How is this any different from the Arab Spring? Why should this be silenced while the Arab Spring had to amplified?
You get someone elected, someone who is far from perfect but he's the only likely candidate to win, so what can you do. And then that person has 4 years to screw you over. That's not just.
I think people tend to conflate liberalism (in the classical sense), and democracy. You can have undemocratic liberal states (the Austro-Hungarian empire was a good example).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22451908-the-revolt-of-t...
You may hate something equally under any regime but there's a huge difference when that something is done in a democracy versus basically any other common form or government. In democracies issues can be (are?) solved at the election booth. Not so much in a dictatorship, a monarchy, or any "pseudo-democracy" (see China), etc.
These people were in these very same election booths last year so clearly issues aren't being solved that way.
<rant> Also, we need to step down our high moral horse and stop patronizing other nations by bringing up our holy "democracies". There has been an increasing and almost delusional portrayal of countries like Russia, China, Iran etc. That's not to say they don't have flaws but let's just take a good long look at the mirror before we hop on the <insert non western nation> bashing hype train. </rant>
Edit: formatting
This being said, to this day there is no better real world alternative to democracy. I take it you know very little of how Russia and China work internally. It's going to sound cynical but if you did you'd appreciate the "lesser evil" of western democracy. Think at least of the fact that you're now free to express these opinions, as you do.
You know the upside of democracy? With enough people behind you you can easily install dictatorship. The other way around needs slightly more sacrifices. Pretty sure those people fighting in the Arab spring against their not elected leaders weren't doing it just to jump on the bashing hype train ;).
Sure, South Koreans could wait one more year and solve the problem at the election booth, but protesting solved the problem faster.
The same act can have very different meaning in different contexts. In this case it doesn't feel like those protesters have exhausted their options before jumping to violence. As such this is a condemnable act.