On 4 April President Yoon Suk Yeol was ousted from office by Korea’s Constitutional Court following his attempt to impose martial law on 3 December 2024. The following conversation between Hoduk Hwang and Jason Barker took place between 14 April and 5 May. Topics included the upcoming presidential elections on 3 June and the broader state of Korea’s domestic politics.

From past experience, we have come to recognize a hard truth: no liberal government, however well-intentioned, will devote serious attention to class politics unless there exists a well-organized progressive party and representatives capable of continuously articulating a transformative agenda.

—Hoduk Hwang

Jason Barker:  On April 4, Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled unanimously to remove President Yoon Suk Yeol from office. How significant is this decision, and what implications will the judges’ ruling have, if any, for the politics of South Korea and the election of a new president?

Hoduk Hwang: I see four main dimensions to this question:

1. Domestic Dimension: Overcoming Exception and Restoring Constitutional Order. The verdict can be understood as both a confirmation of the fragility of Korea’s 1987 constitutional system and its strong pull toward democratic restoration. However, it also exposed domestic divisions that may be difficult to heal.

A stark ideological divide based on age—particularly between those in their 40s–50s and those in their 60s–70s—became evident. Additionally, a trend of increasing conservatism among segments of the 20s–30s generation, especially among young men, has clearly intensified since the last presidential election.

The emergence of a young, pro-democracy group led largely by women in their 20s–30s—who pushed for impeachment, supported farmers’ protests, and led overnight demonstrations in the snow outside the president’s residence in Hannam-dong—also revealed a latent divide within that same generation, particularly among men. The rise of young male conservatism is not unique to Korea but part of a global phenomenon. It may serve as a critical lesson for progressive politics in other countries facing the aftermath of neoliberalism.

Over the four months from martial law to the president’s removal, it became clear that at least 30% of the population in Korea would accept virtually any form of ideology, violence, or extra-legal governance as long as it was under the banner of “conservatism.” This distorted and complicated the impeachment process. However, compared to the Cold War-era dominance of the right and anti-communist absolutism, this group is now clearly a minority. Though the emergence of a “new young right” hoped for by the impeached president and his party presents troubling signs, it was not a decisive factor.

2. Regional Order: Anti-Communist Rhetoric and Shifting Threat Perceptions. The ideological restrictions and aggressive rhetoric based on the threat from North Korea were once again repeated. Evidence emerged suggesting that Yoon and the coup-affiliated faction deliberately provoked North Korea to justify martial law. The political incitement of past decades—labeling pro-democracy forces as anti-state or pro-communist—was attempted again, but with reduced impact, as the primary target of anti-communism has shifted from North Korea to China.

This also showed that fabricated links between the Gwangju Uprising of May 1980 and North Korea no longer hold persuasive power in Korean society. During this crisis period, North Korea ceased all provocations, including the launching of trash balloons toward the South.

Unlike in 1980, the U.S. under the Biden administration voiced criticism of martial law. Even Donald Trump, after taking office, avoided sending any message that could be interpreted as foreign interference in Korea’s political autonomy. Despite harsh anti-China rhetoric, China maintained a very cautious and restrained commentary. Japan, although clearly favorable to the Yoon regime, also confined its commentary within the boundaries of democratic values.

Considering Korea’s historical geopolitical entanglement with six powerful neighboring countries, such diplomatic restraint is highly unusual. These countries seemed to share the belief that Korea would soon regain control and that the post-martial law situation would not pose a fundamental threat to regional order.

That said, the rise of overt anti-China sentiment dominating public media and political discourse for several months may pose some challenges for Korea-China relations. Meanwhile, the growing closeness between Russia and North Korea is likely to create further geopolitical instability for Korea. However, a shift from value-based diplomacy to pragmatic diplomacy may help calm some of these tensions.

3. International Dimension: A Global Rightward Shift. This incident shows that Korea is no exception to the global trend of far-right resurgence. Korea’s long-standing pro-American posture, centered on anti-communism and restricted sovereignty, has created political and economic conditions that make it vulnerable to the very effects of American rightward shifts represented by Trump.

The anti-impeachment camp waving both the Stars and Stripes and the Taegeukgi (Korean flag) culminated symbolically when the ousted president wore a red baseball cap with the words “Make Korea Great Again” written on it. The attempted storming of the trial court by protesters, mimicking the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, was a powerful visual echo.

Anti-China demonstrators opposing the impeachment even chanted slogans and waved “Stop the Steal” placards identical to Trump supporters.

4. Implications for Korean Politics and the Presidential Election. On March 20, 2025, Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with leading opposition candidate Lee Jae-myung. Some interpreted this meeting as a signal that “Samsung has chosen to support the restoration of constitutional order and democracy.” During this politically sensitive moment, while awaiting the impeachment ruling, Lee Jae-myung stated: “When Samsung does well, investors thrive.” It was a moment in which the democratic citizen of the public square was redefined as a self-actualizing investor concerned with near-future market success.

