SEOUL, September 12 (AJP) - On most Saturdays, Gwanghwamun Square belongs to tourists, families, street performers and the assortment of political groups that regularly claim a patch of downtown Seoul for their causes.
This Saturday brought another one: opposition to President Donald Trump’s repeated demands that South Korea help secure the Strait of Hormuz as the United States confronts Iran.
Many in the crowd were not the veteran anti-American or progressive activists familiar from demonstrations past. They were young Koreans, part of Gen Z that has become an increasingly visible political force across Asia.
By 5 p.m., the plaza facing the U.S. Embassy was still filled with families browsing a flea market and foreign tourists taking photographs.
Then another sound pushed through the weekend crowd.
“Stop the war of aggression.”
“Stop considering troop deployment.”
“Reject pressure to deploy troops.”
Hundreds of protesters moved down Sejong-daero, past shoppers and tourists and the U.S. Embassy, their chants carrying through the center of Seoul as they headed toward Cheong Wa Dae.
An hour earlier, the “Citizens’ March Against the Hormuz Deployment” had begun in Jongno. The march was organized by a coalition of about 540 civic groups opposed to South Korea sending military personnel or assets to the Strait of Hormuz.
The rally came as President Lee Jae Myung’s government weighs whether, and how, South Korea should contribute to efforts to secure one of the world’s most important energy waterways amid mounting pressure from Washington.
But before the march began, many of those taking the microphone asked a simple question - Who would actually be sent into danger?
Ko Geon introduced himself as “a young worker who will be attending reserve forces training the day after tomorrow.”
“I feel a deep sense of betrayal and anger that the Lee Jae Myung government, which was born out of the ‘Vigil Candlelight Revolution,’ is considering an overseas troop deployment that even Yoon Suk Yeol did not dare undertake,” Ko said.
Then he raised his voice.
“Did we hold light sticks in Gwanghwamun and Hannam-dong in that freezing cold just to see this?”
Cheers rose from the crowd.
“Was the ‘New World’ we dreamed of in ‘Into the New World’ really a world like this?” he asked.
For many younger South Koreans, the references needed little explanation.
The “Candlelight Revolution” is a term used by Lee’s ruling Democratic Party and its supporters for the civic resistance that followed former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Dec. 3, 2024, declaration of martial law and ultimately led to his removal from office.
Young protesters became one of the defining images of those demonstrations, many carrying glowing light sticks normally reserved for K-pop concerts. The Democratic Party has described Lee’s administration as a government born from the “Light Revolution.”
Among the songs closely associated with the demonstrations was Girls’ Generation’s 2007 debut single “Into the New World.”
For Ko, those memories made the prospect of another overseas military deployment particularly bitter.
Addressing Lee directly, he said: “Please do not send troops, so that this country, where I will live for decades to come, does not get swept into a war.”
Yoo Eun-bi, an activist with the Korea YWCA, also focused on the generation that would bear the consequences.
“The people who will have to carry the weight of a deployment are our young people,” Yoo said.
“Where are the young people at the table where they are deciding whether to send troops?”
Sitting in the front row was Ha Ji-won, a 23-year-old philosophy student at Soongsil University.
“I had been watching this war of aggression without justification and thinking that something completely absurd was happening,” Ha said. “Then talk began about our country sending troops to the Iran war. I came here today because I wanted to add my voice to the opposition.”
A few seats away was Lee A-ran, 24, who had come with three friends.
She had already joined a weekday peace march opposing deployment and said she was frustrated by the way police had handled demonstrators.
“I took part in a peace march against the deployment during the week, but the police obstructed the march while trampling on rights guaranteed under the Assembly and Demonstration Act,” Lee said. “I thought a small number of people would not be enough, so I came today to help make this march bigger.”
She was also troubled by what she saw as attempts to extract economic or political benefit from a war.
“I have a problem with the government trying to put its spoon into a war and profit from it,” Lee said.
For those who support sending South Korean forces to Hormuz, she had a more direct message.
“If you want to go to Hormuz and fight a war that badly, don't send young people. You go.”
The anger extended beyond students and people in their 20s.
Heo Woo-jin, 34, and his wife, Song Hwa, 35, sat together at the rally. The self-employed couple said they had come because they wanted the government to see that opposition was real and visible.
“We came out to show the government that there are many people who oppose sending troops,” they said.
Song said she was disturbed by arguments that deployment could be justified in the national interest.
“I thought it was violent to drive citizens onto a battlefield on the grounds that it would benefit the national interest,” she said. “I'm worried because there seem to be far too many people around the world now who defend war or say that war is necessary.”
Her husband pointed to what he saw as the fundamental imbalance behind decisions to go to war.
“The people who decide on war and the people who actually fight in it are not the same people,” Heo said.
“The people who would actually have to pick up guns in the Iran war are young people. Considering a deployment is far too irresponsible.”
