[Essay] Day One: The First Day of Going Out to Meet a Nuclear-Free World -The Road to Bring Back a World Without Nuclear Power-

Field Notes in Anthropology

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Oct 12, 2026

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If the walker is the needle, the road becomes the thread. To cross, stitch by stitch, the gaps that have opened between one person and another, between one region and another. Perhaps that is what a pilgrimage is.

On September 1, 2026, people from the nuclear power plant regions of Gijang, Yeonggwang, and Uljin, as well as from Sejong, stood on the road to begin walking. Starting from nuclear power plant sites, they will walk toward Seoul for sixteen days. Although they set out from different places, they will meet at a single destination. It is a “world without nuclear power.”

“It is only the first day, so my body is a little tired, but my heart feels all the more resolute at the thought of being back on the road… I began my anti-nuclear activism in 2012, when I first came to Samcheok to stop a nuclear power plant from being built there. In the end, we made history by getting the Samcheok nuclear power plant construction plan scrapped. One single step may not be enough to change the world, but I believe that when people begin to walk together, history begins to move.” — Activist Seong Won-gi

But why walk, of all things? Why choose to walk, laboriously, in weather this hot?

Even when I asked an activist who had spent more than a decade in the anti-nuclear movement, a journey that had begun with the struggle against the proposed Samcheok nuclear power plant, the answer was the same.

And so they walk again.

More than ten years have passed, but what they believe in has not changed: that people who walk together will, in the end, create change.

Atthe same time, in Sejong, a pilgrimage of dancing and singing is unfolding beneath the sweltering midday heat. Activist Sang-hyeon introduced the Sejong group as a “marching contingent that walks joyfully, singing and dancing.” Perhaps the name itself carries a kind of spell that only those who have walked a long road can know. The heavier the problem, and the longer it has been left waiting for an answer, the more it needs joy alongside anger. There must be moments when people sing and laugh together; only then can they find the strength to walk again.

In a video, activist Cheongmyeong sings “Tal! Tal! Tal!” (meaning anti-nuclear)in chorus with two activists in their twenties, weaving beatboxing into the rhythm. Small in stature, she has a remarkably powerful voice.

“When my daughter was in high school, she took musical instruments to the struggle over the transmission towers in Miryang and sang with the villagers. Sometimes I would see tears in her eyes. Watching my daughter, I thought, ‘Now it’s time for Mom to step forward.’ That was how it began.” — Cheongmyeong

Cheongmyeong’s anti-nuclear activism did not begin with some grand undertaking. It began with her daughter.

When she told her family that she was going away on a fifteen-day pilgrimage, they simply said, “Okay,” without asking anything else. Cheongmyeong jokes, “I’ve been leaving home so often, I guess they’re used to it by now.”

When activist Ha Heon-jong, who has been taking part with her in the Thursday Anti-Nuclear Action, told his family that he was leaving for a two-week pilgrimage, his spouse responded with a joke disguised as suspicion.

“They said, ‘You’re crazy, absolutely crazy. You’re having an affair — you’re having an affair with the Green Party and the anti-nuclear movement.’”

— Activist Ha Heon-jong

He spoke jokingly of his encounter with the anti-nuclear movement as though it had been a meeting with destiny. At a gathering where he happened to meet activist Sang-hyeon, he met activist Seong Won-gi by chance. Through that connection, he began taking part in the Gwanghwamun Thursday Action. As that connection continued over time, he gradually fell under the spell of the possibility of a world without nuclear power.

But there was something else weighing on his mind. “I was shocked when more than a thousand people were killed or injured by a glacier collapse in Nepal,” he said. The news had stayed with him throughout the day as he walked.

In fact, rising sea temperatures and rising sea levels are also manifestations of abnormal climate conditions, and they pose a threat to the safety of nuclear power plants as well.

The pilgrimage groups held simultaneous press conferences in Yeonggwang, Gijang, Uljin, and Sejong for a world without nuclear power. Park Sang-hyeon, secretary-general of the Busan Federation for Environmental Movement, referred to the pilgrimage’s slogan, “Do not cross the line,” and called for solidarity in the face of a government that has, in effect, already crossed that line.

The word “anti-nuclear” itself is so vast, so weighty, that at times it can sound as though it has little to do with the lives of ordinary people.

How much do citizens who do not live in nuclear power plant regions understand about this? Do they even care?

Activist Lee Jeong-suk, who set out from Uljin, said as she began the pilgrimage:

“I hope this will be the last time.”

Beside her, activist Kim Hyeong-chan immediately responded:

“You are a true patriot!”

And he laughed heartily.

Lee Jeong-suk joined today’s pilgrimage with the hope that the next generation would never have to walk this road. Perhaps because he was walking beside a colleague who wished this would be her final pilgrimage, activist Kim Hyeong-yeon also seemed solemn.

In each photograph posted in the group’s promotional chat, one can sense their affection for the region. The titles of the photographs, too, were given by the Uljin pilgrimage team.

Words such as nuclear power plants, energy policy, the climate crisis, and high-level radioactive waste carry meanings so weighty that they can sometimes seem difficult to connect to the ordinary rhythms of a person’s day.

And yet, looking closely at the photographs posted by the pilgrimage team, I came to see in full the houses, fields, little streams, sea, and open countryside of a place I had known only as the site of a nuclear power plant.

The pilgrimage team uses their bodies to bridge the distances between one person and another, between regions with nuclear power plants and regions without them, between struggles of long ago and the future, and between the present and the future.

It was while passing through Jukbyeon Port.

By then, they were soaked in sweat, to the point where even their hats had begun to feel like a nuisance. Looking at the concrete blocks covering the coastline, the pilgrims said bitterly:

“Here, too, just like Samcheok, the coast is filled with concrete blocks.”

And yet they had to keep walking, carrying even that hollow sense of futility with them.

Although the bodies of the pilgrims are on the roads of today, the place they are looking toward is a time that has not yet arrived.

On September 1, 2026, the pilgrims completed the first day of their journey.

They are still walking on separate roads, but they are heading toward the same place.

“A world without nuclear power!”

Today is the first day of going out to meet that world.

September 1, 2026, National Action Pilgrimage for a Nuclear-Free Society