South Korea’s unrepentant president is on the brink
“Seoul’s spring”, the highest-grossing South Korean film of 2023, tells the story of how Chun Doo-hwan, a military dictator, seized power more than 40 years ago. It is supposed to be an edifying historical drama, a reminder of the horrors the country endured under martial law and of how far it has come in the decades since. Instead, on December 3rd, Yoon Suk Yeol, the current president, staged a real-life sequel by imposing martial law for the first time since Chun’s era. The film has shot back to the top of streaming platforms in South Korea. Mr Yoon, however, has crash landed. After quickly backtracking on the declaration of martial law, he now faces imminent impeachment or even arrest.
Mr Yoon has been defiant since his failed self-coup. He survived an impeachment vote in the National Assembly on December 7th, thanks to a boycott by his People’s Power Party (PPP). The party then proposed an “orderly” transition of power. But the dubious legality of this arrangement caused a constitutional crisis. By law, Mr Yoon remained in charge of the country and the commander-in-chief. In political and moral terms he had lost all authority.
The president underscored his unfitness for office with a raving address on December 12th, the 45th anniversary of Chun’s coup. He accused the opposition of seeking to turn South Korea into a “paradise” for foreign spies and a “drug den” overrun by “gangsters”. He railed against a “parliamentary dictatorship” that thwarted his agenda and promised to “fight until the end”. The speech came shortly after Han Dong-hoon, the head of the PPP, had changed tack and called for immediate impeachment. The Democratic Party (DP), the main opposition, will hold a vote on a second impeachment motion on December 14th. Only eight PPP members need to break ranks for it to pass.
Pressure from the streets is also building. Protest movements have been a powerful force in the country’s history, from the democratisation process in the late 1980s to the impeachment of a former president, Park Geun-hye, in 2016-17. Tens of thousands gathered on December 7th. Smaller rallies have since persisted. The mood is carnivalesque, with music, dancing and vendors selling lighting sticks intended for K-pop concerts that have been plastered with anti-Yoon slogans. But the protests are fuelled by real fury. “I’m too old to be doing this in the cold, but I’m just so angry,” says Park Ju-yeon, a 62-year-old pensioner from Seoul who promises to continue until Mr Yoon is gone.
The picture of the fateful night of the coup has become only more disturbing as details have emerged. Troops were dispatched not only to the National Assembly, but also to the national election commission. Mr Yoon says this was to gather evidence of purported North Korean hacking (which he implies led to his party’s defeat in general elections in April). The president ordered the arrests of leading politicians, including Lee Jae-myung, the head of the DP, and even Mr Han. As farcical as the affair now seems, the intent was all too serious. One special-forces commander testified that Mr Yoon personally called him during the operation and ordered him to “break down the doors” and “drag out” the lawmakers inside.
Only a small cabal, many of whom graduated from the same high school as the president, knew of the plot in advance. Rhee Chang-yong, the governor of the Bank of Korea, was among many senior officials who learned of the impending martial law only when he saw Mr Yoon on television. The declaration was so unlikely that “I initially thought the video was a deepfake and that the television station had been hacked,” says Mr Rhee.
In retrospect, signs of Mr Yoon’s intentions had been visible. In recent months he had moved loyalists into key positions in the defence ministry and intelligence services. Opposition leaders had been warning of the possibility of martial law since August. Mr Yoon’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, dismissed the idea as fearmongering during his confirmation hearings. He ended up being the first official arrested in connection with the plot; he attempted suicide while in custody.
Mr Yoon’s justification for his rash act is unlikely to convince many. Mr Rhee calls the move an “unnecessary and unimaginable mistake” and an “embarrassment”. Other current and former officials, politicians and diplomats use even starker language: shameful, stupid, crazy, surreal, unthinkable, outrageous, psychotic.
Liable to be a laughing-stock
The consequences will be far-reaching. Mr Yoon positioned his country as a democratic bulwark, even co-hosting, with America, a “Summit for Democracy” in Seoul this year. He promoted the idea of South Korea as a “global pivotal state”. He has instead made it look ridiculous.
American officials insist that their alliance with South Korea remains “ironclad”. Yet trust in it may suffer, especially since America had no advance notice, despite having nearly 30,000 troops stationed there. South Korea will also be in a worse position to manage Donald Trump, America’s president-elect. A longtime sceptic of the alliance, Mr Trump discussed withdrawing American troops from the Korean peninsula during his first term. South Korea’s best hope of changing his views was for its leader to forge a personal bond, but there is likely to be a leadership vacuum in Seoul when he is inaugurated.
The political crisis may well drag on for months. If the National Assembly approves a motion to impeach, the president will be suspended, with power passing to the prime minister in the interim. The constitutional court then must issue a final ruling within 180 days. The court has just six of its nine seats filled (three justices retired in October). While only six votes are needed to convict, in normal circumstances seven would be required for a quorum. It is a matter of debate whether the court could issue a verdict in its current state.
Prosecutors may get to the president even sooner. South Korean law makes treason an exception to presidential immunity. The National Assembly voted on December 10th to empower a special counsel. Investigators have already put Mr Yoon on a no-fly list and moved to search his office.
Mr Lee, the DP’s presumptive presidential candidate, faces his own legal problems, having been convicted of lying in a parliamentary audit and in an interview during the previous presidential campaign, which a court determined to be a violation of election law. (He calls the charges politically motivated.) The PPP hopes that his conviction will be upheld on appeal before the next election, barring him from running. A second constitutional crisis looms if he tries to stand regardless.
Any DP candidate will be favoured to win the new elections. If they do, foreign policy will be an area of “dramatic change”, reckons Kim Sook, a former ambassador. Those changes will probably frustrate Western governments that welcomed Mr Yoon’s alignment with America, Japan and Europe. The DP may bid for more engagement with North Korea, which has been happy to sit back and watch Mr Yoon’s antics. The relationship with Japan will face friction. DP leaders are also loth to aid Ukraine or Taiwan.
The impact on South Korea’s economy will probably be more muted. “There is a mechanism for economic issues to be dealt with irrespective of political issues,” says Mr Rhee. Mr Yoon’s finance minister has agreed to take part in a consultative body for emergency economic policymaking alongside the DP. Daily life has continued without interruption since the abortive martial-law attempt. Acute turbulence on financial markets proved short-lived. But prolonged political uncertainty will make it harder to tackle longer-term economic challenges. A DP president will want to implement labour-friendly policies, while corporate-governance reforms that Mr Yoon promoted may stall.
For all the turmoil, the incident has also highlighted the evolution and resilience of South Korea’s democracy. During Chun’s rule, Ms Park, the pensioner, and her husband, Hyeong-Bae, were too afraid to protest. Previous periods of upheaval, including the massacre of protesters by Chun’s forces in Gwangju in 1980, helped strengthen South Koreans’ dedication to democracy. “I hope this will be another of those episodes that feeds into that process,” says Mr Park. The film version, when it inevitably gets made, will write itself. ■
Correction (December 23rd): An earlier version of this article stated that Lee Jae-myung, the head of the Democratic Party, was convicted of lying to investigators. In fact, he was convicted of lying in a parliamentary audit and in an interview during a prior campaign, in violation of election law. We regret the error.