By reframing the relationship between corporations and citizens—or between corporations and labor—as one between corporations and investors, Lee declared a pro-business, pragmatic stance. He also hinted at what kind of citizenry might emerge after the return to constitutional normalcy.
Subsequently, Lee was acquitted in his second trial regarding election law violations and now holds more than double the support of any other candidate. Regardless of the eventual conservative nominee—likely a political “avatar” of Yoon—it appears highly unlikely that the People Power Party will win the presidency.

Despite Korea’s robust manufacturing sector and accumulated financial capital, the past 30 years have deepened economic polarization and generational divides. While the 1987 democratic system briefly triumphed over the neoliberal system ushered in by the 1997 IMF crisis, unresolved issues since 1997 could allow similar emergencies to repeat in different forms. Korea now represents a quintessential case of global capitalism, where political and gender-based backlashes have converged.

The next president will not only face the task of ending a domestic “insurrection,” but also confront broader global capitalist challenges. Korea has confronted a crisis first; how it understands and overcomes that crisis could serve as a global historical lesson.

JB:  Things are still very unsettled and, as you say, although Lee Jae-myung the Democratic Party leader is favourite win the presidential election on June 3, the “Trump factor” is coming to overshadow the domestic agenda; not just Korea’s, but all the countries in the region, not to mention the wider world.

I’d like to shift the discussion to domestic politics because, as you say, although Lee Jae-myung’s election would provide a more“pragmatic” approach and some stability in a precarious economic climate, I suggest to you that Lee Jae-myung won’t be capable of making any progressive political moves should he become president. However, before we move on, let me ask you about the question of the Trump trade tariffs.

With Trump obviously we are dealing with very short-term and “experimental” policies that can be revised or completely shelved from one day to the next. Nonetheless, on 11 April the Korean government announced it was going to provide an additional 9 trillion won ($6 billion US dollars) in finance support to Korean exporters facing Trump’s tariffs. This is an extremely passive and conservative response by a discredited Korean administration to the unprovoked economic aggression of the United States, an aggression all the more nonsensical given Korea’s pivotal role as a strategic military ally. Assuming Lee Jae-myung wins the presidency, how much room will he have to reset trade relations with China and work more cooperatively with other countries in the region? The present government is obviously content to let the US President dictate its export policies. How much is this passive-conservative masochism in economic policy likely to carry over into the next government?

HH:  That’s exactly right about the progressive parties.

The progressive party movement—once a powerful legacy of South Korea’s 1987 democratization—has centered more on labor rights than institutional reform. Since the Kim Dae-jung regime, which took the lead on unification issues, it has been the progressive parties’ focus on labor-class agendas that has most clearly distinguished them from the centrist-conservative Democratic Party.

But over the past five years, it has entered a crisis of survival. The Justice Party, formerly the most prominent progressive force, illustrates this decline. While the party addressed key labor issues, such as the Severe Accident Punishment Act, its public identity became more associated with young feminist activism than with workers, which led to a perception disconnect and diminished public support. Progressive parties are now growing distant not only from the increasingly conservative younger generation, but also from the 386 generation, their longtime supporters.

This shift, combined with a growing backlash against progressive politics among young men, contributed to a rightward shift in the 20s–30s male demographic during the last presidential election. Mirroring trends in Europe, the U.S. and Japan, South Korea’s progressive movement has become mired in gender-based polarization and culture war dynamics. This is exemplified by Sim Sang-jung’s disappointing 2.37% vote share in 2022 (down from 6.17% in 2017) and the Justice Party’s failure to secure a single seat in the 21st National Assembly, despite previously holding six. With Yoon Suk Yeol winning by just 0.73%, the Justice Party was widely blamed for splitting the progressive vote. In the upcoming election, it is doubtful that any progressive party will even field a presidential candidate, let alone run a competitive campaign.

In the last general election, Lee Jae-myung proposed an electoral alliance to progressive parties. Some, including the Progressive Party, Basic Income Party, and Social Democratic Party, joined. The Justice Party did not. Should these parties remain marginal in key moments—especially presidential elections—Lee may conclude that supporting them offers no political benefit. That would be a mistake. But it also reflects reality: progressive politics in Korea has historically emerged from bottom-up struggle, not top-down cultivation.

Even the much-cited 386 generation, which spanned both radical and moderate progressives, never received substantive institutional support from the Democratic Party. The symbolic nature of this “support” was evident in the collapse of the party-list system and the narrow, often transactional role progressives were allowed to play.

Nonetheless, in a political landscape dominated by conservative interests in government, business, media, and the judiciary, progressive parties have long played the role of agenda-setters—pulling the Democratic Party leftward and bringing overlooked issues into mainstream debate. Without this vanguard, reforms are likely to stall in a polarized environment. Even if Lee Jae-myung gains control of both the legislature and the presidency, any reforms pursued—if pursued at all—may remain surface-level, aimed at symptoms rather than structural problems. In the absence of a robust progressive flank, moderate figures will become the new target of right-wing attacks, leading to paralysis and eventual disillusionment.

