirt bearing the Korean words “Teenage Climate Legal Team,” Kim stood at the front of the protest and joined young people from other countries in calling for urgent action on climate change.
Teenagers from various countries were holding banners and placards with the message “School Strike for Climate.” Also present at the demonstration was Greta Thunberg, 16, the Swedish activist who first conceived of a climate strike. Last month, Thunberg boarded a small solar-powered yacht — rather than an airplane — to attend the climate strike in New York, as well as the Youth Climate Summit, held the next day in New York. Thunberg arrived in New York on Aug. 28 after sailing for 15 days from Plymouth, UK.
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South Korean youth activist Kim Yu-jin during a press interview in New York on Sept. 20. (provided by the School Strike for Climate Change)
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Kim flew to the US on Sept. 18 and joined a planning session with American teenage climate activists on the day before the climate strike. While walking down the street on Sept. 20 with hundreds of thousands of protesters who had come out to raise awareness of the severity of the climate crisis, Kim was reminded about how Koreans were still apathetic about the issue.
“Seeing the endless procession of protesters, reporters lining the streets, and citizens filling the surrounding areas thrilled me in a way that’s difficult to explain. The thought that people were taking interest and coming together brought me courage,” Kim said, saying it was something she hasn’t seen much of in South Korea.
Kim met the Hankyoreh before traveling to the US. “Since getting involved in climate activism, I’ve heard from a ton of people that this is an important time in my life and that I could always become an activist after going to college,” she said.
But it’s easy to forget that choosing one thing means giving up something else. “Scientists say that if global temperatures rise more than 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels, there’s no telling what will happen to humanity. For older people to tell us to wait a little longer in such an uncertain situation strikes me as gambling with our future. Right now is our last chance to change things, and we could be the last generation on earth as we know it,” she said.
Kim is a member of the Teenage Climate Legal Team, a group that was set up in August 2018 with the goal of holding the government responsible for the climate crisis and calling for an aggressive response. Since May, the group has been holding regular street demonstrations under the name “Teenage Climate Action” in order to raise awareness of the severity of climate change. That was the goal of “school strikes” that teenagers in the group held at Gwanghwamun on Mar. 16 and May 24. They’re also planning a domestic school strike for climate at Gwanghwamun on Sept. 27, with the hope that 10,000 people will participate.
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South Korean student activists Kim Yu-jin, 17. And Chung Ju-won, 25, attend the UN Youth Climate Action Summit in New York on Sept. 21. (provided by the School Strike for Climate Change)
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On Sept. 21, the day after the street protest, Kim attended the Youth Climate Summit, at UN headquarters, along with and Chung Ju-won, 25, another member of Teenage Climate Action. The Youth Climate Summit was a meeting of some 500 young climate activists and entrepreneurs invited by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Although Kim didn’t have an opportunity to make remarks at the summit, she described it as a “historic meeting in which the UN recognized teenagers and young people not as a ‘future generation’ but as current stakeholders.”
But Kim was left with some regrets. “After attending the youth summit, I keenly felt how far we have to go. I got the strong impression that the summit was a one-off event, and I was disappointed that it didn’t focus more on the voices of the young people there. But I think we’re just getting started. I realized that there’s really so much to do, both in dealing with climate change and in incorporating young people’s opinions in policy,” she said.
By Choi Ye-rin, staff reporter
Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
