How MAGA Made Its Way to South Korea

It’s a victory for the millions of beleaguered demonstrators who staged protests in freezing weather — beset with ​“insurrection insomnia” for more than 40 days — but whether Yoon will be convicted is unclear, and he has vowed to ​“fight until the end.”

Yoon faces life imprisonment or even the death penalty, and the future of South Korea’s politics and democracy hangs in the balance. Some of those politics may feel eerily similar for U.S. readers as an apparently new dynamic emerges: Trump’s MAGA influence on Yoon’s supporters.

While Yoon was barricaded inside his home, his supporters waved U.S. flags and adopted Trump’s ​“Stop the Steal” slogan to protest Yoon’s impeachment. Yoon’s own legal team cited the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution to claim Yoon is similarly immune from charges.

A few days after Yoon’s arrest, his supporters stormed a courthouse in Seoul. They broke windows, blasted fire extinguishers, destroyed furniture and attacked journalists. South Korean authorities arrested 90 people in connection with the violence.

Pundits have labeled this South Korea’s ​“January 6” and the pro-Yoon protests as ​“MAGA-style.”

It would be easy to identify these apparent similarities and not interrogate further. But the connections between U.S. and South Korean far-right forces are both old and new, rooted in decades of U.S. and South Korean militarism, the ongoing Korean War, and the oligarchs who profit.

The United States currently stations nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea, including at the largest U.S. military base overseas, Pyeongtaek’s Camp Humphreys, more than four times the size of New York City’s Central Park. The fragile 1953 Armistice Agreement that temporarily ceased fighting has still not been replaced by a lasting peace agreement, making the ongoing Korean War ​“America’s longest war.”

Yoon is, however, not ​“Korea’s Trump.” Not too long ago, former President Joe Biden touted an ​“ironclad” alliance with Yoon; during Yoon’s 2023 visit to the White House, Yoon serenaded Biden officials with a rendition of ​“American Pie.” Trump, meanwhile, has indicated more of an openness to engaging with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — an attitude echoed by cabinet picks Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, much to the dismay of South Korea’s leadership.

Regardless, the ongoing Korean War has created a ​“permanent emergency state” in South Korea for more than 70 years. Just weeks before Yoon’s declaration of martial law, I traveled to South Korea to meet with leading women peace activists and learn firsthand how the unresolved Korean War has impacted women’s lives. 

On Election Day in the United States, we paused our meeting in Seoul to watch reports predicting Trump’s win. We sat in silence for a moment, then resolved that transnational connections, between grassroots activists and organizers, would be more important than ever.

The ongoing events in South Korea should not just be a distant news item for U.S. readers with abstract lessons for ​“democracy.” We must understand that the United States has been involved with the Korean Peninsula for decades, and U.S. militarism has profoundly shaped South Korea’s political landscape.

We are already seeing activists fight back against the transnational far right. In January, an intergenerational group of Korean American activists staged a protest against Rep. Young Kim’s (R-CA) dangerous comments claiming that pro-impeachment and pro-peace protesters undermine the U.S. alliance with South Korea. These activists presented a grassroots petition, with thousands of signatures, demanding that Kim retract her statements and instead promote principles of democracy and peace.

We should all follow suit. Recent events should move all of us to look to the root causes that got us here, and how we in the United States must increasingly act in solidarity with Korea’s people-powered movements for peace.