 

Lee Jae-myung’s Governing Style and Economic Orientation

Lee favors a swift executive action—an approach that worked in local governments like Seongnam and Gyeonggi Province, where scale and complexity were more manageable. But the Republic of Korea, embedded in global systems, presents a different challenge. His presidency may end up resembling a second Moon Jae-in administration, marked by limited reform under pressure.

Economically, Lee appeals to the middle class, especially those who own a single apartment in Seoul or Gyeonggi and participate in the stock market or aspire to. His approach is antagonistic to forces seen as disruptive to capital markets and focused on accelerating capital flows, with the aim of redistributing modest gains to a base of self-investing citizens.

 

Geopolitical and Trade Outlook: Korea Between China and the U.S.

If elected, Lee would likely seek to recalibrate relations with China. Triangular trade among Korea, China, and Japan played a vital role in Korea’s rise to developed nation status. While Korea-China economic relations expanded steadily since the early 1990s Northern Policy, they were derailed by President Park Geun-hye’s THAAD deployment. Korea’s division system often privileges military alliances over economic rationale.

Since then, U.S.-China decoupling has intensified, and a second Trump administration looks more aggressive. Ironically, Trump’s tariff belligerence may push Korea, China, and Japan into closer alignment. On April 4, 2025, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz criticized Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and described a handshake between Korean, Chinese, and Japanese trade ministers as symbolizing a “historic shift.” He called it one of the most “shocking images” he had seen—three nations discussing trilateral free trade cooperation in open defiance of U.S. pressure.

Unlike the U.S., China’s long political cycles enable a strategic patience in economic policy. If China maintains its course, the regional gray zone will widen. Countries like Korea and Japan may delay firm alignment, and Trump’s protectionist experiments may fizzle. Though China is cast as an adversary under the U.S.-led order, it remains Korea and Japan’s immediate neighbor. Much like the U.S. cannot permanently antagonize Canada or Mexico, Korea and Japan cannot sustain a purely oppositional stance toward China.

 

Rethinking Regional Integration and U.S. Alliances

If Lee positions Korea as a mediator, a Korea-China-Japan FTA could advance rapidly—potentially serving as leverage in negotiations with Washington. Anti-China sentiment surged during President Park’s ouster, but the 40-year trajectory of East Asian economic integration is not easily reversed by short-term crises or even a decade of geopolitical tension.

Today, Korea, China, and Japan compete in similar industrial sectors. Yet, the collapse of global supply chains and the rise of protectionism are forcing renewed interest in regional political-economic blocs. Once distorted into fascist visions during World War II, such frameworks may now offer pragmatic alternatives.

Lee is unlikely to depart from Korea’s pro-U.S. orientation, but he will not lead the charge in Washington’s confrontation with Beijing as Yoon did. Rising from factory laborer to civil rights lawyer and presidential contender, Lee has combined hardline political stances with a pragmatic, conciliatory approach to economic policy, sometimes to his detriment, as seen in the real estate development scandals.

Korea’s geographic proximity to China brings both opportunity and risk. The U.S. alliance has shaped Korea’s political-economic subordination, but there have been moments of strategic rebalancing—as under President Roh Moo-hyun, who traded military concessions for economic gains like the KORUS FTA. If Japan leans further into “economic masochism,” Korea—with U.S. troops on its soil—won’t be immune. The U.S. has long encouraged Korea and Japan to compete for its geopolitical favor. Yet under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, cooperation between Korea and Japan flourished, strengthening the regional economic zone.

There may still be political temptation to revive historical disputes with Japan during moments of domestic instability. But the effects are likely to be symbolic and short-lived. Nationalist sentiment within Korea’s moderate-progressive bloc runs deep—but it’s not without historical justification.

Let’s return to the first question.

It will be important to see how the next administration handles the politics of identity—most notably the anti-discrimination law, which has come to symbolize this agenda. (Despite high hopes under the previous administration, almost nothing was achieved, and the issue provoked a massive backlash, contributing to the Democratic Party’s loss of power.)

Likewise, close attention should be paid to debates around a four-day workweek—where Lee Jae-myung’s Democratic Party and the People Power Party have clashed. (The PPP, which initially criticized Lee’s proposal, has now floated its own 4.5-day alternative, despite lacking a clear presidential candidate.)

We should also watch where Lee’s ambiguous stance on basic income and capital market regulation ultimately lands.

Very soon, we will begin to see more clearly the nature of the incoming government, as well as the tasks—and perhaps the fate—that await the progressive parties. In South Korea, where the pressure of anti-communism has long been intense, progressive party movements have traditionally found more room to maneuver under Democratic administrations. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party’s reforms are likely to remain limited. And now, rather than confining themselves to anti-anti-communist messaging (“We’re not communists”), progressive parties may begin to operate more freely—stepping into spaces where they can articulate genuinely vanguard agendas.

