South Korea's Democracy Saved Itself (2024)
55 comments
·January 24, 2025sanxiyn
robertlagrant
Mistakenly pasting in martial law is surely grounds for impeachment in its own right. Ignorance of what law you're passing is not an excuse.
bamboozled
Yoon is arguing some ridiculous excuses which would have been funny if this was not serious.
Sounds like a standard "democratic leader" these days.
sanxiyn
Is anyone else claiming to have made copy and paste error in, say, executive orders?
winternewt
Not precisely that. But blaming your Nazi salute on autism is in the same vein.
heresie-dabord
Proof once more that the enemies of Democracy can be both foreign and domestic.
> The democracy movement isn’t just history but is also actively taught in schools as part of national identity.
Education is the beginning. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." [1]
> Conservative leaders now have to choose between democratic principles and party loyalty.
To choose party (or any other) loyalty over democratic principles and the constitution is treason. For any voters to support such a party implies a deep failure to instill democratic principles and knowledge of history.
[1] _ https://www.monticello.org/exhibits-events/blog/eternal-vigi...
wakawaka28
>To choose party (or any other) loyalty over democratic principles and the constitution is treason. For any voters to support such a party implies a deep failure to instill democratic principles and knowledge of history.
Being loyal to one's party is something they all do (except for a handful of people who may very well be turncoats). You can't reasonably interpret hiring "loyalists" to positions that you have every legal right to fill as anti-democracy, in general, because everyone does it. You certainly wouldn't expect someone to tolerate disloyal and disobedient subordinates if they had the choice, would you? There needs to be some discretion but many jobs are promised to supporters long before any election.
pjc50
Loyalty above the law is corruption. You can't have a modern state without some degree of loyalty to the concept of the democratic state itself, over and above personal ties.
wakawaka28
I'm not suggesting that anyone should break the law. (There are some rare circumstances where that is justifiable, but I'm not getting into that right now. It's basically irrelevant.) I sense that someone is trying to connect the South Korea wannabe dictator to one of our political parties, and it's not even close to comparable. Call me when the Bill of Rights is suspended or something.
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Joker_vD
Maybe they should just remove the president's post altogether? Seriously, almost every one of recent SK presidents were convicted of something after they left the post. How... why do such people regularly keep getting elected there, and why do they even bother to, since there is already an established pattern of criminal convictions, do they think they'll break it and get away with whatever they did?
unsupp0rted
It's not just presidents. You can't go from receiving foreign aid from Ethiopia one day to being a glittering rich megalopolis the next day without a culture of corruption, nepotism, and selfishness sticking around for a few generations afterward.
The good news is every year things improve by a huge %. Younger Koreans are more and more honest, reasonable, kind-hearted and selfless.
Just give it another generation or two.
randallsquared
> You can't go from receiving foreign aid from Ethiopia one day to being a glittering rich megalopolis the next day without a culture of corruption
What? Corruption would be a drag on economic growth, not a boost to it...
Joker_vD
There has actually been quite a number of studies like
Abstract: Several cross-country studies have found that corruption is detrimental to economic growth, but the
findings are not universally robust. We utilize the economic freedom index to examine if corruption can facilitate
growth by allowing entrepreneurs to avoid inefficient policies and regulations when economic freedom is limited.
Using regression analysis, we find that corruption is growth enhancing when economic freedom is most limited but
the beneficial impact of corruption decreases as economic freedom increases. Not all areas of economic freedom
affect the corruption-growth relationship equally. In particular, we find that when we analyze individual areas of
economic freedom the beneficial effect of corruption disappears most quickly when the size of government and the
extent of regulation decrease.
unsupp0rted
Korea didn't become prosperous "because of" corruption and nepotism necessarily, but at least "in addition to".
And now that it is prosperous and the rising tide has lifted all ships, it'll be a few more generations before they can largely clean up the corruption and nepotism that has been along for the ride.
xeonmc
> Just give it another generation or two
Until they go extinct?
yladiz
If we assume that the country isn't going to become authoritarian and will have some form of democratic elections, if you get rid of the president's post, you need an equivalent person and the shift in responsibilities. If the system changed to not elect the leader directly, but indirectly like in Germany, it wouldn't just change the possibility of someone corrupt getting into power, just the way they get into power. With that in mind, what would you replace it with?
boxed
Presidental systems with real power behind the president has only one success story: USA. And we'll see if it's still a success story after these four years.
