coverage of the 2008 demonstrations and a greater understanding of "candlelight spirit" that academics are referring to as an emergence of a new social movement and form of democracy in South Korea that protests policy development on trade, liberalization of public education, the privatization of health, and the environmental consequences of a cross-country canal project without substantial public opinion gathering. The Hankyoreh has campaigned for higher standards of ethics in journalism since its founding and had initiated a campaign against journalists' taking bribes, which had been customary in the industry in South Korea until the late 1990s. The Hankyoreh has a fairly favorable view of feminism, LGBT rights, opposes discrimination against ethnic minorities and supports political correctness. However, some editorials criticized political correctness. Hankyoreh's shows a favorable tone for Democratic Party of Korea, but opposes their somewhat socially conservative approach to LGBT rights. Economic and labor propensity The Hankyoreh has been critical of Korean big business and conglomerates that overwhelm the market, the Korean university entrance system, widening income disparities in Korean society, while maintaining a generally favorable attitude towards organized labor, and the redistribution of income. The Hankyoreh supported protectionism in the early days of its foundation, but now it is closer to the tone of support for free trade. The Hankyoreh described Joe Biden's protectionist policy in 2022 negatively, referring to the reactions of experts and European countries, and pointed out that it was "economic nationalism" (경제적 민족주의) similar to Donald Trump. The Hankyoreh departed from established convention by relying more on sales, periodic private donation campaigns, and the sale of stock, rather than advertising from major corporations to sustain itself. The newspaper currently has more than 60,000 citizen shareholders, none of whom have a more than one percent share. Core shareholders include students, professors, lawyers, writers, liberals and urban industrial workers. The company remains intentionally unlisted to avoid hostile takeover; it has also never shown three consecutive years of profit, one of the requirements for listing. Readership of the newspaper is evenly distributed between provinces and the major metropolitan areas, of which 63.2% were in their twenties and thirties, and 44.5% were college graduates. Hankyoreh's readership is mostly of low to middle class income. Criticism of mainstream right-wing conservative After three decades in print, Hankyoreh's subscriber base is still comparatively small. Its circulation of about 600,000 readers, puts it at one third the size of any of