[Essay] Day Five: Stitch by Stitch — The Road to Bring a Nuclear-Free World Home

Field Notes in Anthropology

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Oct 15, 2026

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Making a dishcloth along the pilgrimage route?

One of the pilgrims sits in a corner of a restaurant, looping hemp yarn stitch by stitch to crochet a dishcloth.

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“Heonjong is always crocheting hemp dishcloths whenever he gets a spare moment!”

“He gives them to people he meets along the pilgrimage route as tokens of gratitude. ^^”
(Cheongmyeong, pilgrimage organizer)

The Sejong pilgrimage team set off at eight in the morning and passed the site of the Osong underpass disaster. At the scene stood a ladder designed to rise above the water as the level increased, along with yellow pipes that had been installed there. The secretary-general of the Chungbuk Environmental Movement Coalition explained that, since the disaster, the state had made little visible progress in establishing the facts or building a memorial tower or commemorative facility.

The site of this disaster is not a place of tragedy unto itself. The pilgrims paused for a moment and offered a prayer in remembrance of those who had died.

After lunch, the Sejong team once again performed their “Stop Nuclear Power” rap, dancing along to the beat. A little child passing by happened to become a surprise guest in the pilgrims’ performance, showing off a few dance moves of their own.

Sometimes, it is these unassuming walks that stay with us longest: handing someone a dishcloth, or unexpectedly encountering a child’s dance along the way.

A little later, Cheongmyeong sent a message.

“Today, they joined us at the ‘New People March.’

Indi, who designed the logo for the nuclear phase-out movement, has made a video for us.

Everything is connected.”

(Cheongmyeong, pilgrimage organizer)

Before setting out each day, the pilgrimage teams do two things: they pray and they sing. First, they read a prayer, then sing a song for a nuclear-free world, and only then set off along their respective routes. Their journeys may differ, but they share the same song and the same prayer. Their days are not simply divided into separate stretches of road assigned to each team. Prayer and song are the knots that bind yesterday to today, connecting pilgrims who walk different paths.

The four pilgrimage teams regularly share videos of themselves singing the Tal-Tal-Tal Pilgrimage Song in their group chat.

“Let’s keep step together! Let’s move forward~
Arm in arm, let’s go! Let’s move forward! …
Tal-Tal-Tal!”

Ha Tae-seong, the Yeonggwang team’s pilgrimage organizer, explains the song to newcomers, going over its opening and ending, right down to the final shouted refrain. He even gestures to cue them at just the right moment. The pilgrims may feel a little self-conscious, but soon they find themselves singing together at full volume.

The pilgrimage teams set out each morning at around eight. On this day, the Gori and Uljin teams had arranged to meet in Naari. They were going to attend an event marking Twelve Years and Twelve Days of the Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant Neighbourhood Residents’ Relocation Committee and meet the residents.

The Gori team passed the Gyeongju Seomyeon Administrative Welfare Centre and arrived in Naari shortly after three. The Uljin team had already reached the event site before half past two. The gathering celebrated the residents’ funeral-procession protests, through which they had demanded relocation for twelve years, while also marking the final day of those protests. The relocation issue itself, however, remained unresolved.

The gathering was also a chance to honour and comfort the residents for having endured twelve years of struggle, and to acknowledge once again what had yet to be resolved. Organisations that had stood alongside the Relocation Committee and remembered its twelve-year history came from Seoul, Busan, Miryang, Ulsan, Gwangju, and elsewhere. Around a hundred people gathered to meet the elderly residents.

Updates from the event in Naari were relayed in real time through several anti-nuclear group chats, including the pilgrims’ own. Videos captured the reflections of residents who had led the Relocation Committee for so many years, as well as those of Lee Sang-hong, secretary-general of the Gyeongju Environmental Movement Coalition. Messages of encouragement and support also poured in from many others whose lives had become intertwined with theirs.

Hwang Bun-hui, the elderly chair of the Relocation Committee, looked back on the past twelve years and reflected that so many people had helped them, and that they had received so much. Lee Sang-hong responded with gratitude, describing the residents’ lives and voices, carried forward over the years, as an invaluable part of the history of the nuclear phase-out movement.

“The fact that so many people have gathered here, in a place this far away, feels like a miracle in itself.

It feels like a miracle that so many people have come together along the road we are travelling.

You have made these small miracles possible.

For the past twelve years, the residents have never stopped speaking out, always telling us, ‘Thank you for standing in solidarity with us.’

I cannot tell you how reassuring and how deeply appreciated it has been to have residents living right beside a nuclear power plant stand alongside civil society for so long, raising their voices in opposition.

I would like us all to say together: ‘Relocation Committee, thank you!’”

(Lee Sang-hong, Secretary-General of the Gyeongju Environmental Movement Coalition)

Like the hemp dishcloth, made by joining one stitch to the next, each step had helped make the pilgrimage, while small acts of solidarity had been writing the long history of the nuclear phase-out movement.

That day, the teams had set out from different places. Some had passed the site of the Osong disaster; others had encountered the stories of Naari. And yet, in another sense, they had all arrived at the same place.

To walk is also to thread together, one stitch at a time, things that might otherwise seem unrelated.

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Reference material

National Anti-Nuclear Pilgrimage to Stop New Nuclear Power Plants (1–16 September 2026) — Google Docs