On a bitterly cold December day last year, Jeon Jeehoo decided to join a protest.
After wrapping up her part-time job as an English tutor at a hagwon—a Korean cram school—Jeehoo rushed to the subway. Ordinarily, the trip from her workplace to the National Assembly building in Seoul would take one and a half hours. But the station was in total chaos as crowds of people were also out and about, arguably for the same reason.
Jeehoo hopped on a bus, which made little progress fighting traffic. So she got off midway and started walking along a bridge across a river—one typically only used by cars, not pedestrians—toward the legislature, where thousands were gathering to call for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.
Before participating in this protest and several others later on, Jeehoo meditated on Micah 6:8, which says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” The church cannot turn its back on society, Jeehoo thought.
Trudging across the bridge, the 24-year-old student and InterVarsity ministry leader at Sookmyung Women’s University clutched hand warmers in her pockets to soothe her frigid fingers. A frosty wind slapped her face.
As she drew closer to the protest site, she saw people waving light sticks that flashed bright green, purple, and pink hues in the air. The sounds of upbeat K-pop music—alongside loud cries repeatedly chanting, “Yoon Suk Yeol, step down!”—flowed into her ears.
Courtesy of Jeon JeehooJeehoo’s father, Jaehyung, had arrived at the same protest site earlier that day. The crowd was overwhelming and felt eerily reminiscent of the Itaewon crowd-crush incident in Seoul in 2022, where more than 150 people died in a narrow alley while celebrating Halloween. He tried to text Jeehoo to warn her of the crowd, but cell service on the messaging app KakaoTalk was not working, and phone calls only worked after he left the protest’s vicinity, when the motion to impeach Yoon failed after members of the president’s People Power Party boycotted the vote.
Seven years earlier, the father and daughter had participated in another protest against former president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in March 2017 and charged with bribery, extortion, and abuse of power. As Jeehoo shouted protest slogans demanding Park’s impeachment for hours in the freezing cold, her throat became raw and she tasted blood.
This protest would be similar, Jeehoo surmised. The protest against Park had a solemn atmosphere that was “full of resentment,” she said. But the mood around the National Assembly building was cheerful, with people dancing, singing, and wearing creative costumes.
One week later, when the second motion to impeach Yoon was passed, the mood turned jubilant as thousands of protesters—with an estimated 417,000 people present at its peak—let out a rapturous cheer outside the National Assembly.
Fifty-year-old Moon Chan and his twenty-year-old daughter, Hyein, who had arrived at the protest site feeling anxious and expectant, were among them. Chan had often driven Hyein to K-pop idol concerts but had never attended a single one. At the protest, however, he found himself waving a light stick from her favorite idol group beside her.
Hyein, meanwhile, saw an elderly man dancing to the Girls’ Generation song “Into the New World” when the news broke. A middle-aged woman standing in line for the restroom looked around and quietly took in the scene before saying, “Thank you for your hard work,” to a group of young people near her.
Older generations of Koreans excel in protests, but here they had warmly welcomed elements of younger Korean culture that felt unfamiliar, like singing K-pop songs that were not part of the traditional protest repertoire, Hyein thought. “Seeing their flexibility and willingness to adapt made me realize they were far more open-minded than I had thought,” she said. The Moons remained until evening, snapping photos of themselves with the National Assembly as their backdrop.
Protests have erupted across Seoul in the wake of Yoon Suk Yeol’s ill-fated martial law attempt. Almost every city in the country, from Daejeon to Busan to Jeju, held protests on its streets, outside their city halls, or in front of the Republican Party’s buildings.
Some of the protests were organized by rival political activists who use YouTube to garner supporters and livestream the gatherings. Some were led by civic organizations not affiliated with any religion or political party, such as Candlelight Action, which held the protest Jeehoo and her father participated in. Others arose organically, as angry citizens found each other in plazas and squares.
On December 3, Yoon rocked the country by issuing a nationwide emergency martial law, declaring that there were “anti-state” forces sympathizing with North Korea that threatened to cause South Korea’s downfall. The last time martial law was imposed in the country was in 1979 after Park Chung-hee, the president and a military dictator, was assassinated.
Armed soldiers surrounded the National Assembly building, preventing lawmakers from entering to cast their votes on the martial law declaration, which was formally lifted the next day. Members of the National Assembly then voted to impeach Yoon for abuse of power on December 14, throwing the country into further turmoil.
Tens of thousands of Koreans have since thronged the streets. Intensifying tensions between pro- and anti-Yoon supporters have exacerbated generational and gender-related rifts in Korean society. Many congregated outside the National Assembly, while others demonstrated in front of the People Power Party’s headquarters. Hundreds of Yoon’s supporters and opponents also spent weeks campaigning outside the president’s home in Yongsan, central Seoul.
