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(Left) Impeached former South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol wears a “Make Korea Great Again” hat given to him by a supporter as he leaves the presidential residence on April 11, 2025, after being deposed. (Right) US President Donald Trump campaigns in Iowa in October 2020. (pool photo; AP/Yonhap)

By Seo Bokyeung, director of the Possibility Lab

Clashes between the Donald Trump administration and the city of Los Angeles, and opponents in the general public, have been heating up amid the US president’s decision to send the military into the city to supposedly crack down on illegal immigration.

While this was happening, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., posted a controversial social media message on Sunday bearing the caption “Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!” Amid strong protests from California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the decision to send federal troops into the city, Trump has made the situation worse with threats to have him arrested.

US media have reported on concerns that Trump’s actions could amount to a dress rehearsal for bigger incidents to come.

While there is no way of knowing where the current situation in the US will lead, the events so far bring up memories of what the South Korean people went through during the Yoon Suk-yeol presidency.

Donald Trump Jr. is not only the son of the current US president. He is an influencer who boasts around 15 million followers, shaping opinions as he spreads messages that his father deems necessary but is not in a position to share through official channels. The “Make Rooftop Koreans Great Again!” message included a photo showing a Korean American on a rooftop, carrying a weapon to protect a neighborhood of Korean-owned shops during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

While those riots erupted as a form of resistance against deep-rooted racism within the US government and society, they also had a tragic outcome in terms of clashes between the Black and Korean American communities. On Monday, the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles shared a message “strongly urg[ing] that the past traumas of the Korean American community [. . .] never be exploited for political gain.”

The younger Trump’s message was horrific and brutal in the way it starkly revealed the intention of furthering the president’s own political interests by encouraging fighting among minorities in US society.

The image brought to mind similar experiences during the Yoon administration. In one instance, the administration drove a wedge between organized and unorganized workers with a message at a Commerce & Industry Day commemorative event on March 20, 2024, where Yoon characterized unions as a “cartel of interests armed with ideology” and declared plans to “protect the alienated unorganized and irregular workers.”

At a meeting of the People Power Party’s Supreme Council on March 28, 2022, then-party leader Lee Jun-seok decried protests in subway stations organized by the group Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD), which he referred to as “uncivilized and illegal demonstrations where the only way for their demands to be met is by causing misfortune and inconvenience for the majority.” This represents an attempt to incite conflict by dividing the public into “uncivilized” disabled demonstrators and the “majority” suffering misfortune and inconvenience because of them.

Wherever you look, bad politicians are attempting to pit vulnerable segments against each other to further their own interests.

The scenes of Trump provoking Newsom call to mind instances where Yoon and other PPP politicians sought to extricate themselves from political difficulties by attacking their rivals and political opposition as “anti-state forces,” “opponents of the Republic of Korea,” and “juche advocates” — and even attempting to remove them by violent means.

By branding immigrants as the source of all evils, and by denouncing the Democratic Party and the strongest potential political rivals as siding with immigrants against a “great” America, Trump is attempting to legitimize the idea of eliminating political opponents.

US law states that the federal government must obtain a governor’s consent to send the National Guard into a given state. Trump deliberately disregarded the California governor’s authority to consent to the measure. His aim appears to be to provoke a violent response that can then be used as a justification for elimination.

Indeed, Newsom is seen as a leading Democratic Party contender for the next presidential election. Wherever you look, bad politicians are using illegal means to try to remove their political rivals rather than competing with them legitimately.

Yoon was willing to mobilize the military to incapacitate the National Assembly and remove opposition party politicians. Trump is likewise using the military to attack demonstrators, override the state of California’s independent government, and threaten opposition party politicians. Bad politicians will not hesitate to seek to further their own interests by mobilizing forms of national authority that should only be used to protect the public.

We’re witnessing yet another real-life demonstration of the fact that bad politicians can crop up anywhere, and that if the political community doesn’t work together to stop them, that inaction may come back to destroy it. I pray that Korean Americans, Koreans living in the US, and the rest of Americans are unharmed by state violence. 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]