Meanwhile parliamentary systems have a much stronger track record imo.
lvl155
It’s not political corruption but political theatre. SKorea is controlled by a few chaebols. They keep the gen pop “entertained” so they can do what they want behind the scene. The closest they got to the chaebol is when they sent the Samsung dude for a couple of years Escobar style. There’s a very famous footage of Ban Ki-moon, former UN secretary and someone universally celebrated, kowtowing to the most hated political figure in SKorea in Chun Do-Hwan. That’s how it goes in SKorea. It’s a miracle that their economy continues to flourish in spite of political turmoil and social malaise.
tonyhart7
yeah south korean president has wild track record given how advance south korea are like they almost turned into "north korea" dictatorship, thats seriously wild things are
Hamuko
And haven't all of them been pardoned for all the wild shit they've done?
I remember seeing Americans cheering when the president got impeached, going on about how "this is how you do it in a democracy", even though there's a pretty decent chance that the next guy or the guy after him will just pardon him.
roenxi
> There are approximately 28,500 U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea...
> A fully functioning UN Command is at the top of the chain of command of all forces in South Korea, including the U.S. forces and the entire South Korean military...
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea#United_States_cont...
Despite the headline, it would seem fair to claim that the US is acting as an anchor here to the South Korean government.
I wouldn't suggest there is anything improper here since the South Korean army is around half a million strong and can do what it wants, but in the event of a coup I imagine the US would be playing a significant deciding factor. How the military moves is what ultimately matters in an uprising, particularly the opinions of the top generals.
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pyrale
The US military presence is from before the country’s current democratic transition, and did nothing to prevent past coup.
maxglute
>did nothing to prevent past coup
That's the joke. US consistently supported SK coup(er)s (there's been several) as long as the couper is anti-communists / aligned with US geopolitical interests. The last two in late 70s were post Combined Forces Command, and including this one, with capacity of US intelligence, it's hard to rationalize US did not know what was going to happen.
pjc50
> but in the event of a coup I imagine the US would be playing a significant deciding factor
Yes, but on which side?
shoemakersteve
Just barely. Had the military been just a bit more indoctrinated, they may have started shooting. Which, as far as I understand, were the instructions they received. If nothing else, if the legislators weren't able to get in, this would have gone a whole other way, and the coup could easily have been successful.
ANewFormation
It's not about military indoctrination but the popularity of the leader. Yoon is exceptionally unpopular. If he had 80% approval, instead, he would probably now be the dictator of The People's Democratic Republic of South Korea.
Without that approval the best you're looking at (from his perspective) is mass unrest which an opportunistic nation like their neighbor could foment, support, and exploit.
michaelt
If you've got 80% support in a democracy you don't need to declare martial law and overthrow the legislature: If you're that popular your party will easily secure a sizeable majority in the legislature and you can pass any law you want.
suraci
In fact, DPRK anticipated that Yoon Suk-yeol might attempt to ignite conflict on the peninsula to justify imposing martial law. Therefore, DPRK preemptively severed the roads between the two countries to prevent this from happening. Although DPRK is often scorned by the West, it is far more rational and stable than many other countries.
sealeck
Very rational, except that the leadership is starving the population, banned the internet, and executes people by strapping them to anti-aircraft guns.
Oh and has send thousands of its citizens to die in Ukraine.
tpm
In the interest of Poe's law: that's not why DPRK has blown up the roads. It's because the current leader does not anticipate any cooperation or reunification with ROK in the future.
pjc50
Yeah, I don't think you can call blowing up your connections to the outside world in these circumstances "rational".
oefrha
He’s just too incompetent, utterly failed Military Coup 101:
1. Cut communications;
2. Make sure the troops you send to capture critical objectives are hardcore loyalists (or at least paid exceedingly well).
noxs
well, do people forget that Yoon was also voted by South Korea's Democracy
suraci
This is what I mean by the advantage of the "democratic system." Democracy can always save a country from the mess. As for why it’s in the mess, don’t worry about that.
Presidents may be impeached, removed from office, or even die, but the system will never fail.
throw0101d
> Democracy can always save a country from the mess.