Yoon’s supporters are predominantly elderly or young men, while those protesting against Yoon largely comprise women in their 20s and 30s.
“Mothers and fathers openly disapprove of their children’s activism, while some young South Koreans speak online of severing ties with their parents over their support of Yoon,” noted a report in the South China Morning Post.
In central Seoul, a large crowd gathered to oppose Yoon’s impeachment, calling the parliament vote invalid and championing for the president’s reinstatement. Pro-Yoon protesters waved American flags and chanted “Stop the Steal” in English while bearing posters with the slogan, even as peddlers hawked bright red MAGA-inspired caps bearing the words “against the unlawful impeachment.”
Yoon’s supporters see similarities in their president’s predicament to that of United States president Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. They say South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party stole the April 2024 legislative election by winning 175 out of 300 seats at the National Assembly. Yoon also suggested that election fraud was the reason why he failed to impose martial law in the country.
Similar splits have occurred in Christian circles. Many evangelical Korean churches are supportive of Yoon, whom they view as pro-America and capable of defending South Korea from communist influences.
One of the most prominent voices in this space is Jun Kwang-hoon, the pastor of Sarang Jeil Church. “If President Yoon hadn’t declared martial law, the country would already be in the hands of North Korea!” he shouted during a demonstration in early January.
Yet close to two-thirds of the pastors polled in a survey last month favored impeachment. Around 700 pastors from the Presbyterian Church of Korea held a public prayer meeting in the Yeouido neighborhood calling for Yoon’s impeachment.
Courtesy of Jeon JeehooBut the Jeons and the Moons have largely been spared these fissures. In fact, rather than tearing them apart, the protests have helped to bridge intergenerational divides between parents and children.
Long before the country’s political unrest, the Jeon family sought each other out. Jeehoo would confide in her parents about struggling to have an intimate relationship with God. They would also chat about interesting books they had read or political developments in the country. Even now, they often share life’s highs and lows with one another.
Since attending the protests, Jeehoo’s parents have stopped labeling younger generations as indifferent to politics and not brave enough to demonstrate publicly against an issue or a person in power.
Sixty-year-old Jaehyung, Jeehoo’s father, experienced martial law firsthand in the ’70s and ’80s, living under Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan’s authoritarian dictatorship, and during the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, where around 200 civilians were killed while protesting against Chun.
As Yoon’s short-lived martial law announcement broke, Jaehyung worried history would repeat itself as younger Koreans seemed less invested in politics.
But when Jaehyung turned up at the National Assembly that cold December day, he was surprised to see so many young Koreans showing up to protest. He felt heartened that young people wanted to mark this significant moment in South Korea’s history.
Joining the protests with her parents and receiving their support for her political activism also made her feel “very happy and proud,” Jeehoo said.
Chan, a member of Onnuri Church, also previously held stereotypes of young Koreans, thinking they lacked historical awareness and preferred individualism over collectivism. What he witnessed at the protest challenged his perceptions of that generation. He saw young people displaying resilience and creativity, expressions of hope and aspiration that were “vibrant and innovative,” he said.
“Seeing them create and lead their own unique protest culture while actively and diversely voicing their opinions [makes me] think that this younger generation possesses many qualities that surpass those of older generations,” he added.
It was a “blessing” to share similar values with her father, Hyein said. Many of her friends are struggling to understand their parents’ views, and vice versa, as they disagree over whether Yoon should be impeached.
On January 15, Yoon was apprehended after barricading himself in his residential compound for weeks and resisting an initial arrest attempt two weeks prior. Police formally arrested Yoon four days later. When a court extended Yoon’s period of detention for up to 20 days, his supporters stormed a court building, destroying office equipment and furniture, with 40 people suffering minor injuries. On January 21, Yoon made his first public appearance at his impeachment trial.
Upon hearing of Yoon’s arrest, Chan clapped and cheered with relief and joy, praising God’s sovereignty and justice. He thought of Revelation 18:10, which says, “Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!”
Jeehoo joined a protest at Gwanghwamun with her university friends the day before Yoon’s arrest. As she and thousands of other protesters marched toward City Hall, waving handmade Korean flags, she listened to middle and high schoolers making passionate speeches.
An elderly man held up a sign that said, “Feminism saves democracy.” Another elderly man earnestly sang a K-pop song, stumbling slightly over its fast-paced rhythm. An elderly woman smiled and said, “Thank you for your hard work.” A young mother tightly gripped the hands of her two children as they marched along.
“The protest chants and those who shouted them were diverse rather than uniform,” Jeehoo said. “We applauded each other’s flags and laughed together.”
Additional reporting by Jennifer Park in South Korea.