JB: Maybe we could turn away from the bigger picture and consider some grassroots domestic issues. Among the defining political issues in South Korea is the question of land. Korea’s domestic economy since the 1990s has been notoriously subject to real estate speculation and real estate bubbles, which in 1997 had catastrophic consequences with the Asian financial crisis. It seems that with Trump’s “protectionism” and “anti-globalisation” rhetoric, along with other global supply chain shocks brought about by Covid, the domestic real estate sector only looks likely to strengthen its stranglehold over the lives of ordinary Koreans.

If you travel around Korea, especially around the northwest, there’s a complete absence of town planning and a shockingly decadent attitude to urban development. One minute you’ll be driving through a ghost town, where the entire town comprises empty and dilapidated buildings ready for demolition, and then two kilometres down the road there will appear a recently constructed plot of multi-storey residential buildings, shopping centres or depots. It’s demoralizing to reflect upon how little these constructions actually serve the lives of young people, who as with all the developed countries of the world struggle even to be able to rent apartments, let alone buy them.

This is maybe a difficult question to articulate properly because what we’re talking about here is not the question of land per se, but the question of the production and circulation of capital in general. The real estate business plays a huge role in how the banks retain their liquidity and the Korean economy stays afloat. A real estate crisis = a banking crisis = a social crisis, as happened in the Asian financial crisis of 1997, when millions of families went bankrupt overnight. The crisis left profound social scars, and many thousands of people committed suicide as a result.

 How has the question of people’s land rights and access to land informed Korean politics of, for example, the 386 generation? It should be pointed out that within living memory, before Korea’s industrialization in the 1960s, most Korean families would have either lived and worked in rural communities or come to the big cities in search of work. There is an organisation that I’m sure you’re aware of, The Korean National Women Farmers Association (전국여성농민회총연합). They are allied with the parliamentary opposition. They are an organisation fighting the impact of globalization and neoliberalism on the rural economy, and for the integrity of Korean agriculture and for women farmers. However, they also take political positions, like for instance against Yoon Suk Yeol. They organised a hunger strike in protest against his attempt to impose martial law and were very dedicated in organising protests last December.

HH: South Korea is often labeled “The Republic of Real Estate,” “The Republic of Apartments,” or a “Concrete Utopia.” Your question touches on a vast and profound set of issues—the mode of wealth accumulation in Korea, the reproduction of class structures, the operational dynamics of Korean finance, the patterns of uneven development and regional inequality, and the division and potential solidarity among labor, peasant, and feminist movements.

We must first examine how the Korean middle class was formed. Today, two-thirds of household wealth in Korea is tied to real estate. The gap between those who own property and those who do not is wide, particularly among individuals over 40, the self-employed, and high-income earners. Before global financialization, owning a home or land was virtually the only available method of accumulating wealth.

Although younger generations are increasingly investing in financial assets such as stocks, cryptocurrencies, and bonds—commonly through Western markets, in what Koreans call “Seohak Ants”—the deep-seated belief that real estate is the most secure form of wealth persists. Unlike Japan, where the real estate myth collapsed in the 1980s, Korea’s obsession with property continues unabated.

As of March 2024, the average household wealth stood at approximately KRW 540.22 million (roughly $378,000), with liabilities of KRW 91.28 million (around $64,000). Physical assets—predominantly real estate—make up 75.2% of total assets. Compared to the United States (28.5%), Japan (37%), and the United Kingdom (46.2%), South Korea’s over-reliance on real estate is extreme. This pathological dependence on property is not incidental; it created political monstrosities like Yoon Suk Yeol. (Similarly, the previous Moon Jae-in administration was punished at the ballot box after infuriating the public with runaway housing prices.)

 

Real Estate, Class Reproduction, and Intergenerational Conflict

Despite repeated debates about moving the administrative capital, Seoul remains the epicenter of elite universities, major corporations, and government institutions. The relentless concentration of high-value labor, corporate headquarters, and real estate investments into Seoul has created a vicious cycle of asset inflation and population convergence.

The price-to-income ratio in Seoul has reached 25.1, meaning an average worker must save every penny for 25 years to afford an apartment—a figure surpassing famously expensive cities like New York (14x), Paris (17.8x), and London (14.8x).

In 2023, households led by people under 29 earned an average annual income of KRW 41.23 million ($28,850). After deducting living and non-consumption expenses, the available savings were about KRW 13.89 million ($9,720) annually. At Seoul’s average apartment price of KRW 1.19957 billion ($839,400), it would take 86 years to buy a home.

In the elite “Gangnam 3 Districts,” the average housing prices are absurd:

Seocho District: KRW 3.14043 billion ($2.197 million)

Gangnam District: KRW 2.70634 billion ($1.892 million)

Songpa District: KRW 2.02813 billion ($1.418 million)

Even saving every dollar for 100 years would not make home ownership possible for ordinary people. The ruins you observed in northwestern Seoul are a direct outcome of this system. Major corporations cluster south of Seoul, where the mantra is to own “a solid one-unit property” in high-value zones. Aside from restricted greenbelt areas, what remains are undesirable regions abandoned to decay.

