By Anna Goodman ’28
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article discusses political violence and mass death.
Ask any of my friends what my interests are and you’re bound to hear “K-Pop” in the top three. It’s true; I’ve been a K-Pop fan for about a third of my life. I even have a blog about it called Married To The Music, both to have an outlet to ramble about my interest and to connect with other fans. I dreamed about taking a vacation to South Korea, thinking of swimming at beaches in Busan, seeing cherry blossoms in Jeju and going to concerts of all my favorite idols in Seoul. And then, on Dec. 3, 2024, at around 9 a.m., this clip came across my social media feed.
It’s about 30 seconds long. A young woman with bobbed hair in a black leather jacket stands in the middle of a crowd of people, parted around her. She’s furious as she grabs the end of an armed soldier’s gun with her bare hands and wrestles for control of it, screaming at him “부끄럽지도 않나?” , or, “Aren’t you ashamed?”
I quickly learned that her name was Ahn Gwi-ryeong, a former news anchor and now politician. She was standing in front of South Korea’s Parliament attempting to prevent the soldiers from forcing their way in. President Yoon Suk-Yeol had just declared a return to martial law, a move which meant that he alone would have military control over the entire country. This law is supposed to be used only in times of immediate national crisis, similar to the “state of emergency” that was declared during the American Civil War. However, in practice, martial law has often been used as part of dictators’ playbooks to assert control without popular support.
It had only been an hour by then. The articles in English were only beginning to trickle in. I couldn’t help it. I kept scrolling. That’s the thing with horror movies, isn’t it? You can’t look away.
But why should you care? What effect does a country halfway around the world have on you, when you’re just trying to pass Statistics and drink your morning coffee in peace without some random K-Pop fan lecturing you?
On Nov. 6, I woke up to the news that Donald Trump had achieved the second term that I hadn’t let myself believe was a possibility. My friend cried on my shoulder. My sister bought a years’ supply of Plan B. My political science mother tried and failed to go back to sleep. I went to class.
I didn’t go to class on Dec. 3, 2024, the day Ahn Gwi-ryeong’s video came across my feed. At first, I sat, frozen in bed, gripping my stuffed animals, curled up in my favorite sweater, arms around my knees.
I had moved to furiously pacing grooves into my floor and updating my news feeds when I saw Ahn Gwi-ryeong say to Reuters, “I felt like I was watching the regression of history”. “And I knew I had to stop it.”
It was at that moment that I realized I too was watching the regression of history, to Jan. 6, 2021. I was sitting on the couch with my mother, watching armed insurrectionists storm our own Capitol building, Confederate flags be waved in the Senate, members of Congress barricade themselves inside to save their lives, just feet away from being murdered by a rampaging mob.
But while I was looking back just a couple years, Gwi-ryeong was looking further to May 18, 1980. That was the last time South Korea was under martial law, when police attacked student protestors at Chonnam University and used bayonets to kill and wound protestors as well as other civilians. The number of protesters then grew into the tens of thousands in the next few days, and in response, the government called in the army. The protesters managed to claim the city of Gwangju with organized militias and forced the soldiers out, forming a committee to run the city in its stead and inspiring similar protests across the country.
The short-lived revolt came to an end on May 27, 1980, when the army used rifles and grenades to break back into the city, killing many people and arresting more. The then-government claimed that around 160 civilians were dead, with slightly fewer wounded. Some modern estimates by academics put the toll at at least ten times that, according to The Washington Post.
But while people like Ahn Gwi-ryeong and I expected to have front-row seats to watch yet another country fall into dictatorship on Dec. 3, 2024, we instead witnessed one of the most incredible acts of collective power I’ve ever seen.
In the face of soldiers armed with machine guns, 190 Members of Parliament, including the President’s own party, raced out of bed in the middle of the night to the Capitol Building, climbing the fences to get inside and immediately vote against the declaration. Political staffers created barricades with furniture and sprayed soldiers who had broken into the assembly with fire extinguishers; others threw chairs and set off loud alarms.
Outside, thousands of civilians, like Ahn Gwi-ryeong, barricaded the doors, helping the politicians climb through and blocking the military from coming any further. And many soldiers outright refused to comply with the orders they’d been given. In Gwangju, as well as across the country, other similar protests were organized in support of the demonstrators. Perhaps people saw it as a second chance; a chance to be on the right side of history.
At around 1 a.m. KRW on Dec. 4, 2024, with the soldiers just a few dozen feet away, the Members of Parliament voted unanimously to suspend martial law, and declared that they would remain in the assembly until the President acquiesced. He gave in three hours later.
From Dec. 5 to Dec. 12, I’d watch, stunned, as all the country’s newspapers condemned the martial law declaration, and as President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached and removed from power. As thousands of citizens came from around the country to demand and then cheer for the verdict, singing K-Pop songs in protest. I have never been prouder to be a fan.
I could go into detail about the exact timeline of events. That’s what this article was originally supposed to be: A coolly detached, unflinchingly professional recap of South Korea’s martial law crisis. But I just couldn’t do it.
I have seen so many times over the last decade, spending my childhood in an America wilting under the shadow of Donald Trump, that passive-voiced, “neutral” reports of unthinkable political violence do us no good. That you can only read between the lines of so many papers that say things like “Protestors Clash with Minneapolis Police over Death of Man in Custody” or “Dozens of Children Killed as Hospital Collapses in Gaza” before you throw your computer across the room in fury. That brushing over the sense of bone-deep horror, of bubbling hope, and then unimaginable pride that I felt in December of 2024 would do a disservice not only to every reader of this paper but to the people of South Korea, who did what America failed to do. Who did not forget their history, and who ensured it would not happen again.
In the four long years ahead of us, we need to remember that nothing is a foregone conclusion. To remember that we too have the power to do what the people of South Korea did. In fact, one song very popular amongst protestors is my favorite K-Pop song of all time, Girls’ Generation’s “Into The New World,” which has the line, “눈앞에선 우리의 거친 길은. 알 수 없는 미래와 벽 바꾸지 않아. 포기할 수 없어”, or, “Our rough path in front of us might have challenges and an unknown future. But we can’t give up,” when translated into English.
As I’ve grown up, my love for K-Pop has grown up with me. I’m as ardent a fan as ever — please believe that it was blasting while I typed this up — but with a deeper respect for the power of music that I gained along the way: the good, the bad and the revolutionary.
I still plan to go to South Korea one day, but not the same way as I did back at the age of 12. One day, I’d like to visit the sites of Japanese occupation in Busan, to learn about the history of shamanistic medicine in Jeju, to walk the streets of Seoul and stand in front of the Parliament building with new eyes. And if I have time, I’d like to go to Gwangju, and lay a wreath down in the Mangweol-dong Cemetery, where many of the students who were killed by military police for fighting for their rights have been laid to rest. I’d like to tell this story. And I’d like to say thank you. 너무, 너무, 감사합니다.
Quill Nishi-Leonard ’27 contributed fact-checking.