Like all other forms of human action, collective action is subject to both rational and emotional processes. Movement participants often find themselves in the grip of emotional charge: anger or indignation at system injustice and ignorance by authorities of activist claims; fear of repression; shame or fear of shame at the prospected image of one's failure to live up to alter's expectations or activist social norms; sorrow, grief or frustration and subsequent anger at the loss of comrades or at failures; euphoria at successes, and the like.

Such emotional experiences punctuate every turn of events in the course of movement activities, sometimes expressing movement participant's perception and evaluation of the status and prospect of collective action and sometimes providing further impetus and energy for subsequent activism. At the same time, movement participants are strategic in choosing among various action alternatives. In such moment of strategic consideration, they do so with regard to consequences of alternative action strategies on movement success.

Consequently, diverse collective action strategies were constantly devised, adopted, re-configured to successfully advance movement causes so as to meet new challenges imposed by counter-maneuvers by opponents and the ebbs and flows of political opportunities, organizational capacities, and public opinion.

Against these backgrounds, this paper attempts to explore a mechanism by which human emotionality establishes a symbiotic relationship with human rationality in enabling collective action, by analyzing the activism-inducing effect of shame as was testified by homage-paying visitors at the tomb of a suicide protester in South Korea.