The large-scale public housing projects that benefited the 386 Generation are now a distant dream for young people. The myth of real estate-fueled social mobility—the so-called Korean Dream—has turned into a closed staircase.

Post-war land reform dismantled the landlord-tenant hierarchy and catalyzed rapid economic development through increased population, education, and urbanization. Yet, since the 1990s, wealth concentration via real estate has led to plummeting birthrates and entrenching class privilege. For nearly two decades, the children of the wealthy have leveraged massive educational investments to dominate social mobility pathways.

 

Real Estate and the Crisis of Korean Politics

The centrist-liberal Democratic Party of Korea, often mislabeled as a “progressive” party abroad, has been haunted by the specter of real estate inflation every time it has governed. While the party officially promoted inter-Korean reconciliation and a more equitable economic order, it simultaneously opened the floodgates to capital market liberalization, labor market flexibilization, and free trade agreements.

Rather than empowering workers or shareholders, wealth increasingly accumulated in property markets. Education spending, entrepreneurial capital, and retirement savings became utterly reliant on real estate.

As you pointed out, real estate crises in Korea swiftly metastasize into banking crises and full-blown social collapses—as witnessed in the 1997 IMF disaster. This historical trauma enshrined real estate price stability as the sacred mission of all governments, even if it meant chronically restricting housing supply.

Former President Lee Myung-bak, a former real estate developer, rode into office in 2008 promising national prosperity through redevelopment. In early 2024, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, eyeing a presidential bid, recklessly lifted transaction restrictions in Gangnam—only to trigger localized price explosions, popular outrage, and political humiliation. In Korea, real estate must rise—but not too much—in an impossible balancing act.

Even Eric Hobsbawm, in The Age of Extremes, credited Korea’s miracle growth to land reforms and educational egalitarianism. The major events linked to “equal land rights” were the 1950 land reform and the property tax strengthening policies under President Roh Moo-hyun. Yet, the recently impeached Yoon Suk Yeol secured power by pledging to dismantle property taxes.

With the repeated defeats of Roh and Moon’s reformist efforts, Korea faces a grim future: both conservative and liberal parties appear reluctant to challenge the property oligarchy. Progressives may still champion wealth redistribution, but their electoral prospects remain dismal.

 

Young Men, Real Estate, and Reactionary Politics

The radicalization of young Korean men is inseparable from the housing crisis. Traditionally, Korean marriages required the groom to provide housing while the bride furnished the home. According to a 2025 survey, the average marriage cost KRW 362 million ($253,000), with housing costs accounting for over 90% of that sum. (Naturally, given that marriage agencies predominantly serve a particular social class, this survey should be understood as representing primarily middle- and upper-class cases.)

Grooms and their families are expected to contribute roughly twice as much as brides, reinforcing intergenerational wealth gaps. Young men’s frustration—even within a male-favoring labor market—has metastasized into anti-feminist backlash and far-right political support. Thus, South Korea’s real estate crisis is not merely an economic challenge; it is a demographic and democratic time bomb.

 

Women, Peasant Movements, and the Rise of Environmental Solidarity

Around the 1980s, Korean social movements, including student activism, splintered into three main directions: some activists entered industrial labor sites; others shifted toward civil society organizing; and yet another group turned toward the countryside, joining peasant struggles.

The peasant movement, far from being marginal, has been a vital asset of Korean social activism since the colonial era of the early 20th century.
One must recall that Korea’s first modern revolution—the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894—is often recognized by historians as the true starting point of modern Korean history.

Since the 1960s and 70s, under Park Chung-hee’s developmental dictatorship, forces opposing institutional politics were known as jeya (在野), literally meaning “those who move across the farming fields.” Following his release from prison, the dissident poet Kim Ji-ha, along with Bishop Ji Hak-soon and peasant activist Jang Il-soon, founded the “Wonju Camp,” eventually establishing Hansalim, an organic farming cooperative that continues today.
It was within the peasant movement that resistance to the Uruguay Round, the WTO system, and FTAs was most fervent. Indeed, Korea’s ecological movement can be traced directly to the struggles of its peasants, with many women joining Hansalim as both consumers and activists advocating organic agriculture and environmental sustainability.

In November 2016, the Korean Peasants League (KPL) famously crafted a massive funeral bier bearing the inscription “Collapse of Rice Prices, Resign Park Geun-hye” and paraded it through central Seoul. Soon after, they organized the “Jeon Bong-jun Brigade,” an effort to drive nine tractors into the capital—a vivid foreshadowing of the Park administration’s collapse and impeachment.

The Korean National Women Farmers Association (KWPA), founded in 1989, was itself a direct outgrowth of the 1987 democratization movement.

KWPA has consistently taken radical stances: it opposed the import of U.S. beef in 2008, fueling the mass protests that accelerated the downfall of the Lee Myung-bak government, and it stood firmly behind the Justice for the “Comfort Women” movement in 2020.

