Originally published in CounterPunch.
“People of this nation, please come to the National Assembly now. Protect the final bastion of our democracy!”
—Lee Jae Myung, December 2024
This urgent plea was livestreamed at 10:40 p.m. on 3 December 2024 by National Assemblyman Lee Jae Myung, barely ten minutes after martial law had been declared by the now-impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol. Hundreds of citizens heeded the call, converging on the National Assembly building to block troops from entering parliament and prevent the country from sliding into authoritarian rule.
One year later, Lee, now President of Korea, commemorated one of the most dramatic nights in the nation’s history. He described it as a moment when the Korean people peacefully overcame an “unprecedented democratic crisis in world history,” in what is now remembered as the Revolution of Light. Lee went on to designate December 3 as National Sovereignty Day, pledging to build a Korea in which no one could even contemplate extinguishing the light of popular sovereignty. Lee’s renewed focus on sovereignty underscores the urgent need to examine not only the causal factors behind Yoon’s failed insurrection, but also to confront deeper factors that continue to undermine the foundations of Korea’s sovereignty, namely, Washington’s encroachment on Korean independence.
Despite the great strides made by South Korean democracy, the country remains the world’s only state to have ceded wartime operational control to a foreign power, an arrangement that violates international law and contradicts the principles of the UN Charter by effectively positioning Korea not as a fully sovereign state but as a U.S. forward military base. For 74 years, Washington has maintained wartime Operational Control (OPCON) over Korea’s military, commanding 600,000 frontline troops, 3.5 million reservists, and the entirety of Korea’s military infrastructure. Under the 1953 U.S.–ROK Mutual Defense Treaty, U.S. forces have unrestricted freedom of operation on Korean soil.
As a result, Korea remains bound to a security framework that prioritizes Washington’s strategic objectives over its own sovereign decision-making. This unprecedented system has long constrained Korea’s military and political sovereignty and continues to shape every major security decision the country faces. It is within this broader structure of dependency–and the ongoing limitations on Korea’s sovereignty–that the events of December 2024 must be understood.
Exposing the U.S. Role in Yoon’s Insurrection
A six-month investigation into Yoon’s declaration of martial law resulted in his indictment, along with 18 co-conspirators, of attempting to create justification for declaring martial law provoking North Korea to “mount an armed aggression”; a gambit that failed only because Pyongyang “did not respond militarily.” The Special Prosecutor investigation revealed that the Yoon administration carried out a series of calculated provocations, including repeatedly launching droves of massive balloons and military drones into North Korean airspace just two months before the December 3 insurrection. South Korean military sources confirmed that these were not defensive measures but deliberate provocations. A memo from the Defense Counterintelligence Command warned of potential North Korean reprisal scenarios ranging “from a minimum security crisis to a maximum Noah’s flood,” reflecting the high stakes of Yoon’s planning.
While Yoon stands trial for deliberately heightening inter-Korean tensions and risking a devastating war in furtherance of his own ambitions, the U.S. role in his brinkmanship has remained largely unexamined. In fact, Yoon’s declaration of martial law, far from being an isolated act of authoritarian overreach, was the culmination of years of U.S. pressure under the Biden administration, which strategically positioned Korea as a frontline military hub in Washington’s global strategy. Washington’s geopolitical ambitions were directly manifested through Yoon’s pursuit of regime change in the North, his advocacy for the deployment of U.S. nuclear assets in South Korea, and his full embrace of a U.S.-brokered trilateral military alliance that inducts Korea and Japan into Washington’s aggressively anti-China regional strategy.
It strains credibility to suggest that given the extensive intelligence sharing between the U.S.–ROK Combined Forces and the advanced reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), which monitors the Korean Peninsula 24/7 with advanced equipment like satellites and reconnaissance aircraft, Washington somehow failed to notice Yoon’s sustained provocations against Pyongyang. Noh Sang-won, a Yoon associate and former intelligence operative, was found in possession of notes pointing to a plan to notify the US in advance before martial law declaration, including several references to “US advance notice,” “cooperation from the U.S.,” and “prior notice to the U.S.” While Noh Sang‑won’s notes contain references to “U.S. advance notice” and “cooperation from the U.S.,” suggesting that elements of Yoon’s plan may have considered informing Washington, U.S. officials have publicly denied any prior knowledge or involvement in the attempted martial law declaration.
