What Charlie Kirk meant to South Koreans

On the first weekend of September, I saw Charlie Kirk speak at the Build Up Korea conference in Seoul. It was his first trip to Asia and sadly destined to be his last; five days later, he was assassinated at Utah Valley University.

The conference is an annual gathering of young Korean conservatives, with whom Kirk had become quite popular. Even after having taught university here for seven years, I still did not feel like I had a good handle on the current political scene.

When Kirk spoke of how the most pressing problems were those that came from within South Korea, a hush settled over the mostly young audience.

The issues that are divisive can appear puzzling and petty to the outsider unfamiliar with the parties involved. And the terms of debate seem to have remained the same even as the values and outlooks of people have changed, even dramatically, over the past decade.

While conservatism in South Korea was on the same page as the Republican Party in the past, the rise of the MAGA movement has complicated matters. Its slogan of “America First,” which portends the reduction of U.S. military commitments across the globe and the drawing down of U.S. forces across the globe, stands at odds with the priorities of South Korean conservatives, for whom maintaining alliance with the U.S. is a cornerstone of their politics.

Indeed, until recently, one of the major dividing lines between left and right in South Korea was that the right, as the party of business, was more outwardly directed, favoring international trade and supporting the activities of the major South Korean corporations, while the left was more inward-looking and nationalist.

A South Korean today who would be willing to declare “Korea First” is likely to belong to the shrinking number of aging leftists who want to unite the two Koreas under a social democratic system.

But the enthusiastic cheers that greeted Kirk when he took to the stage seemed to dispel any such apprehension about the future of the alliance. Kirk’s engaging presence on social media had created an eager cohort of followers among young Christians in South Korea.

The affection shown by the audience was reciprocated by Charlie, who had clearly taken the time to study contemporary South Korean society so that he could speak knowledgeably about the most serious problems it faces.

He praised how well things work in Korea and spoke of how the country had come such a long way from the poverty caused by total war. Kirk spoke of how peaceful and friendly the people are and of how wonderful it felt to be able to take public transportation without the fear of crime or walk in a park and not be menaced by violent drug addicts. This is how things should be in every modern country, and his tone took a wistful turn, as he indicated that life was no longer like this in the U.S.

To be sure, his speech contained some familiar and predictable warnings about the dangers of communism and the threat to South Korea posed by the Chinese Communist Party and by the dictatorship in the North. Invoking the times that Americans and South Koreans had fought side by side, Kirk reaffirmed the alliance as the fruit of shared sacrifice and common values.

These boilerplate remarks were met with applause from the audience, but when Kirk spoke of how the most pressing problems were those that came from within South Korea, a hush settled over the mostly young audience.

After praising South Korea for its remarkable rise from the ashes of a devastating war and the dire poverty it caused, Kirk warned that the country currently faces an existential threat of its own making. The collapsing rates of marriages and births pose the gravest threats to the nation’s future. Of course, this issue has long ago become an everyday topic of conversation, but the way Kirk approached the topic grabbed the attention of the crowd.

He spoke with great sympathy of the harsh and stressful lives endured by Korean children, who from an early age are forced to spend day and night studying for the college entrance examination. He was also familiar with the lingo used by South Koreans to describe their despair, referring to the “en-po generation,” which is used to describe the things that Koreans feel forced to give up. For example, “sam-po,” which means “three renunciations,” refers to giving up on dating, marriage, and children. “O-po,” which means five renunciations, adds “homeownership” and “friendships” to the list of the previous three. “Sip-po” refers to giving up everything, including life itself.

The care that Kirk took in learning about the most pressing crises in South Korean society did not just flatter his audience — as a people might feel warmth and reassurance when an outsider speaks both sympathetically and knowledgeably about their troubles. He also challenged the young people at the conference in a way that sparked in them hope and confidence.

Kirk reminded them of the thousands of years of history on the Korean peninsula and the terrible ordeals that Koreans had suffered in the past — wars, invasions, and famines. What would the ancestors of today’s Koreans say, he asked, if they were to learn that their descendants, living in a wealthy and prosperous nation, had stopped reproducing out of economic worries?

Kirk emphasized not only that is it morally wrong not to have children, but also that children bring joy into the lives of their parents. Koreans, he continued, need to look at every aspect of their society — law, policy, culture — to create an environment that promotes child-bearing and healthy child-rearing.

The recent impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative Catholic, and the subsequent election of liberal Lee Jae-myung has left local Christians feeling embattled. The country has also felt increasing pressure from global allies to allow mass migration.

In these matters, Kirk affirmed that the struggles of Koreans were also those of Americans, who had thrown off the tyranny of the Biden administration and are at present undoing the damage caused by the regime’s policy of open borders. He ended his message by declaring that he would never forget South Korea and that he would be there for young Koreans in the future.

It is grieves my heart to note that in retrospect, he will be there in spirit. Yet, a man who planted so many seeds that bore much fruit in life will also in death become even more fruitful in renewing the lives of those who remember him.