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We are Each Other’s Democracy: The Emergence of New Political Subjectivities and Solidarities during the Anti-Martial Law Protests in South Korea

Yoonkyung Lee

Published 2025 in Critical Asian studies (Print)

ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT Against former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s sudden declaration of martial law in December 2024, South Korean citizens organized “light stick protests,” which signify the wide involvement of a younger generation and their embrace of K-pop culture as a medium for political expression. This analysis concerns how young women in their twenties and thirties formed new political subjectivies and how they emerged as a central node for intersectional solidarity of diverse marginalized groups, including queer citizens, people with disabilities, precarious workers, and aging farmers. To address these questions, this study examines the political dynamics that undergirded the formation of new political actors and the diversified arenas of communications and associations that connected them, inter-generationally and inter-sectionally. This analysis shows that diverse new political subjectivities and solidarities emerged as a collective critique of the dominant order of masculine power, heteronormativity, and neoliberal illiberalism, which South Korea’s democracy has consistently failed to address during its process of democratic backsliding.

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