Incheon lawmaker threatens audit over Massive Attack's May 18 footage at rock festival

Festivalgoers enjoy a performance at the 2026 Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival, held at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, on Friday. [Yonhap]

An Incheon city council member has threatened to raise the matter at an administrative audit after British band Massive Attack screened footage related to the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement during their set at the 2026 Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival.

Lee Beom-seok, a People Power Party member of the Incheon City Council who sits on its culture and welfare committee, posted a screenshot from the Massive Attack performance on his personal social media account on Monday, writing: "The event is organized by Incheon Tourism Organization. It falls under the jurisdiction of the council's culture and welfare committee. I will make sure to address this at the administrative audit."

[Screenshot from Lee Beom-seok's Instagram]

The screenshot showed a frame from archival footage of the May 18 Democratization Movement overlaid with a subtitle reading: "In 1980, the United States supported the South Korean government's massacre of civilians in Gwangju."

Lee said the Pentaport Rock Festival "is not a private concert but a paid event hosted and organized by Incheon city and its tourism organization," and therefore subject to council oversight. He added that the band had connected Seo Taiji's 1996 song "Sidaeyugam" to the 1980 Gwangju democratization movement to deliver a video message claiming US forces supported the May 18 massacre. "For a foreign band to handle this on their own, the content of the video was a highly orchestrated political message that would have been difficult to produce without Korean involvement," he said.

Lee said the incident was "a different matter entirely from simply raising a spontaneous slogan or holding up a flag," adding that "even if the foreign band prepared the video on their own initiative, it could have been confirmed in advance through rehearsals at the very least."

He warned that "conveying historically contested content as if it were one-sided fact is not appropriate," and that "if the organizers were aware of this content and still allowed such subtitles, it will be difficult for them to avoid responsibility."

Massive Attack took the stage at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Incheon on Saturday, performing a reinterpretation of "Sidaeyugam," a hit by Seo Taiji and Boys.

The performance was accompanied by footage of pro-democracy movements including the May 18 Democratization Movement, along with a message on the stage screen declaring that "K-pop was born in an era of resistance against dictatorship and corruption." The video also featured images of world leaders including US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posing critical questions about entrenched and corrupt power.

Massive Attack also performed "Sidaeyugam" with similar pro-democracy footage at a concert at Veikkaus Arena in Helsinki, Finland, in May. At the time, the band posted on social media: "The work of Seo Taiji and Boys, pioneers of K-pop, challenged state censorship while at the same time creating a global genre."

Since forming in 1988, Massive Attack has consistently delivered social commentary — on war, human rights, refugees and the climate crisis — alongside music that blends electronic sounds with rock.

jshan@heraldcorp.com