The special prosecutor’s most striking claim is that Yoon sought to justify martial law by repeatedly trying to “provoke” North Korea into responding militarily and coordinating covert moves to spark a security crisis. Yet the most serious provocations toward the North remain in place even after Yoon’s impeachment, namely, the decades-long campaign of military brinkmanship led by Washington.
Under the Yoon administration, U.S.–ROK combined military exercises surged to nearly 340 per year, nearly triple the number conducted in 2017, locking the Korean peninsula in a cycle of militarization and provocation that perpetually thwarts any prospect for peace. These maneuvers mobilize tens of thousands of troops and U.S. strategic assets for live-fire field maneuvers simulating preemptive strikes, decapitation of leadership, territorial occupation, and post-war stabilization. ROK–U.S. and ROK–U.S.–Japan military exercises expanded exponentially, signaling near-continuous training and a sharp escalation from 2023. This trajectory reflects the consolidation of a trilateral nuclear war alliance, formalized in 2022–2023 and now actively operationalized. The exercises have also undergone a qualitative shift, encompassing nuclear war simulations against North Korea, China-focused drills, U.S. homeland defense training, and Conventional–Nuclear Integration (CNI). Through CNI—evident in bomber escort missions and carrier-based operations—South Korea’s conventional forces are increasingly embedded in U.S. nuclear war planning.
At the same time, the U.S. has been rapidly expanding its airborne footprint in South Korea, signaling a significant strategic shift. Gunsan Air Base, located on Korea’s southwest coast in North Jeolla Province, provides the U.S. with rapid access to key theaters such as the Chinese mainland, the Taiwan Strait, and the West Sea maritime zone, making it a critical platform for US power projection into Northeast Asia. It now hosts the first U.S. F-16 “super squadrons,” with 31 aircraft deployed last year and additional squadrons joining this year. Infrastructure upgrades, including 20 reinforced hangars built in 2020 and another 18 more nearing completion, have prepared the base to accommodate F-35A strategic bombers as well.
While portrayed as “defensive”, the U.S. military posture in the Korean peninsula is unmistakably offensive, integrating nuclear and conventional capabilities, and rehearsing multi-domain operations spanning land, sea, air, space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains and extending across the Indo-Pacific to explicitly target China. The increased cadence of Multinational drills such as Talisman Sabre, Pacific Vanguard, and Freedom Edge deepen South Korea’s entanglement in U.S. strategic priorities at the expense of its own national interest. Properly understood, the offensive character of these U.S.-led military exercises is not incidental but foundational, providing a structural context that enabled and emboldened Yoon’s insurrection. Although the exercises are justified as “reinforced deterrence,” in practice they implement a permanent near‑war posture. The battlefield is being structured not around risk reduction and normalization of relations, but around the maintenance and even increase of heightened tensions.
Gravest Threat to South Korea: Servility Toward Washington
In contrast to Yoon, the Lee administration has taken modest but meaningful steps to de-escalate tensions, including suspending anti–North Korea leaflet launches and halting loudspeaker broadcasts along the heavily militarized border. Yet even these small gestures merely serve to expose the limits of South Korea’s sovereignty under the alliance structure. Washington has taken no parallel steps, as U.S.-led joint military exercises continue unabated, hamstringing any measures independently taken by Seoul and effectively constraining South Korea’s capacity to pursue an independent de-escalatory policy.
In fact, the precedent of provocation set under the Yoon administration has not only persisted but expanded, undermining South Korea’s efforts toward genuine de-escalation. Just two weeks after Lee’s inauguration, on June 18, 2025, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea conducted their first-ever joint military exercise near Jeju Island, while South Korean artillery drills near Hwacheon, situated only a few miles from the North Korean border, violated the September 19 Inter-Korean Military Agreement, underscoring the persistence of provocative military posturing.
