On Tuesday night, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law across the country for six hours. He retracted his declaration only after the National Assembly passed an emergency resolution ordering him to back down. As of this writing, the Assembly has drafted but failed to vote on articles of impeachment. Instead, Yoon’s party has announced a plan for the president’s “orderly resignation.” Many details remain up in the air.

As an American, it is not my place to take sides or say what Korea should do next; I can only observe and interpret. With that as my goal, I would like to discuss two novels that may supply context to the current political situation.

First, to understand the images that Koreans associate with “martial law,” we must discuss Han Kang’s 2014 novel Human Acts (한강, «소년이 온다»), which is available in an English translation by Deborah Smith. The novel portrays 1980’s 5/18 movement and the ensuing government crackdown in which public officials killed, sexually assaulted, arrested, and tortured pro-democracy activists in Gwangju on false charges of communist sympathy—crimes that the Korean government has since acknowledged.1 As Friday’s New York Times explains (paywall), Han Kang’s recent Nobel Prize offered a moment of catharsis and vindication for victims of the 1980 incident; the recent turmoil has cut short their celebration.

Next is 28 by Jeong You Jeong (정유정). Set in Hwayang, a fictional city on the outskirts of Seoul, this 2013 novel imagines the outbreak of a highly infectious disease transmitted between humans and dogs. Once the Korean government grasps the infection’s contagiousness and lethality, the president imposes a swift military blockade on the city. Within, anarchy prevails. As the citizens of Hwayang clash with the occupying troops, 28 makes transparent reference to the crimes of 5/18, but pushes further to ask how martial law would unfold with modern technology and social media. Jeong also raises difficult questions about the transactional relationship between humans and animals. (And, because it is a Jeong You Jeong novel, there is a serial killer running around.) It looks like Chi-Young Kim translated this novel into English at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, but all I can find is an excerpt.

These modern novels remind us that in Korea, the concept of authoritarian rule is more than a rhetorical foil, but a living memory than looms over public policy and civic life. At this moment, martial law is no longer in effect, President Yoon has apologized, and the democratically elected National Assembly controls the government. That means that Korea’s future is, for now, safely in the hands of its people.

  1. It took until 2018 for the Korean government to acknowledge that soldiers sexually assaulted civilians during the crackdown. ↩