《Lighthouses, Shining Quietly》 is a book containing photographs and stories of thirty-three high-altitude protest sites between 2005 and 2019.
Photographer Moon Seon-hee took photos of chimneys, transmission towers, CCTV towers, and billboards across the country where protests had taken place in the past, following the high-altitude protest of Cha Gwang-ho, a laid-off worker at Star Chemical, which was the longest-running protest in the world at the time in 2015.
And the stories before and after each siege were compiled and published together.
The purpose was to accurately witness and remember what the high-altitude sit-in protesters went through and achieved in a time and social context where the labor environment was rapidly changing.

“High-altitude protests are not a thing of the past.
“It’s still ongoing, and we still have stories to tell.” The records of the sites left behind after the fight allow us to look at the sit-in as a historical process rather than a sensational event.
From the perspective of a citizen who lived in the same era, this book preciously highlights the hopes and courage of the high-altitude protesters, who were ordinary workers before becoming fighters, and asks what we must not forget and continue to remember in the history of high-altitude protests.

It was that day that the chimney came to me.
The day he came down with a new Guinness World Record.
'Guinness World Record: 408 Days of High-Altitude Sit-in.' I paused as I read the article in the quiet exhibition hall.
The phrase 'Guinness World Record' was being used everywhere, as if something worth celebrating had happened.

In the photo, a forty-six-year-old man with gray hair was coming down the chimney.
It was Mr. Cha Gwang-ho, a laid-off worker at Star Chemical.
The police immediately arrested him after he had endured 408 days in the chimney.
As he was being dragged to the detention center, reporters swarmed him and asked him how he felt about setting a new Guinness World Record.
What are your thoughts? My face flushed at the reporters' imprudent questions.
“I’m afraid that the 408-day record will become a standard for someone.” His unexpected words struck a thud in my heart.
It was a chance that came with great difficulty.
It was perhaps the only moment when I could passionately shout out all the words I had wanted to shout out to the world and everyone would nod and listen.
At the very moment when he finally had a voice, he must have suffered immeasurable physical and mental wounds, and he was worried about someone else who had not yet arrived, not himself… … .

The world neglected him, but he cared about the world.
Even after going through such a difficult time, he did not break down and maintained his composure.
He was not only strong, but also a sensitive and deep-hearted adult.
It felt like water seeping through a dry tree.
Not everyone who goes through hardships becomes a bad person.

--- p.67~68

The following fall, I saw the news that the chimney had exploded.
Three large explosions occurred during the demolition of a chimney at a closed factory, killing one worker and injuring four others.
My heart was heavy with the reality that workers were repeatedly dying and getting injured on the job.

Where are you?
Surprisingly, it was the chimney.
I ran to Gumi in a panic.
The silence all around was as if a mouse had died, the faint artificial smell in the air, and the wall with the words “Cheer up” written on it were still there.
Only the chimney was gone, as if erased with an eraser.

Days spent curled up like animals on top of a chimney, enduring the scorching heat and the bone-chilling cold.
The chimney that had been soaked with hope, despite all the pain, loneliness, fear, helplessness, anger, and despair he had endured during all his time, getting wet when it rained and getting wet when it snowed, was no longer in this world.
It was a factory where he had worked for over ten years since joining when he was twenty-five.
He spent 408 days on the chimney, hoping to return to the factory where he had dedicated his youth, but the factory eventually closed and the chimney disappeared.

--- p.71

What was tied there could be called 'pain', but it could also be called 'hope'.
They risked their lives going up, not to die, but to live, to live like human beings.
If only he had been desperate enough to know that no one would listen to his story of injustice unless he risked his life, he would not have been able to get there.
If you really think the world is hell, there's no reason to climb.
The foundation of their ability to risk their only life was their faith in the community, which would not trivialize their own lives.
The last thing they relied on was the hearts of the citizens.

--- p.92~93

When I was young, I thought it was a small group of extraordinary heroes who could change the world.
Now I know.
Where do the rights we enjoy come from, whose power sustains our nation and communities, who has sacrificed and to whom we owe our respect and gratitude?

