Namjoon, The Idol, and The Machine

On suffering in sync, idol worship, and the silent trauma of serving the state

I felt sick as soon as I opened my phone and saw it. The timeline was on fire with excerpts from Namjoon’s live—the one he made the day he got out of the military. Nausea washed over me. A great sadness too. He had suffered. He had suffered so much that he couldn’t sleep at night, that he needed specialist help, that he needed medication. Helplessness, guilt, heartbreak… that’s what I felt. And writing this now, my heart is still heavy. I still feel sick.

Militarisation takes our artists and turns them into soldiers—breaks them down, builds them back up, and calls it duty. But who are they once they’re rebuilt? And how does life ever look the same again?

What struck me most wasn’t just that Namjoon had been hurting, it was that we didn’t know. He didn’t show us. Not because he didn’t trust us, but because that’s what soldiers are trained to do: suppress, endure, protect others from their pain. And Namjoon has always protected us. Even when it cost him.

There’s a specific kind of heartbreak that comes after the fact. When someone you love tells you what they went through—and it’s already done, already over. There’s no way to go back and sit beside them in it. All you can do is grieve what you missed. All you can do is ache in retrospect.

That ache… it’s not just about Namjoon. It’s about the system that made his silence necessary. South Korea’s military conscription isn’t a cultural quirk—it’s a state mandate born of decades-long tension, surveillance, and armament. It’s a symptom of global militarisation, of a world where defence spending outweighs care, where bodies are trained not to feel but to obey. Even poets aren’t exempt from the demands of a militarised nation. So it’s no wonder he couldn’t sleep at night.

We watched Namjoon return, still soft in voice, but quieter in soul. The light still flickering… but dimmed. And I wonder: how many more of our artists, our visionaries, will be told they owe their country more than their creativity? More than their humanity?

The thing is, Namjoon was a soldier long before he enlisted.