Can feminist, peasant, and civic movements truly converge?

According to a report published by the Federation of Korean Industries in January 2025, South Korea’s female employment rate stands at 61.4%, ranking 31st out of 38 OECD countries—a decline from its 27th-place ranking in 2003 despite numerical improvements.

Let’s return to that cold winter night on December 21, 2024. One of the most electrifying moments during the impeachment protests against Yoon Suk Yeol came when the KPL and KWPA, united under the “Jeon Bong-jun Brigade,” led a convoy of over 30 tractors and 50 trucks into Seoul, demanding Yoon’s immediate arrest, resignation, and imprisonment. This action was met with overwhelming solidarity from young women activists and citizens, many of whom stayed up through the night, watching the scenes unfold via KPL’s YouTube channel.

In Korea, rural women occupy the harshest edges of structural inequality—a form of internal colonialism within an already stratified society. It was these most marginalized women, from both rural and urban peripheries, who, in a moment of crisis, shone like a sudden flash of light.

Whether this solidarity proves ephemeral or evolves into a sustained movement—combining feminism, environmental activism, and anti-discrimination struggles—remains to be seen. Yet it is clear that this eruption of solidarity had deep historical and contemporary foundations.

JB: That’s an illuminating answer: the “young male resentment” and political support for Yoon is a direct outcome of this “Concrete Utopia” of real estate.

I’d like to explore the land issue a bit more, by showing you a couple of photographs I took last week. These are two images of land at the back of my university campus, on a very small portion of ground about 5 x 20 metres, situated between the university grounds and the public highway. It’s a very small area, secluded from passers-by, where someone has prepared the ground for cultivation. I don’t know the circumstances, but regardless of who owns the land I thought its symbolism might reveal something interesting. The first photograph is of a sign stating that “illegal farming of this land is prohibited” and that offenders will be prosecuted. The sign suggests that the land is owned by a private company in Gyeonggi province, rather than by the local council.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second photograph shows that, in spite of the official warning, someone has actually cultivated the land regardless.

It seems that the person cultivating the land either owns it or has paid to use it; or else they have ignored the warning. I like the second possibility, because it suggests that Koreans might be less inclined to submit to authority when it comes to the commons and their national heritage. What’s your understanding of what’s going on in these images?

Incidentally, it’s important to clarify that in Korea the cultivation of land in urban areas is widespread and occurs on a far larger scale than in other industrialised countries. Public allotments in the UK, which are council-owned land set aside for non-commercial cultivation by private persons, are still fairly widespread, and have retained a certain esteem since the Second World War and the so-called “Dig for Victory” campaign. Council-owned allotments in Korea are increasingly being given up for real estate development, often in response to the lack of affordable housing. The fact that Koreans nonetheless retain a strong connection with the land is striking and no doubt ideologically significant.

HH:  I want to bring to mind the large-scale civil engineering projects of the Lee Myung-bak regime, known as the “Four Major Rivers Restoration Project” of 2009—2011. The organic farming and local agriculture I mentioned earlier were precisely taking place on these public lands along the four rivers, particularly the Han River. According to the civic group Environmental Justice, over 80% of the organic farmland in Paldang (Paldang is where the tributaries of the Han River converge), which supplied Seoul with organic vegetables, was destroyed, dealing a massive blow to decades-old farming communities and organic farmer cooperatives. How much of these commons—forged through a long tradition of agrarian struggle, intersecting with organic farming and local food movements—was annihilated by urban engineering megaprojects?

The scene you witnessed and the two photos you shared are deeply symbolic. To me, they are familiar. Urban cultivation on public land was common among my parents’ generation—people who, though urbanized through rapid modernization, were once peasants. As your images show, there are still farmers and citizens in the metropolitan area who seek to cultivate the land, suggesting the potential for urban agriculture, perhaps even akin to Cuba’s model.

I don’t know if you intended this, but the landowner ”LH” stands for Korea Land & Housing Corporation, a state-owned enterprise—or quasi-state entity—under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Its origins trace back to 1962, just after Park Chung-hee seized power. Some scholars even trace its lineage to the Chosun Housing Corporation, established in 1941 under Japanese colonial rule to address housing shortages from rapid urban migration.

In fact, post-colonial Korea had an unusually high proportion of state/public land, due to abandoned Japanese properties (jeok-san, or “enemy assets”) and ownerless land after the war. While ownership was difficult to obtain, cultivation rights were widely exercised. Public corporations like LH were later created to manage this land for cheap housing supply—and they still hold vast holdings.

The right to cultivate was a crucial entitlement in premodern Korea, but under capitalism, it has become an unprotected right. Yet South Korea’s “Agricultural Land Act” (농지법) strictly restricts non-farmers from owning farmland. The traditional principle that ”those who work the land should keep it” continues to impose significant restrictions on urban land ownership, which is why the farmers’ movement remains vital in Korea—not just as resistance to globalization, but also against homogenizing capitalism and real estate speculation.