Moreover, General Xavier Brunson, Commander of the ROK–U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), has explicitly described South Korea as a forward platform for U.S. power projection and offensive operations against China and Russia, thus abandoning any pretense of pursuing deterrence or regional stability. Brunson has prioritized “cost imposition” against China and Russia by operationalizing the Korea–Japan–Philippines strategic triad, placing Seoul in the front line of potential conflict and highlighting the enduring challenge to South Korea’s sovereignty. In doing so, he has openly positioned South Korea as the central hub of U.S. forward military operations in Northeast Asia aimed at China and Russia. By enabling the USFK to impose military costs not only on North Korea but also on Russia’s Northern Fleet and China’s Northern Theater Command, South Korea itself becomes a primary target.
Korea’s National Sovereignty Crisis Under the Trump Administration
Since Yoon’s removal from power, the Trump administration has imposed even harsher and more coercive encroachments on Korea’s national sovereignty, deepening the subordination of Korean decision-making to U.S. strategic imperatives. Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy (NSS) 2025 explicitly states that “allies” must bear the costs of the Indo-Pacific strategy “with a focus on the capabilities—including new capabilities—necessary to deter adversaries and protect the First Island Chain”, a U.S.-led strategic concept describing the line of western Pacific islands stretching from Japan and Okinawa through Taiwan and the northern Philippines. These nations are intended to serve as the U.S. front line of military containment against China.
This represents Washington’s renewed emphasis on systematically shifting the financial costs, operational burdens, and strategic risks of its Indo-Pacific and global defense commitments onto subordinate allies who are incapable of rejecting this structure. South Korea, deeply bound to the United States economically, militarily, and ideologically, has become a prime example of this subordination. Not only does the country shoulder the major financial responsibility for the U.S. forces it “hosts”—troops whose unrestricted operations on Korean soil have been guaranteed since the 1953 U.S.–ROK Mutual Defense Treaty–it is increasingly being entangled in a program of intensified regional militarization driven by Washington.
Coupled with military pressure, economic coercion has also been systematically applied to undermine Seoul’s sovereignty. Through the imposition of a new trade arrangement that replaced the zero-tariff framework of the original KORUS FTA with a 15% tariff rate, Washington has compelled Seoul to commit to an estimated $350 billion investment (which amounts to nearly 19% of the country’s total GDP in 2024), including roughly $200 billion in cash commitments and $150 billion tied to U.S.-controlled assets, including shipbuilding and other strategic sectors. According to Trump’s Social post, South Korea has agreed to pay the U.S. $350 billion and additionally purchase large quantities of oil and gas, with investments by South Korean companies exceeding $600 billion. Trump’s tariff-driven trade deal has had a profoundly destabilizing effect on South Korea’s economy, exemplified by the current won‑weakening crisis. By pressuring South Korea to put U.S. investment first—at the expense of its own economic stability—the deal shifted real financial risk onto Seoul. The result is not merely economic realignment but effective dispossession: Korea has ceded control over critical segments of its own economy and entrenched itself in a structurally subordinate position within a U.S.-led economic order.
Furthermore, South Korea’s 2026 defense budget has risen by 8.2 percent, representing the largest year-on-year increase since 2019 and driven largely by expanded procurement of U.S.-made arms. Seoul now finds itself compelled to purchase an estimated $25 billion in additional U.S. weapons systems, underscoring how Seoul’s defense policy is being reshaped under coercion and locking Korea into a U.S.-dominated military-industrial framework. Moreover, South Korea has committed an additional $33 billion to support USFK, on top of the expenses it already bears for hosting roughly 28,500 U.S. troops on its soil. Notably, South Korea covered 90% of the $10.8 billion cost of constructing Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. overseas base in the world.
Under the Trump administration, Seoul, as a key “burden-bearing” state within a U.S.-centered framework spanning defense, energy, and infrastructure, is being compelled to finance the construction of U.S. military installations, absorb strategic and frontline costs, fund U.S. security operations, increase defense spending to support U.S. forces, and purchase billions in American weapons. Recognizing these exactions, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby praised South Korea as the first non-NATO treaty ally to make such commitments, calling it a “model ally” for “stepping up” its defense spending.
Taken together, these measures reveal not a commitment to peace or regional stability but the deep entrenchment of a war-making posture: Korea’s sovereignty has been subordinated to Washington’s strategic agenda, forcing the country to finance the occupation of its own territory while bearing the material, political, and front-line risks of U.S. militarism in the Indo-Pacific.
