In 2022, Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor, was elected president of South Korea. Yoon served as prosecutor general for the ruling Democratic Party three years earlier – ostensibly as a neutral outsider – but his relationship with the government became increasingly fractious, especially after he indicted a senior aide of the outgoing president Moon Jae-in, in a bribery case, and in so doing burnished his own political credentials. In 2021, Yoon tendered his resignation to the government in order to become the presidential candidate for the conservative People Power Party, and triumphed in the subsequent election, albeit with a razor thin majority. In his inauguration speech, he promised to “rebuild this great nation” into one “that truly belongs to the people”.
To some readers, Yoon’s trajectory – from political outsider to candidate pledging to clean up politics – will look familiar. In 2016 (and again in 2024), Donald Trump, formerly of the entertainment business, was elected president of the United States. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former actor, was elected president of Ukraine in 2019. And in 2023, the chainsaw-wielding economist Javier Milei was elected president of Argentina. In each of these cases, the electorate grew frustrated with an inept or corrupt political class and thus turned to newcomers with ostensibly clean hands to “drain the swamp”. For all its recent successes as a growing economic power, allegations of corruption have been made against every South Korean administration since the country’s return to democracy in 1987. Yoon pledged to clean up politics. “I have no political experience”, he conceded, during the election campaign, “(But) the public has seen everything I’ve experienced in the process of realising fairness and the rule of law”. A more controversial policy was his promise to dissolve the Ministry of Women and Family with his victory reliant, in part, on the votes of young men who rallied against what they regarded as gender-biased policies.
But the Yoon administration was beset with problems from its inception. The margin of victory in the election was narrow (just 0.73 percent) and Yoon entered office with low approval ratings. The Korean parliament was also opposition-controlled. Four of Yoon’s preferred cabinet nominees were forced to withdraw on account of allegations of impropriety. As of January this year, meanwhile, only 29 percent of bills submitted to parliament by his government had passed. Yoon responded by wielding his presidential veto to strike down opposition-led legislation; indeed he vetoed more laws than any of his predecessors in the country’s modern history. Yoon’s political inexperience showed when he announced a plan to move his office from the “Blue House” in central Seoul to a defence ministry complex in order to make him appear more down-to-earth and in touch with public opinion. But the public decried the cost of implementing the plan. Opposition figures have also pushed for investigations into Yoon, his wife and their spiritual advisor over allegations of improper dealings with a polling agency owner. Amid these issues, politicians, trade unions and civil society have begun demanding Yoon be impeached.
Then on Tuesday, in a late-night television address, Yoon took the extraordinary decision to declare martial law to “protect liberal democracy” and “the safety of the people”. Among the accompanying document’s core points were the prohibition of parliament and local councils, cessation of strikes, and government control over the media. The decision apparently blindsided everyone, not least the United States, South Korea’s most important international ally, whose government reported it had not been informed. There were, perhaps, signs. In an August 2023 speech, Yoon railed against “the forces of communist totalitarianism” masquerading as “democracy activists, human rights advocates, or progressive activists”. But most commentators dismissed this as right-leaning political rhetoric. A Democratic Party politician Kim Min-seok proved the exception, noting in September that Yoon had given his close associates prominent positions in state administrations and the military. But these warnings, too, were dismissed as shrill.
Soon after Yoon’s address, the police and military descended upon the Korean parliament. But martial law proved very short-lived. Protesters gathered outside the barricades while 190 politicians broke through them and, in the voting chamber, unanimously rejected Yoon’s order. Six hours after the announcement, then, Yoon was forced into a humiliating retreat. Senior aides and his defence minister apologised and resigned. Trade unions called for a general strike while a motion to impeach Yoon was drawn up. The Korean parliament is controlled by opposition parties who will need the votes of only ten members of Yoon’s 108-strong People Power Party for the motion to pass. Though his party will officially defend him, the president’s career surely looks doomed.
From the outside, Yoon’s gambit appears downright bizarre. But there are historical precedents. In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India declared a two year long “Emergency”, citing threats to democracy within and without. In 2015, the president of France Francoise Hollande declared a “state of emergency” that granted him special powers after 130 people were killed by Islamist terrorists in Paris. And governments globally granted themselves extraordinary powers to impose “lockdowns” after the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020. But Yoon’s decision comes amid mounting opposition to his presidency and his own chronically low approval ratings. It is difficult, in such circumstances, for a president to persuade the public of the necessity of this course of action – even where martial law is concerned, some tacit public consent is essential.
There are, nevertheless, broader causes to consider here. The first is the issue of Donald Trump’s election in the United States. Since its return to democracy, the incredible growth of South Korea’s economy and arrival at the status of “developed” nation in 2021 has been reliant on American military support: the “Pax Americana”. 30,000 American troops are stationed in the country due to continuous military tensions with its communist neighbour North Korea. But Trump’s “America First” foreign policy means that South Korea may be forced to renegotiate the costs of American military support.
Second, the rise of China poses an economic threat to South Korea, with the former becoming particularly adept in production of semiconductors and consumer electronics, sectors that have been disproportionately responsible for the latter’s success. A beneficiary of the old trade-friendly world order, South Korea’s best hope, as the FT reports, may “rest on the US becoming maximally hostile to Chinese imports”. Then there is, of course, the issue of North Korea. Troops from North Korea have been deployed in Russia’s war against Ukraine, a consequence of a deepening alliance between the two countries; thus, a shift in their relationship with China, upon whom both increasingly depend. Should South Korea deepen its ties with the US, it may be forced into a confrontation with China, if the latter decides to invade Taiwan. In such circumstances, South Koreans may well ask whether this is really worth the risk.
Economically and militarily, then, South Korea’s future is uncertain. The old certainties of the globalised world order have gone and in this unsteady and mercurial new world order, medium-sized powers like South Korea are increasingly at the mercy of big power politics beyond their control. Of course, that has always been true to an extent. But the old word order made countries like South Korea prosperous so long as they abided by the rules of the game. But economic uncertainty makes it difficult for politicians to bring about change and whenever democracies cannot effect change, the legitimacy of the system itself is called into question. That is true of South Korea, but also of liberal democracies the world over. Or, as Leo Lewis in the FT puts it: “Yoon’s gambit was an extreme weather event; the underlying climate change is more troubling”.