Unless the people themselves want to give up on democracy and… oh, I don't know, let's pick a random example out of thin air… storm government buildings to stop the process to keep their desired leader in power.
quesera
To be fair (however painfully), a healthy percentage of those people believed they were there to save democracy.
We all believe things that are poorly-supported by facts, possibly serving an agenda we don't understand, and are clearly stupid when viewed rationally and with better information.
I will not defend their actions, but I have some compassion for the well-meaning dupes, and I wish the legal process could neuter their manipulator-perpetrators.
thrance
And then they all get pardoned, including the neonazis, by said leader that is elected 4 years later because the people have very short memory and he wants to protect his brown shirts.
suraci
Yeah, they failed - the system saved itself again
paulryanrogers
Hitler was elected. Putin was elected, and supposedly is still being elected.
taejo
Just a technical nitpick: Hitler was appointed by President Hindenburg, not directly elected. However Hindenburg was directly elected and Hitler was leader of the party that received the most votes (though still a minority).
actionfromafar
Semantics and language are actually important here, IMHO. Democracy-"the system" saved itself here. This is somewhat distinct from who or what people vote for.
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noobermin
This is now soon to be politically incorrect in America given the sitting president now avoided such a fate.
thisislife2
Has it really? I don't think the "movie is over" (as we colloquially say in India) and this was just the "opening scene" than the "climatic finish" that some think it is.
South Korea is an oligarchic democracy, and, as the paper points out, has developed deep political divisions between the left- and the right- in its society.
The deposed South Korean President was a favourite of the Biden administration ( https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2022/07/yoon-suk-yeol-i... ) because of his pro-western and pro-business values and his political willingness to militarily commit to western / US foreign policies against China and Russia. (He is the first South Korean President to attend a NATO summit, has been public about his desire that South Korea be a part of an "Asian NATO" - Quad + Jarokus + AUKUS - supported sanctions against Russia and has even supplied Ukraine with the artillery they badly needed).
Some of Biden's and Yoon's foreign policies seem to have backfired on South Korea as North Korea's near-total alienation, that previous US and South Korean administration had achieved, to economically and military weaken it, is now over. (Russia and North Korea have signed a new political and military alliance, committed to help each other if the other is attacked and, North Korean troops will not only get upgraded armaments from Russia but are also getting battle trained in real warfare conditions in the Russia-Ukraine war). Many South Koreans are not thrilled about this, because the most serious and imminent threat for South Korea has always been from the North Koreans. While many South Koreans understand that a military alliance with the US means that they cannot disregard US foreign policy concerns, many in the left- are concerned that there was still enough room to manoeuvre to not aggravate both China and Russia so much that they are now openly hostile against South Korea too.
I believe this was one of the underlying tension between the Yoon's administration and the opposition - instead of trying to create a democratic political consensus in South Korea about his policies, he suddenly decided to deal with valid criticism about his domestic and foreign policies by attacking the opposition as “pro-North anti-state forces”. (This was stupid as even though latent anti-war sentiment amongst the South Korean working class is high, the left-leaning opposition Democratic Party are also inclined to the idea of joining the US lead anti-China military alliance and a consensus on foreign policies atleast was very much possible.)
His political bungling and attempt to tarnish the opposition as North Korean stooge now means forming political consensus will be now more difficult and further polarise South Korean polity, thus allowing Russia, China and the US to interfere more in their political affairs.
I fear democracy in South Korea is still under threat, just it is in many other parts of the world facing similar political polarisation.
Sadly, the situation is not yet in the past tense and is in progress. Yoon was impeached and impeachment is being litigated in the Constitutional Court. Yoon is arguing some ridiculous excuses which would have been funny if this was not serious.
For example, martial law decree no. 1 said "Activities of national assembly, local assemblies, political parties, and all political activities such as political association, assembly, demonstration are hereby forbidden". Decree was widely published and it is a strong evidence that Yoon intended to violate the constitution and disable the legislative branch. Yoon is now claiming "it was copy and pasted from old authoritarian martial law decrees by mistake". No, really. It doesn't make any sense by itself, but moreover, this can't possibly be the case because South Korean local rule was introduced after democratic transition so no mention of "local assemblies" is possible in old decrees. I mean, lying is pretty difficult, reality has surprising details...