The world was blindsided on 3 December when South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol declared “emergency martial law”. In an unscheduled TV address at half-ten on an otherwise tranquil Monday night, Yoon announced that he and the military were now in charge of a country that still carries the battle scars of its long fight to secure liberal democracy and civilian rule. All political activities were prohibited, Yoon said, and media were given a gag order. Luckily, the public, including the press, ignored the president’s command. Yoon sent police, followed by soldiers, to shut down the National Assembly. But in a mad race between legislators and special forces, the lawmakers, with the help of an incensed crowd, won. The Assembly voted to revoke martial law hours after the president’s decree, and in the wee hours of the morning Yoon conceded the end of his hapless dictatorship.
The move was so outrageous that some labeled it a political suicide. But Yoon seemed to think he was acting in his own self-interest, even when committing a massive miscalculation, if not a high crime, that would incite the wrath of the nation. So why did he think it was a good idea to put one of Asia’s most robust democracies under military rule? And where does South Korea and its foreign policy go from here?
The best way to understand Yoon’s gambit is an act of autocratic desperation by a deeply unpopular president. He won the presidential election two and a half years ago by the narrowest margin of victory in Korean political history. And unlike some of his predecessors, there was not much of a honeymoon after the win. Instead of a boost, Yoon faced buyer’s remorse on the part of many Koreans. His first big move was a literal one, insisting on relocating the presidential office, known as the Blue House, from its historic place at the northern edge of Seoul to the defence ministry complex in the heart of the city. The proposal generated considerable public complaint about the cost and inconvenience, but Yoon would not budge. Embedding the presidency within the defence ministry looks in retrospect like an ominous harbinger of things to come.
The defining event of Yoon’s first year in office took place on Halloween, when 159 people were killed and hundreds more hurt in the horrific “Itaewon crush.” Itaewon is a regentrified neighbourhood known for its narrow streets and buzzing nightlife, located, as fate would have it, just minutes away from the new presidential office. I was teaching in Seoul at the time and will never forget the traumatised looks on my students’ faces after the tragedy, which disproportionally impacted young people. The breakdown in public safety protocols reflected terribly on the administration, leaving a lasting wound. The Itaewon crush also dredged up painful memories of the Sewol Ferry sinking in 2014, when over 300 passengers perished, including hundreds of students on a class trip to Jeju island – a tragedy that badly tarnished then-president, Park Geun-hye, who would herself be impeached two years later.
Things kept going from bad to worse for Yoon. Over the course of this year, the biggest story in Korean papers was a prolonged doctors’ strike that brought to the fore structural problems in the healthcare system. While the labour dynamics were complicated, many people held the Yoon administration responsible for failing in its part to help find a resolution. It was not a coincidence that Yoon’s martial law decree banned unions and ordered doctors back to work within 48 hours.
In April, Yoon’s conservative party was badly defeated in the National Assembly elections, held every four years. The leading liberal opposition party and allied members ended up with 192 out of 300 seats. Since the electoral defeat, right-wing YouTubers have promoted conspiracy theories about election fraud in the absence of credible evidence.
Immediately after declaring martial law, Yoon sent soldiers not only to shut down the Assembly but also to raid the non-partisan National Election Commission. He would have presumably used “evidence” of North Korean interference obtained in the raid to insist the current legislature was illegitimately elected, and using ex post facto justification of his martial law decree to shut it down.
Finally, allegations of misdoings and behind-the-scenes influence by the First Lady Kim Keon-hee have snowballed and reached avalanche-like proportions. As a candidate Yoon promised to do away with the tradition of an office for the first lady, and Kim said she would be a “quiet wife”. Yet her public profile increased even as the public soured on her. The National Assembly called for special counsel investigation into charges including stock price manipulation, but Yoon exercised a presidential veto to stop them. In the view of many Koreans, the unspoken subtext of Yoon’s martial law speech was putting an end to what he saw as the “demonisation” of his wife.
