Organizer's Cumulative Participant Count Method
Police Use Fermi Method... No Official Announcement
Need for Neutral and Objective Approach
Amid ongoing protests calling for President Yoon Seok-yeol's resignation following the '12·3 Emergency Martial Law' incident, a debate has erupted over the size of the protest participants. The estimates from the organizers and the police differ drastically, leading to criticism that the numbers were either deliberately inflated or downplayed.
On the evening of the 7th, when the impeachment vote against President Yoon Seok-yeol was underway, citizens gathered at Yeouido Park in Seoul shouted impeachment slogans. Photo by Heo Young-han
According to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) on the 13th, the protest held on the 7th was estimated by the organizers to have attracted 1 million participants. In contrast, the police's unofficial estimate was 150,000. This discrepancy arises because the organizers and the police use different methods to calculate the number of attendees.
Typically, organizers use a cumulative participant count method. A KCTU official explained, "For protests with clearly affiliated participants, accurate verification is possible, but for large-scale protests, we roughly estimate based on the size of the venue or empirical experience. Since there are also transient populations and numbers vary by time of day, the estimated number can differ by time slot, so we consider various factors when calculating."
The police calculate the number of people based on population density per unit area. A police official stated, "The police estimate using the Fermi method, and due to the measurement approach, differences with the organizers' numbers are inevitable, so it is not a matter of who is right or wrong. We calculate numbers for operational purposes such as manpower allocation and traffic control, but we do not disclose these figures publicly."
Police officers are walking alongside the procession of a rally march held near Seoul City Hall, preparing for any possible emergencies. Photo by Heo Young-han
During the 2016 protests calling for the resignation of the Park Geun-hye administration, a similar controversy arose over the large gap between the participant estimates from the organizers and the police. At that time, the 'Emergency National Action for the Resignation of the Park Geun-hye Regime,' which organized the candlelight protests, accused the police of deliberately downplaying the numbers and threatened to file charges for obstructing the protest. The police responded by saying, "It only breeds distrust in the police and causes unnecessary controversy," and internally decided not to disclose estimated participant numbers from January 14, 2017.
To prevent controversies over exaggerated or underestimated announcements of protest sizes, there are calls for neutral and objective methods of estimation. Professor Lee Woong-hyuk of Konkuk University's Department of Police Science said, "The size of protest participants is a number that shows the legitimacy or influence of the protest, so the organizers tend to inflate it, while the authorities managing it try to reduce it. Depending on the size, it can become a tool for propaganda or agitation that influences whether people decide to participate, so objective and neutral management is necessary."
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