MORNING CALM TALES I love the smell of tear gas in the afternoon

Korean riot police in downtown Seoul in May 1992 / Courtesy of Jeffrey Miller

By Jeffrey Miller

• Published Apr 18, 2025 5:40 AM KST
• Updated Apr 18, 2025 12:51 PM KST

I got my first real whiff of tear gas on my way to my buddy Ken’s wedding in April 1991. Actually, it was more than a whiff — I thought I was going to die.

We had a mini-break at school, and I’d just returned from a few days exploring Incheon's Ganghwa Island. I arrived by bus back at Sinchon in western Seoul on Saturday. From there, it was a 10-minute walk to the subway station for the short ride downtown to Ken’s wedding near City Hall.

Unbeknownst to me, I had just missed a massive demonstration in and around the Sinchon Rotary — a chaotic five-way intersection linking four major universities: Yonsei, Ewha, Sogang and Hongik. Riot police buses rimmed the rotary, their windows covered in steel mesh to block rocks and Molotov cocktails. Dozens of riot cops in gray-padded uniforms and samurai-style helmets manned key intersections and subway entrances.

Still blissfully unaware, I descended into the subway station — right into an invisible wall of tear gas. The deeper I went, the worse it got. Within seconds, my eyes were burning, throat closing, brain screaming, "What is happening?" I staggered through the fog like an extra in a zombie flick, one hand over my mouth, the other waving uselessly in front of my face.

Logic said, "Turn around." Stubbornness said, "You're already halfway there." So I pressed on, like the world’s most determined wedding guest.

At the platform level, the air was just as bad. Fortunately, the train arrived after a few minutes. We stumbled aboard blindly. Inside, the air was clearer. My lungs started to relax, though my eyes still stung. If you’ve ever been tear-gassed — or even caught in its aftermath — you know how nasty it is. This wasn’t a direct hit, but it was more than enough.

By the time I got off at City Hall, I could finally breathe. The wedding hall was just up the street, but the route was flanked with police buses and lined with riot police.

I reached the wedding hall just in time. Inside, everything felt calm and orderly, surreal even, considering what I’d just come through. Under a perfect spring sky, Seoul bustled with life — cherry blossoms blooming, people going about their day. And yet, the ever-watchful presence of riot police cast a long, uneasy shadow.

Later, as we posed for wedding photos, we heard the unmistakable pop-pop-pop of tear gas canisters being fired in the distance.

When I first arrived in Korea in 1990, I knew little of its modern history. “Ignorance” might be putting it kindly. I’d heard of its first president, Syngman Rhee — thanks for the reminder, Billy Joel: “U2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy” — and I had a vague sense of who Park Chung-hee was. I’d heard about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, but Korea had mostly been off my radar, apart from the Seoul Olympics. My impressions during the 1980s came mostly from the evening news: footage of student demonstrators flooding the streets, hundreds of riot police dodging rocks and Molotov cocktails as tear gas canisters arced through the smoke-filled air.

What I came to learn was that Korea’s path to democracy had been anything but smooth. The April 19 Revolution in 1960 had brought down Rhee, but the years that followed were dominated by military regimes. It wasn’t until 1987, with the election of Roh Tae-woo, that the country took its first real steps toward democratic governance. Even then, the past was never far behind. Roh had been Chun Doo-hwan’s handpicked successor, and the shadow of the Gwangju Massacre still lingered — like smoke that refused to clear.

In the early 1990s, tear gas and protest were still seasonal norms. As one colleague quipped, “Korea has five seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Protest.” Demonstrations typically erupted when the school year began, fading only when summer vacation rolled around.

The protests of spring 1991 were particularly intense, sparked by the death of Kang Kyung-dae, a 20-year-old student from Myongji University. His death set off a wave of fury that lasted through June. At one point, more than 200,000 people marched nationwide. Several students set themselves on fire.

Around that time, I received regular letters from one of my former language students who attended Ewha Womans University. We shared thoughts about life, books and music. In one letter, she wrestled with whether to join the demonstrations. Everyone around her was marching, swept up in the spirit of resistance — but she wasn’t sure she believed in the cause. Her dilemma captured the mood of the moment: a country still coming to terms with the meaning of freedom, the weight of history and the cost of dissent.

A few weeks later, I was in a Myeong-dong movie theater one Saturday afternoon when I felt my eyes begin to sting. People around me started coughing and rubbing their faces. Tear gas had drifted in. Some bolted for the exits. Others stayed put, myself included. After a while, the gas thinned out, and the film resumed.

When I stepped outside after the movie, Myeong-dong was unrecognizable. Normally packed on weekends, it felt like a ghost town. Storefronts were shuttered. The streets, usually alive with color and motion, were littered with crumpled tissues and silence. But the day’s clash hadn’t been between students and riot police — it was the merchants. Worn down by weeks of disruption and dwindling sales, they had taken to the streets themselves.

As June approached and the students returned to their hometowns for summer break, the protests ended. The tear gas lifted. For a while, the city was still.

In Korea, even resistance had its season, like the cherry blossoms of spring: sudden, beautiful and gone before anyone could quite hold onto it.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels including "War Remains," a story about the early days of the Korean War, and "No Way Out," a thriller set in Seoul in 1990.