David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
History from below: Korea’s Minjung movement
Two people in hanbok walk past a Korean palace. Courtesy of Markus Winkler
By David A. Tizzard
In the telling of Korea’s modern history, it is often the powerful who speak loudest: generals, businessmen, and presidents — backed by foreign powers or dressed in the garb of economic success. Yet beneath these figures lies a different story, one written not in national assemblies or university lecture halls but rather in blood, sweat, and defiant chants from the streets. It comes us to in a language or form that is often uncomfortable. Not easily understood. That story is the story of the minjung.
The term minjung is often translated as “the masses” or “the people,” but to leave it at that is to miss its moral, political, and spiritual power. The minjung are not simply the demographic majority. They are the oppressed, the overlooked, the ones denied authorship of their own history. They are those who have too often been treated as passive objects in Korea’s turbulent modern saga — moved around by empires, ideologies, and elites. But beginning in the 1970s and 80s, a new idea began to take root: What if the minjung were the true subject of Korean history?
Modernization at what cost?
A key idea for Korean intellectuals was that throughout its history Korea was a failure. This included being due to the people’s inability to construct their own unified state. Thus in seeking solutions, the idea that the oppressed were the guardians and owners of Korean history wasn’t just idealism; it was a response to a very real series of crises. Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945 was not won through its own unified struggle despite persistent anticolonial activities by some, but instead arrived through the catastrophic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the firebombing of Tokyo. Then, with one empire gone, another stepped in. The American occupation of the southern part of the peninsula laid the foundations for a capitalist, anti-communist South Korea — one that would prioritize economic growth above all else, and often at the expense of democratic values or cultural sovereignty.
Modernization then became a game of catch-up. “To be successful,” the logic went, “was to be rich, Western, and staunchly anti-communist.” In this frenzied pursuit, Korea industrialized, but it also silenced dissent, censored memory, and allowed its leaders to consolidate power through force.
Enter the minjung, or more precisely, those who began to speak on their behalf: students, artists and intellectuals. These were people who believed that the greatest tragedy of Korean history was not colonization or war, but the inability of the Korean people to be the authors of their own story. They saw the minjung as representing ideas not just victims, and potential agents of change. A future that was entirely Korean. It was about identity.
Challenging the state
How might it be possible for the common people, those without political, economic, or cultural influence to challenge a system created and supported by some of the world’s most powerful institutions and ideologies? The answer was to be found right next to where the greatest Korean failure was observed: history. History was to be rewritten and redefined. Questioned and reevaluated. It was to be told through the lives of the people rather than the ruling elite.
Alternative interpretations of life under Japanese colonization, of the military dictatorships of Park Chung-hee and Chun Do-hwan, and the tragedies of Jeju, Gwangju, and many more would be thrust into public consciousness through art, song, poetry, writings and social gatherings. Other issues that the minjung addressed were the ferverent anti-communism that stifled education and literature, the division of the country and North Korea’s identity, ROK-US relations, the primacy of economic development over humanity, and the reinvention of tradition. The official story of the state was no longer the only word in town. Everything from history, culture, and international relations was to be reimagined through the lives of the people. Memory and counter-memory were to challenge each other.
The government’s response was generally to label members of the minjung as communists. Rather than merely direct its anticommunism towards North Korea, the state also directed it towards domestic and local political opposition in South Korea. It was utilized as a form of state control, relegating particular elements of society to the position of “Other,” outside of the nation, and outside of protection. Throughout the postcolonial period, the attacks against the minjung other were carried out with a brutality and violence that often surpassed that which took place during Japanese colonization
Gwangju and the right to invoke it through literature, art and film was fought for passionately by the minjung. This was their story. And any attempt to use it was seen as a type of appropriation. Gwangju also ensured that the minjung remained morally superior. So despite its lack of economic or political power, the minjung had a crucial weapon to deploy in its battle against the state. The 4.3 Jeju Uprising and the Sewol Disaster and subsequent impeachment movement have also taken on such status.
This counter-history challenged the notion that South Korea’s success was simple or inevitable. It exposed the contradictions of a state that embraced democracy while crushing its advocates. It revealed the cost of growth measured in silence, trauma and surveillance. And it forced a reckoning with the ever-present shadow of American involvement — not just in Korea’s liberation, but in its authoritarian development.
Out of this emerged what some called the 386 Generation — those in their 30s during the 1990s, educated in the 1980s, born in the 60s. Many of them abandoned privilege, entered factories, and shared radical ideas with workers. They saw themselves not as saviors but as conduits, helping the minjung understand the forces arrayed against them and the power they might collectively wield.
But herein lies a paradox. The minjung were defined by their oppression. If they rose above it — if they gained power, education, and wealth — could they still be minjung? Could they still speak with moral authority? This tension remains unresolved.
Beyond culture
Echoes of the minjung movement persist today. The Sewol Ferry disaster in 2014, and the subsequent impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, were not just political moments — they were emotional reckonings. Citizens demanded answers. They took to the streets not as consumers or taxpayers, but as people who believed the state had once again failed its moral duty. The cries of “Is this a country?” (ige naraya?) weren’t just about Sewol. They were about everything the minjung had been saying for decades. The protests we saw both for and against ousted president Yoon Seok-yeol also reveal elements of this conversation continuing in the modern age.
Understanding the minjung is not an academic exercise in nostalgia. It is essential for anyone who wishes to understand South Korea today. Because despite skyscrapers, K-pop, and global respect, the country still wrestles with inequality, censorship, and the ghosts of a past not fully reconciled. The battle between state and people, between memory and forgetting, between development and dignity, continues.
The minjung remind us that real change doesn’t always have to come from the top. It also comes from the margins — from those pushed aside. It can be brought forward by those who find in their exclusion not just anger, but purpose. And as long as that purpose burns, Korea’s story remains unfinished.