South Korean President Very Sorry He Tried To Do That Coup That You Do
Oh did he try to arrest the opposition leaders? His bad.
Late Tuesday night in South Korea (Tuesday morning here in the US), President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in what looked like a hissy fit because the nation’s parliament keeps not voting how he wants it to. A few hours later, the National Assembly voted to lift martial law, and Yoon, accepting that’s how his country’s constitution works, said OK FINE and agreed to comply with the parliamentary vote. Shortly after that, the streets of Seoul were full of protesters demanding Yoon resign, as is just and fitting.
Seems to us there could be a lesson for aspiring American dictators and the national legislature here, too, but then we’re prone to wild flights of fancy like that.
In his late-night martial law declaration, Yoon said that the opposition party must be cleansed of “anti-state” forces who he claims are actually sympathetic to North Korea’s communist government. We are not even slightly close to experts on Korean politics and that sure sounds like bullshit to us.
Yoon’s martial law declaration had also banned “fake news” and “manipulating public opinion,” which you also don’t have to be an expert on South Korean politics to understand only applied to Yoon’s opponents.
The military, perhaps nostalgic about the good old days of the 1970s and ‘80s when governments were toppled by a series of authoritarian strongmen, announced the immediate suspension of the parliament and of political gatherings likely to cause “social confusion.” For good measure, the military ordered doctors, who have been striking for months, to get back to work within 48 hours or face immediate arrest without a warrant. Authoritarians gotta throw their authority around.
Several hours after Yoon’s declaration, in an emergency session held in the wee hours of Wednesday morning local time, the National Assembly, ignoring the military’s declaration that it was suspended, went right ahead and voted to lift martial law, which is a thing it has the power to do under South Korea’s constitution. National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik said the martial law decree was invalid, and said the lawmakers “will protect democracy with the people.”
Reuters reports that after the vote,
Police and military personnel were seen leaving the Assembly’s grounds after Woo called for their withdrawal. Lee Jae-myung, leader of the liberal Democratic Party, which holds the majority in the 300-seat parliament, said the party’s lawmakers will remain in the Assembly’s main hall until Yoon formally lifts his order.
The 190 National Assembly members who were able to attend the emergency session voted unanimously to lift martial law.
In an embarrassing sub-hed that has long outlasted the crisis, CNN reported that “South Korea's parliament voted to block the president's martial law degree” and asked “What happens next?” So far, more uncertainty and some petty spelling nitpicks by American bloggers.
Once past the headline, which remained defiantly uncorrected when we wrote this story, the CNN story offers some genuinely useful information about the emergency powers available to South Korea’s president and the balancing options that its parliament can take:
[The] president has the power to declare extraordinary martial law, which allows special measures influencing freedoms of speech, press, assembly and association.
The president must then notify the National Assembly of his decision — but if a majority of lawmakers vote to lift martial law, “the president shall comply,” according to the constitution.
The president’s cabinet must then “deliberate” and review the decision to lift martial law, according to the constitution.
We had already written a draft speculating that Yoon would probably dismiss the National Assembly’s vote, both because he thinks it’s full of commies, and because the Strongman Playbook obviously required him to whine that the National Assembly was already suspended, so no fair, they were on a break.
We love being wrong sometimes! Yoon instead announced that he was waiting for his full cabinet to arrive so the declaration could be formally lifted, and called attention to how the nice troops had left the National Assembly building after the vote passed.
But as the Times also reports, that came only after Jo Seoung-lae, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party, said that military personnel had entered the building and tried to arrest both Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung and the head of Yoon’s own People Power Party, Han Dong-hoon, who had called for Yoon to reverse the order. The military also tried to arrest National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik. Jo called the attempt to prevent the National Assembly from holding its vote a “coup d’etat and a plot to overthrow the government.”
The New York Times explained in a separate story that since being elected in 2022, Yoon has been consistently blocked by the opposition party, and he’s increasingly become a fan of the whole would-be dictator thing that all the world’s rightwing assholes have been experimenting with lately. Peer pressure and all that:
Soon after he was elected, however, Mr. Yoon began turning to lawsuits, state regulators and criminal investigations to clamp down on speech that he called disinformation, efforts that were largely aimed at news organizations. Police and prosecutors repeatedly raided the homes and newsrooms of journalists whom his office has accused of spreading “fake news.”
In April, Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party suffered a stinging defeat in parliamentary elections, giving the opposition a huge majority. He became the first South Korean president in decades to contend with an opposition-controlled Parliament for his entire time in office.
CNN reported, before the resolution of the crisis, that President Joe Biden, who’s touring Africa this week, was very carefully not commenting on the situation in South Korea, telling reporters early on he was “just getting briefed on it.”
You can see why Biden would want to be very careful, given the US-South Korea military alliance, the notorious bromance between Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and Trump’s already clear indifference to democratic norms. Trump supporters have long urged him to declare martial law, and the last thing he needed was a model from South Korea.
As of yet, we haven’t seen any comment from Trump on yesterday’s emergency in South Korea, possibly because none of his top advisers have yet succeeded in explaining to him that it’s not the Korea whose leader he’s smitten with, or because Trump can’t be convinced to stop making racist jokes about all those funny Korean names.
[NYT (gift link) Reuters / CNN / NYT]
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What angers me is that when Trump will do this the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press will side with him.
Why do people vote for this? Part the infinity.
"House Republican Wants Party To Boldly Own Plans To Gut The Social Safety Net,"
This country is already untenably expensive to live in. My entire SS check only pays the rent. I still have to work in order to afford groceries. Fucking idiots.