For Lee Sang-hoon, 41, the argument was also about the image South Korea has built abroad since its political upheaval.
“What kind of country is South Korea in the world today?” he asked. “It is a country where citizens, through the Light Revolution, drove an unjust government from power and gave democratic inspiration and courage to people around the world. A country like that must not participate in a war of aggression.”
He turned next to another source of Korean influence: its culture.
“At a time when Korea is spreading its style and spirit around the world through the Korean Wave, if it sends troops to the Strait of Hormuz, young people around the world who listen to BTS and BLACKPINK, who dream and find comfort through their music, will be enormously disappointed in Korea,” Lee said.
“Think especially about the pain young people in the Middle East would feel.”
He said he was ashamed that deployment was even under consideration.
“I am ashamed that there is talk of sending troops in our country,” Lee said. “If South Korea becomes an accomplice in this illegal war, peace on the Korean Peninsula will also be put at risk.”
A war thousands of kilometers away
On the streets of Seoul, the arguments were emotional and direct. Inside government, the calculation is more complicated.
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began on Feb. 28 and has gone through ceasefires, lulls and renewed fighting.
The Strait of Hormuz has become a focal point of the conflict as commercial shipping faces threats and U.S. and Iranian forces repeatedly confront one another in and around the waterway.
Washington has pressed Seoul to help secure freedom of navigation. Trump has publicly criticized South Korea for declining to join U.S. efforts, while Iran has warned Seoul of serious consequences if South Korean forces take part in U.S.-led operations.
For South Korea, which relies heavily on energy supplies moving through the strait, the stakes are unusually high.
Seoul has not made a final decision.
A South Korean government assessment team sent to the United Arab Emirates to examine military bases, ports, logistics and security conditions returned Thursday.
The government has said possible contributions could include maritime patrol aircraft, mine-clearing capabilities, search-and-rescue forces or other noncombat assistance. Cheong Wa Dae has also stressed that technical assistance without deploying personnel remains an option.
Any overseas military deployment would require approval from the National Assembly.
The issue has divided the public. A National Barometer Survey released Thursday found 45 percent of respondents opposed sending assets such as maritime patrol aircraft or logistics support vessels to Hormuz.
For one man at Saturday’s rally, however, the war was not a matter of polling percentages, alliance management or shipping lanes.
Tehran is home
Siavash Saffari, a professor of West Asian studies at Seoul National University’s Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, stood among the protesters with a deeply personal reason for being there.
His parents, both in their 70s, live in Tehran.
Early in the war, a police station on their street was bombed.
Saffari called the war an “illegal, illegitimate and destructive war” and urged South Koreans to oppose their country’s participation.
Iran is suffering from serious shortages of medicine, he said, and he worries constantly about whether his parents, who need heart medication, will be able to get it.
The war has also struck places woven into his memories of home.
The police station hit on March 18 stood along the route his mother regularly took to a nearby park — the same walk Saffari had taken with her during his last visit to Tehran in 2017.
Other places hit in the fighting were part of his childhood: Ferdowsi Square, where his family went shopping, and an area near Mehr Hospital, where he was born.
His mother had already lived through one war.
During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Saffari recalled, many people fled Tehran. She stayed.
When a bomb struck the police station near her home two days before Nowruz, the Persian New Year, she eventually managed to call her son in Seoul.
Rather than dwell on the bombing, she told him about the food she had prepared and the holiday she and her husband had celebrated.
Her message was simple. Life goes on.
Six months into another war, her son was standing thousands of kilometers from Tehran, asking the country where he teaches not to move any closer to it.
Two hours to say no
Among the youngest protesters was 21-year-old Heo Sun-woo.
He had left Wonju in Gangwon Province earlier that day, taking an express bus and then the subway for about two hours to reach Jongno.
An international relations major, Heo said he hoped a larger anti-deployment movement would force the government to reconsider.
“I came here to pressure the government through public opposition to the deployment,” he said.
Like several young protesters around him, he returned to the question that had run through the afternoon.
Who would pay the price?
“The only people who suffer from troop deployment are young people,” Heo said. “It is a deployment with neither justification nor practical benefit.”
Then the speeches ended and the crowd began to move.
The protesters left the rally site and filled Sejong-daero, marching through Seoul’s political center. They passed the U.S. Embassy, their chants bouncing between the buildings around Gwanghwamun Square, and continued north toward Cheong Wa Dae.
The flea market stayed open. Tourists kept taking photographs. Buses rolled through downtown traffic.
For a few hours, the rhythms of an ordinary Seoul Saturday and a war thousands of kilometers away occupied the same street.
By evening, the march was over.
Heo headed back toward the bus terminal, preparing to retrace the two-hour journey he had made from Wonju that morning.
Before leaving, the 21-year-old had one final message for the president.
“I hope the Lee Jae Myung government will make a decision for young people and for peace.”
Then he boarded his bus home.
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