A Playlist for the Revolution: Protest Music in Youth-Led Movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea

Abstract

Music plays a significant role in shaping social mobilization, including student and youth-led movements around the world. In East Asia specifically, over the last decade music has served as a significant tool for voicing political dissent and fostering a sense of belonging. Using content analysis, this study examines how music was utilized in Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, Hong Kong’s 2019–2020 pro-democracy protests and South Korea’s 2024–2025 impeachment demonstrations. Focusing on the background, lyrics and imagery of songs sung by protesters, the study identifies similarities across these three socio-political contexts in the transformation of individual grievances into collective action through music. This article argues that collective singing fosters solidarity across social classes and protest settings, while music also functions as a transnational instrument of protest through spillover effects and the translation of songs across contexts. The recurrence of similar songs across the three cases points to common symbolic repertoires of contention, underscoring how protest music can connect locally rooted movements with broader regional and global struggles for democratic participation. At the same time, however, significant differences emerge in the degree of artists’ direct involvement and support for demonstrators, as well as in the confrontational character of protest music, which appears to be shaped by perceived threat levels. This study provides a nuanced understanding of the dual role of music as both a form of cultural expression and a political resource within contemporary youth-led movements.