On Dec 3, when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared emergency martial law in South Korea, I was stunned. I recalled the last time martial law was declared in South Korea in 1980 in an attempted coup by military dictator Chun Doo-hwan. On May 18, 1980, over 200,000 South Koreans led by students went out into the streets and protested Chun’s attempt in the famous Gwangju Democratic Uprising. Civilians were shot, beaten, stabbed, tear-gassed and killed, and the country entered 8 years under Chun’s brutal authoritarian regime. The massacre left an official estimate of 200 dead and many others lost, but families of the survivors have said the death toll is far higher.

What many Americans don’t fully fathom is how these martial law enactments are directly linked to and even abetted by US military occupation and control. During the Gwangju Democratic Uprising, the Carter administration essentially supported Chun Doo-hwan’s military coup. In a White House meeting on May 22, 1980, Carter’s national security team approved the use of military force to retake Gwangju and even pledged to support Chun if he reformed his government. But these promises were never fulfilled, and Chun was removed from office in 1987.

It was chilling to see President Yoon’s sudden declaration of martial law, but the South Korean government and people’s swift response was remarkable. Immediately after Yoon’s declaration, civilians took to the streets of Seoul and assisted legislators in entering the National Assembly building. In response, the Assembly voted unanimously, 190-0, to revoke martial law. President Yoon met with his Cabinet shortly after to follow suit and announced the end of martial law. His power grab failed, and he has now been impeached. His presidential powers have been suspended, and the Constitutional Court must decide whether to remove him from office or reinstate him. If Yoon is removed, a national election to select his successor must take place within 60 days.

As a Korean woman born in Chicago with US citizenship, both tied to and severed from the Korean peninsula, I feel disoriented and overwhelmed by what’s going on in my motherland. Watching the news outlets and social media ignite with on-the-ground reporting and updates, I feel I am watching a spectacle of which I am somehow both a part but blocked from claiming. My parents left South Korea in 1981 and never looked back, seeking US citizenship as fast as they could and adopting American values and customs of Christianity and capitalism, hungry for American acceptance and deeply indebted to be given a shot at the American dream.

My parents’ immigration story, like that of many, is one of sacrifice, triumph and loss. As I watch the Korean news from a distance, I can’t help but think of the Korean American community here and what we are feeling and thinking as we watch our country on a global stage. Also, I am thinking of other immigrant, migrant and refugee communities -- communities increasingly dependent on the military might, tactical choices and iron-fist policies of the US and the Global North.

The Korean War, which began in 1950 and reached armistice in 1953, is still technically ongoing, and since then US forces have never fully left the peninsula. Today, nearly 30,000 US troops are stationed in various parts of Korea, including Camp Humphreys, the largest US overseas military base. For all the rhetoric about mutual allyship, it’s hard not to see the relationship between the US and South Korea as one of asymmetric dependence.

As I doom-scroll social media, anxious about my motherland’s future, I see many people lauding the protesters, such as the former TV anchor turned government official, Ahn Gwi-ryeong, 35, who grappled with a soldier pointing a gun at a civilian and grabbed hold of the soldier’s gun, telling him, “Let go! Don’t you feel the shame?” After she grabbed his rifle, the soldier stepped back. The video went viral and became an image of South Korean bravery in the face of government violence.

When asked if she anticipated the widespread attention her actions would receive, Ahn replied, “There were many people braver than me who stood up to the martial law troops. There were people who even managed to stop armored vehicles outside. So, I don’t think my actions were particularly special.” This is the type of brave anti-authoritarianism people around the world are praising, but it is important not to tokenize or idealize South Korean democracy and South Korean people.

Nowadays, being South Korean is increasingly trendy and even cool, very different from when I was growing up and people viewed my country as a “third-world, dog-eating, backwards, war-torn” region. Today, South Korea is often reduced to a handful of palatable or commonplace caricatures: a cultural powerhouse with K-pop and K-dramas, a tech giant with companies like Samsung, and the “good” Korea in contrast to its counterpart in the North.

These depictions fail to capture the intricacies of a nation hastily split into two by US government officials in 1945. South Korea has had to navigate a series of authoritarian regimes, rapid modernization, geopolitical pressures and dependence on US and Japanese allyship, and the unresolved traumas of colonialism and war. It also needs to recognize its own rise in the world order and its role in aiding the US during the Vietnam War.

I’m sick of my model minority status in the US, and I am relieved to see the swift end of martial law, but this is only the beginning of much more tumult, especially with the shift to the incoming Trump administration and the current state of South Korean democracy which, as Heesoo Jang notes, is at a “critical juncture” due to Yoon’s corruption, governance failures, rampant economic inequality and a health care system at its near breaking point.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un has sent up to 12,000 North Korean troops to help support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Ukraine intelligence agency just reported the first deaths of at least 30 North Korean troops fighting for Russia against Ukraine. I am haunted by the messiness of empire -- the ways both North and South Koreans are exploited as pawns in global wars we can neither control nor escape.

Han Kang writes in “Human Acts,” “Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? ... Is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?” The Korean Peninsula’s current and ongoing turmoil is a stark reminder of these questions and the fact that sovereignty and democracy are always fragile and never guaranteed. For me, this fragility feels especially personal. It’s a reminder that the progress South Korea has made -- its transition from dictatorships to democracy, its cultural and economic rise -- remains intertwined with, and often complicit in, the actions of the US as a superpower. Whether we acknowledge it or not, South Korea’s history is inseparable from America’s, with unresolved traumas continuing to shape our shared futures.

Joey S. Kim

Joey S. Kim is an assistant professor of English at the University of Toledo in Ohio, specializing in global Anglophone literature, Asian American studies, poetics, and visuality. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.