The exact political and emotional calculations that came together so that Yoon Suk-yeol could convince himself it was a good idea to send soldiers to shutter the National Assembly and breach the National Election Commission might never be fully known. Rather than provide a full accounting, Yoon has opted for self-justification and obfuscation, claiming for example that if he really meant to carry out martial law, he would have made the announcement on a weekend. His assertation that he only wanted to send a message about the severity of political polarisation is hard for Koreans to accept.
Rather than plumb the president’s motives and objectives, the important point to understand is that Yoon was already unpopular and isolated before he declared martial law. The circle of confidants involved in planning the autocoup appears to have been relatively small, which should help the accountability and transition process. Yoon’s party boycotted the initial impeachment vote, but on 14 December let its members to sit for another. A dozen party members abandoned their leader, allowing the impeachment bill to pass by a vote of 204 to 85.
Now, the constitutional court will review the constitutionality of the impeachment motion, a process that took three months the last time it happened. If impeachment is upheld, new presidential elections must take place within 60 days. So, in all likelihood, there could be a leadership vacuum in Seoul until sometime in the spring of next year.
The drift comes at a precarious time for South Korea. The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January poses a huge diplomatic and economic challenge. If Trump goes through with plans to escalate the US-China trade war, Korean businesses and the economy as a whole face the prospect of being caught between Seoul’s two largest trading and investment partners. Meanwhile Trump could direct his penchant for using tariffs or other protectionist trade measures against South Korea itself. Trump is also likely to re-up his demand for billions of dollars more each year out of South Korea to pay for the US military presence in the country, an unmet demand left over from his first term. Severe damage could be done to the US-ROK alliance and economic relationship at a time when South Korea is leaderless.
The other dangerous front, of course, is North Korea. The relationship between North and South became increasingly acrimonious during Yoon’s tenure, in contrast to the inter-Korean dialogue and reconciliation attempted under the previous president, Moon Jae-in. At the beginning of this year, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the end of the decades-long policy, devised by his grandfather and continued by his father, to seek political reunification with the South. Kim boldly announced a two-state solution, offering formal recognition of the territorial sovereignty of the South while at the same time warning, in ominous language, that the North was prepared for war if its own borders were violated. Leading analysts Bob Carlin and Siegfried Hecker argue that Kim might have made a “strategic decision for war,” since he has abandoned the goal of reconciliation with Seoul and Washington. In other words, political instability in the South could look tempting in the eyes of Pyongyang. In a tragic irony, Yoon’s declaration of martial law to “exterminate pro-North Korean and anti-state forces” has itself increased the risk of conflict on the Peninsula.
Looking beyond the perils of a power vacuum in months to come, there are potential longer-term implications for South Korean foreign policy as a result of the spectacular implosion of the Yoon presidency. In the case of impeachment or resignation, the subsequent election will be liberals’ to lose, with the presumptive Democratic Party candidate being Lee Jae-myung, who came close to beating Yoon in the election two years ago.
A return to the presidency for the liberal party can be expected to tilt the balance of South Korea’s foreign relations. The most significant change to anticipate is that, rather than seeking to improve relations with Japan, as the Yoon administration did, a liberal president is likely to put his or her energy into improving relations with North Korea. In this regard, paradoxically, a liberal might have a much easier time working together with Donald Trump, who appears keen to revive diplomacy with Kim Jong Un. But it remains very much an open question whether Kim will reciprocate joint entreaties from a conservative American and liberal Korean president to come back to the negotiating table.
Yoon’s shocking imposition of martial law was yet another example, as if the world needed one, of the fragility of liberal democracy. But the vigorous response by the citizenry demonstrated South Korea’s republican resilience. The separation of powers and public spirit nipped a dictatorship in the bud. As more details of the 3 December incident emerge and the pressing political questions are answered, Koreans will have to take a hard look at the structures and forces that brought them back to the precipice of authoritarianism.
[See also: Europe’s Ukraine delusion]
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