There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The rights we take for granted today were created and protected by someone who sacrificed himself like firewood.
Because I am also a part of the world, I have received grace from them.
A gift I received without any effort, a precious gift like 'democracy' that I can never repay.

They were not sacrificed for a bright future.
I fought back.
They questioned the premise that 'it was like that originally'.
Instead of waiting for a rope to come down from the sky, he climbed into the sky himself.
Rather than waiting for some great force to change the world, I took it upon myself to open a huge door that seemed impossible to open.
I dreamed of a better life, even though the odds were slim.

--- p.96~97

I got off at Seodaemun Station.
When I got to the ground, it was a huge intersection.
Cars coming and going and cars stopped simultaneously spewed out noise and smoke.
Looking around, I saw a slender CCTV tower standing on one corner of the intersection.
There was a basket hanging at the top.
The basket's floor was made of wire mesh, and its sides were open and surrounded by two wires. The CCTV tower stood alone, unlike the other similarly tall traffic lights, streetlights, and utility poles.
It was about twice as high.
Was 30 meters really that high? It was so high that it felt like something was foreign to me.
It struck me as odd that I hadn't even realized that these things were standing at every intersection.
At around 7:30 in the morning on March 21, 2005, Kim Mi-sook, Kim Eun-mi, and Ahn Seon-hyeong came here.
These people, who had just turned 30, were civil servants who were notified of their dismissal on the last day of 2004 according to the National Police Agency's organizational structure revision.
They said that they had been demanding a meeting with the Commissioner General of the National Police Agency for over 90 days in front of the National Police Agency, demanding the "withdrawal of the dismissal and conversion to a functional position," but had no choice but to resort to a sit-in protest as they had received no response.
A civil servant is a civil servant engaged in simple auxiliary work.
In 1989, the government abolished the system of hired civil servants while reorganizing the civil service system, and reduced the workforce by transferring those who had worked for more than three years to functional positions and not filling positions that would naturally decline.
However, some local governments and police agencies continued to hire new civil servants.
Because their hands were needed.
The majority of civil servants were women.
After graduating from high school, they were hired as 'office assistants' at local police stations or substations.
In principle, their main duties included telephone exchanges, record entry, document organization, and accounting, but because they were young women, they said they were required to do anything they were asked to do, including shopping, preparing meals, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the official residence, washing bedding, and even running errands for coffee and cigarettes. (...)
It was the first civil servant sit-in.
The world's attention was focused on it.
When public criticism arose that the government agency that was supposed to protect the socially vulnerable was pushing the vulnerable within the organization to the brink, only then did the police chief promise to "soon set a date for the interview."
It was only 12 hours of high-altitude protest.

--- p.101~102

As soon as we exited the Gumi IC, a huge industrial complex unfolded before us.
The eight-lane road stretched out straight and cool, but it was deserted compared to its size.
The walls of the Star Chemical factory were made of red bricks.
A 45-meter-tall blue chimney stood inside a wall painted with colorful bricks and bearing the message "Cheer Up."
At around 2:40 a.m. on May 27, 2014, Mr. Cha Gwang-ho climbed up this chimney carrying a placard, a sleeping bag, two bottles of water, and a backpack containing daily necessities.
I had told my wife that I was going on an all-night sit-in and would not be able to return for a while.
Eleven workers, including Mr. Cha Gwang-ho, who was a production worker at Star Chemical (formerly Korea Synthetic Fiber), have been demanding the suspension of the factory's spin-off sale and its restart since January 2013.
The reason they couldn't just leave was because of suspicions of "dine and dash": the company had acquired the factory to make a profit and then closed it down. (...)
On July 6, 2015, after 406 days of high-altitude protest, labor and management reached a tentative agreement.
Although the plan to transfer the employment to Starflex, the parent company of Star Chemical, was not accepted, an agreement was reached to establish a new corporation by the end of that year to employ the workers and guarantee union activities.
It was also decided to withdraw the lawsuits and accusations that had been filed.
On this day, the 11 laid-off workers issued a statement.
“There were no workers anywhere during the process of the factory being shut down and sold.
“I wanted to show that workers are not objects that capitalists can use and throw away at will.”

--- p.132~133