Out! A protester punches an effigy of President Yoon Suk-yeol after the National Assembly’s second vote to impeach him, Seoul, 14 December 2024
Anthony Wallace · AFP · Getty
On 3 December President Yoon Suk-yeol abruptly left a cabinet meeting with no explanation. Most of his colleagues only discovered why when they heard him making a televised address from an adjoining room, announcing South Korea’s 17th – and fortunately shortest – period of martial law since it was established in 1948.
The logic seemed watertight to Yoon: if an opposition-controlled National Assembly thwarts a president – for example, by refusing to pass a budget his administration has called for – this is an affront to universal suffrage and the constitution. It didn’t matter that these parliamentarians had been elected or that the opposition’s majority in the assembly stemmed primarily from the president’s unpopularity. In Yoon’s worldview, a parliament either obeys or must be overturned.
On the basis of this rationale – which probably appeals to other political leaders, and not just in Asia – Yoon denounced a ‘legislative dictatorship’ orchestrated by the opposition which had ‘paralysed’ the state: ‘This trampling of the constitutional order of the free Republic of Korea and the disruption of legitimate state institutions established by the constitution and laws is an obvious anti-state act that plots insurrection.’
South Korea has remained officially at war with its northern neighbour since the 1953 armistice because its ally, the United States, has consistently torpedoed efforts to conclude a peace treaty. Yoon was in no doubt: the rebel parliamentarians were, in reality, communist agents seeking to ‘overthrow the liberal democracy system’ and surrender the country to the enemy. It didn’t matter that the Democratic (Minjoo) Party, which has a parliamentary majority, is so moderate that it makes European centrists look like hot-headed radicals and that it has always sought to protect the interests of the ruling classes. Yoon, convinced that democracy was in danger, decided to suspend it.
‘I declare emergency martial law,’ he told his fellow citizens on (…)
Full article: 3 896 words.
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