In 1980, nearly 30% of South Korea’s population were farmers, but today that figure has dwindled to a mere 4%. This stems partly from Korea’s rapid industrialization, but is equally a product of global capitalism’s encroachment. The old resistance has shrunk to a small-scale struggle—yet it remains unvanquished.

If we can seize the moment when, following Yoon’s coup attempt, solidarity between institutional politics, labor movements, peasant struggles, and feminism blazed through the sea of light sticks, then Korean democracy still breathes at the heart of possibility. Of course, it won’t be easy. As Han Kang, last year’s Nobel laureate, posed: ”Can the past aid the present? Can the dead save the living?” Here, we might reverse the positions of past and present to ask the question anew. This paradox demands to be confronted—in all its contradictions.

JB: It seems I misunderstood. I wasn’t aware of LH. The way the sign was worded suggested it was the name of a private real estate company or leasing agency.

Han Kang recalls Marx in the 18th Brumaire: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” The dead generations are a heavy burden, rather than friendly fairies that weave between us. I think it’s fair to say that a great disturbance of all the vested interests in Korean society that we are discussing here may be required in order to save the living.

Controversially, in the same text, Marx says “let the dead bury their dead.” I don’t necessarily want to bring Marx into our discussion, but if we were to explore the implications of his statement for contemporary Korea then we might have reason to be extremely pessimistic. Especially since what I believe Marx means is closer to Walter Benjamin when the latter says, “The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious.”

On the other hand, for Korea such statements may seem naive, orientalising and racist, even. European Marxists surely have little to teach Koreans when it comes to burying their dead or being threatened with the prospect of barbarism “if the enemy is victorious.” It reminds me of Donald Trump threatening Palestinians with annihilation. While Koreans certainly have a lot to lose today compared to the post-war and Korean War periods, it’s not as if violent class war scares them or makes them cowards. On the contrary, why else were so many hundreds of people willing to risk their own safety by coming onto the streets on 3 December to oppose Yoon’s coup attempt?

HH: Europe’s historical experience offers significant insights for Korea as it struggles to overcome its own state of exception. We Koreans, too, live under the weight of inheritances from the age of Marx and Benjamin. The proposition advanced by the writer Han Kang—that the dead can save the living—directly mirrors Walter Benjamin’s counterpoint: that it is the living who must redeem the dead, that is, history itself. In truth, the relationship is reciprocal. The dead and the living must save one another. Only when the living take responsibility for rescuing history can the dead return—symbolically or politically—to rescue the present.

As Han Kang’s fiction makes clear, Korea’s long struggle over “history” since 1987 has been a vital source of democratic renewal. For Korea’s progressive movements, history remains a valuable political resource. By contrast, for conservative forces burdened with the legacies of colonial collaboration and dictatorship, history returns again and again—not as guidance but as a recurring nightmare. Even at moments when the far-right People Power Party and the center-liberal Democratic Party appear indistinguishable in terms of economic or foreign policy, their fundamentally opposed relationships to history remain sharply delineated. In this respect, the Korean experience may contain something Europe lacks: an ever-present, postcolonial, and post-dictatorial confrontation with history—one that refuses to remain in the past. Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History is arguably among the most cited, most consciously engaged, and most actively practiced texts in contemporary Korean political thought over the past fifty years.

How, then, should we understand the actions of those citizens who gathered at the National Assembly on December 3, confronting the coup-aligned military and police, and later sparking mass mobilizations that led to a parliamentary vote for impeachment? Can such events be translated—or transposed—into the language of class struggle? It is not an easy question. But one thing is clear: those assembled were acutely aware of their collective power, even amid differences of class, gender, and generation. They understood that only through solidarity could victory be achieved.

In English, the word “violence” and the German concept Gewalt—which encompasses both “violence” and “power”—carry distinct connotations. The events in Korea on December 3, when citizens spontaneously gathered at the National Assembly to confront the military, and the mass protests that followed, seem to operate on both dimensions of Gewalt: as an experience of violence and as an assertion of sovereign power.

The initial defense of the Assembly by civilians was shaped by Korea’s long memory of military coups and civil unrest, culminating in the 5.18 Gwangju Uprising. It was the specter of overwhelming state violence—entire societies engulfed in militarized repression—that drew citizens to act preemptively. Yet, the demonstrations that followed—millions strong—were deliberately peaceful. This distinction is crucial: the people succeeded in separating their own sovereign “potency” from the regime’s “violence.” They made visible, in the streets of Yeouido, a Leviathan-like embodiment of popular sovereignty—an assertion not of chaos, but of collective will.

That said, Korea’s crisis—its prolonged state of exception—is far from resolved. Even as the opposition candidate Lee Jae-myung appears poised to win the presidency, the Supreme Court has in the last few days overturned a lower court acquittal in his recent legal case, reversing its own prior jurisprudence on freedom of expression to remand the case with an implicit finding of guilt. The initial phase of the Yoon crisis resembled a praetorian coup—but what has followed bears the hallmarks of a broader insurrection, now involving not only the ruling party but also mass mobilizations by far-right crowds.