Inter-Korean Reconciliation Blocked by Washington
Amid mounting economic and military pressure, Washington not only continues to veto even modest Korean efforts to foster inter-Korean rapprochement but also preempts any attempt to formulate independent policies based on the principle of self-determination.
On December 3, for the first time since his inauguration, President Lee publicly mentioned the possibility of suspending or reducing U.S.-ROK joint military exercises. To bolster his argument, Lee recalled President Trump’s 2018 statement: “I think it’s very provocative… We will be stopping the war games… which will save us a tremendous amount of money.” Indeed, a U.S. Army budget analysis later confirmed that canceling certain exercises in 2018 had saved the U.S. an estimated $14 million. Lee then argued for dialogue and rapprochement as a means of reducing or postponing the exercises once “a peace regime between the North and the South is firmly established”
However, USFK Command promptly rejected the prospect of suspending or reducing the exercises, asserting de facto control over Korea’s military decisions. General Brunson retorted: “Whenever someone talks about—I don’t care who it is—talks about exercising less or exercising differently, they need to understand that there are two times in a year where we absolutely need some support.” Brunson also made clear Washington’s rejection of another central pillar of President Lee’s agenda: the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to South Korea within Lee’s presidential term.
Veteran American journalist Tim Shorrock, who has covered Korea for more than two decades, summed up the implications succinctly: “Sovereignty much? … South Korea’s de facto leader is a U.S. four-star general, Xavier Brunson, Commander of U.S. Forces Korea.”
In spite of an approval rating above 60 percent, based largely on public pledges to safeguard Korea’s national sovereignty, Lee remains unable to fully exercise Korea’s sovereignty on the most important national security matters. War, peace, and sovereignty on the Korean Peninsula is being decided by Washington, while the Korean ambition for sovereignty has been pushed aside and Korea itself reduced to a sidekick in the U.S. Indo Pacific strategy, forced to pay for the U.S. military assets stationed on its soil.
Asserting Sovereignty in a World Shaped by Washington’s Militarism
While the broader pitfalls of the U.S.–ROK alliance remain largely unchallenged, grassroots movements within Korea, together with the Korean diaspora in the U.S., continue to assert the right to self-determination and demand an end to Korea’s structural dependence on U.S. forces. In the U.S., Korean American activists, scholars, and peace advocates, along with independent research and educational organizations such as the Korea Policy Institute have been at the forefront of the struggle for Korea to reclaim its sovereignty. At the same time, domestic pro-democracy organizations within Korea such as the weekly Korean Citizens’ Candlelight Rally and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), whose protests were instrumental to removing Yoon from power, have remained active, renewing their focus on social reform, national sovereignty, and liberation.
Viewed through the lens of U.S. militarism and Korea’s eroded sovereignty, the following takeaways highlight both the significance of the Revolution of Light and the paradox of Korea’s sovereignty crisis under Washington’s persistent pressure.
First, Korea’s revolution of light exposed the enduring imperial dynamics shaping Korean politics and the geopolitical constraints imposed by Washington’s revived Cold War posture. In this context, the movement underscored the profound moral contradictions at the heart of a U.S. foreign policy that claims to defend democracy while simultaneously enabling authoritarianism in its client states. It also illuminated the deep contradictions at the core of Washington’s hegemonic ambitions that continue to erode Korea’s sovereignty.
Second, the revolution of light effectively united millions of Koreans around a shared demand to reclaim democracy not only from domestic authoritarians but also from imperial domination. It revealed a truth rarely acknowledged by mainstream analysts: the fragility of U.S. unipolar power when confronted with a morally grounded and highly organized popular resistance. Standing as a testament to the resilience of Korea’s grassroots democracy, it demonstrated that any U.S. policy in Korea that dismisses or sidelines the democratic will of the Korean people is ultimately unsustainable.
A year ago, Koreans rose not only against illegal martial law and an attempted insurrection but also implicitly against a hegemonic U.S. framework that empowered an autocratic president whose ambitions nearly sparked war. To challenge Yoon and martial law was to resist U.S. hegemonic power within a deeply militarized client state under occupation, a reality that most mainstream analysts and media either ignore or deliberately obscure. Korea has already proven it can resist authoritarianism peacefully. The question now is whether it can assert genuine sovereignty in a world order dominated by U.S. militarism.