What has emerged is a “composite coup”—a convergence of the military, police, prosecutors, the ruling party, conservative media, reactionary Christian groups, and, crucially, the judiciary. The fact that President Yoon was released from legal jeopardy, while opposition leaders now face arrest and disqualification, illustrates how the juridical arm of the state has aligned itself with entrenched elites to dismantle democratic safeguards.

Perhaps this outcome was inevitable as long as the institutions shaped by the impeached president—across the executive, judiciary, and legislature—remained intact. Korean citizens are now awakening to another grim realization: the judiciary, or “robes aristocracy,” has become one of the core assets of the conservative bloc. For some Koreans—and for progressive intellectuals around the world—this unfolding scenario echoes the nightmare of Lula’s imprisonment in Brazil. Others, while acknowledging the differences, might recall how Trump’s judicial crisis was effectively nullified by his electoral victory. These cases serve as a sobering reminder that in moments of political upheaval or resurgence, legal accountability can be intensified, manipulated, or altogether erased.

Of course, no one can predict how things will unfold from here. But I do not take a pessimistic view of the situation. If anything, this state of exception has clarified what truly governs: the sovereign power of the people and the authority of elected bodies—namely, the National Assembly. Moments of crisis reveal not only what determines events, but also what forces were hidden beneath the surface. We are reminded of Cicero’s well-known maxim, exceptio probat regulam—the exception proves the rule. In this exceptional moment, we are compelled to ask: What is the fundamental rule? The principle of popular sovereignty under representative democracy may appear aporetic, but it offers a profound lesson.

Democracy operates on the principle of immanence in a godless time. It is a world without exteriority—a world of the people, by the people, in which the people are the sole sovereigns. Ultimately, events will move in the direction pointed to by the general will of the people.

In the absence of a president, the National Assembly now holds the sole legitimacy of electoral power. And the majority of that body lies in the hands of liberal and progressive forces. In all democratic states, the judiciary is established as an independent power precisely to prevent majoritarian rule from becoming totalizing. But when the judiciary—especially one oriented toward preserving the legal status quo—attempts to exercise supra-legal power, to the point of threatening the principle of immanence, the majority will respond. Through parliament, the people will attempt to usher in a new lawmaking moment—one that redefines the balance of legal authority.

We might recall how President Franklin Roosevelt responded when his New Deal programs were obstructed by a judiciary that feared socialism: he threatened to expand the number of Supreme Court justices. The public supported him. The Court eventually relented. Similarly, we now witness a Korean Supreme Court—stacked with ten justices appointed by the impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol—handing down a conviction at unprecedented speed against the leading opposition candidate. But the next chapter may involve the impeachment of those very justices, followed by systemic judicial reform.

Although the Korean judiciary expressed regret under progressive administrations for the many judicial executions carried out under Syngman Rhee, the Yushin regime, and Chun Doo-hwan, not a single person was held accountable. The illusion of judicial permanence in the face of shifting political power is beginning to collapse. History may yet record that these judges opened the door to the storm that will soon sweep through what they thought was a windless domain.

One further point should be added—the economic dimension. Korea’s corporate sector has remained conspicuously silent, implicitly supporting an end to this de facto civil conflict. Rarely in Korean history have we seen the business establishment so clearly distanced from the conservative political bloc. This, too, is a significant development.

When Ernst Kantorowicz wrote The King’s Two Bodies, he famously said, “The king never dies”—but what he had in mind was the body politic of parliamentary sovereignty. In Korea today, the biological body of far-right authoritarianism—embodied by Yoon and his faction—still survives. But the institutional body of parliament remains functional. The Korean people still possess the capacity to resist the final blow of the technocratic judiciary. It is the crisis that decides.

The judicial aristocracy of the Supreme Court may believe they are the ones making the decisive judgment. In fact, they are becoming the object of judgment—marked for reform. Who rules? The answer is: we do.

Since our conversation began, labor and peasant organizations in South Korea—alongside the progressive Justice Party—have raised the banner of a “Transitional Era” (Jeonhwan Sidae), nominating an independent progressive candidate for the upcoming presidential elections. From past experience, we have come to recognize a hard truth: no liberal government, however well-intentioned, will devote serious attention to class politics unless there exists a well-organized progressive party and representatives capable of continuously articulating a transformative agenda.

At present, the overwhelming dominance of the “national restoration” narrative—framed around overcoming insurrection—has made it difficult for class to emerge as the final signifier in Korean political discourse. And yet, we must place hope in the possibility that a marginalized progressive minority may still act as a sudden flash of illumination in this crisis.

Featured image: A “national flag rally” in South Korea ahead of the anticipated presidential elections on 3 June 2025. Photo courtesy of oo.ai.

Hoduk Hwang, Jason Barker