South Korea's political crisis
On January 26, South Korean prosecutors indicted President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges that he orchestrated a rebellion when he declared martial law on December 3. With the indictment, Yoon became the first sitting president in the history of South Korea to be simultaneously subjected to an impeachment trial and a criminal trial. Yoon’s short-lived actions ignited the country’s most serious political crisis since the 1980s democratization. Insisting that he did not act criminally when he imposed martial law, Yoon has rallied far-right groups to his defense.
The nation awaits the Constitutional Court’s decision on whether to uphold Yoon’s impeachment. If the court rules in favor of the National Assembly, Yoon officially will be removed from office; if it rules in Yoon’s favor, he will be reinstated as president. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok is serving as acting president.
In a Boston College Chronicle Q&A, University Communications' Phil Gloudemans discusses the South Korean crisis with Ingu Hwang, an associate professor of the practice in the International Studies Program, and the leader of the Global Korea Project and author of the book Human Rights and Transnational Democracy in South Korea.
South Korea’s constitution affords the president the power to declare martial law to maintain order in wartime or during a comparable emergency. Was the country truly under such severe crisis conditions when Yoon suspended civilian authority?
Article 77 of the South Korean Constitution specifies that a president may proclaim martial law “in times of war, armed conflict, or similar national emergency.” To date, no one, including Yoon, has invoked the above article as justification for the decision to impose martial law. In fact, Yoon claimed in a televised national address that the source of the national emergency was the opposition party’s consistent resistance to his policies and governance. Since then, his defense team has repeatedly cited suspicions of election fraud as the primary reason for the declaration.
Some news platforms also have reported that the South Korean government tried to provoke the North Koreans to create border conflicts to justify Yoon’s declaration of martial law. None of these claims offer any obvious constitutional basis for the declaration. Yoon’s bid for constitutional immunity will hinge on the court’s assessment of his political motivations. The Constitutional Court, which previously has stated that Yoon’s martial law “did not align” with the constitution, is expected to issue its final ruling this month, which should provide further clarity. Additionally, Yoon has been criminally charged for leading an insurrection; the criminal court should reach its verdict in the next six months.
South Korean observers seem mystified by Yoon’s aborted power grab, given that his five-year term would end in 2027 without the possibility of reelection due to term limits. Why would he rekindle the horrific memories of military rule by plunging the country into its worst political crisis in decades? What was his end game?
Yoon’s martial law declaration marks the first time that a democratically elected president of the Republic of Korea has attempted to mobilize troops for the purpose of advancing a domestic political agenda. It is important to note that during his election campaign, he expressed admiration for military dictators, especially for Chun Doo-hwan, who was responsible for the 1979 coup and for the 1980 Kwangju massacre that left hundreds dead. Moreover, he has advanced multiple campaigns of historical revisionism in which he has championed the anti-Communist patriotism and the economic success of South Korea’s past dictatorial regimes while downplaying their unlawful use of violence, intimidation, and oppression. Unsurprisingly, this outlook led him to cultivate close relationships with ultra-right groups rather than promote deliberative democratic processes aimed at building consensus and unity.
Yoon’s relationship with the far right intensified as he sought to maintain power and protect his wife, Kim Kun-hee, whom critics have accused of influence peddling and of interfering in state affairs—accusations that date back to Yoon’s time as prosecutor general. He appointed numerous far-right political figures whom he had known since high school to key government and military positions, thereby consolidating his power over the ruling party. Post-martial law investigations have implicated many of these officials in the plan to enact martial law. Evidence has also surfaced that Yoon and his wife colluded with Myung Tae-kyun, a businessman and journalist, to influence the outcome of parliamentary elections. He, in fact, has tried to maintain his hold on power by trying to exercise influence over who will replace him as president if the Constitutional Court decides to uphold the National Assembly’s impeachment and removal from office.
By mid-January, the conservatives’ approval rating actually increased from 24 to 34 percent, the “highest level of support for Yoon’s People Power Party since last summer,” reported Gallup Korea. To what do you attribute this endorsement surge for the Conservative Party, given the turmoil that Yoon instigated?
First, while opinion polls can highlight developing trends, they also are vulnerable to political manipulations, and in some cases, they are an integral part of political mobilizations. For example, last November, amid allegations of election meddling by Yoon and his wife, it was revealed that a pollster with close ties to Kim appeared to have skewed the results in favor of a parliamentary candidate who supported the president. Such cases make it difficult to know the extent to which polls truly reflect public opinion. Moreover, how a pollster frames a question—especially against the backdrop of emotionally and politically charged events—influences respondents’ answers.
In South Korea’s current divisive political climate, pollsters often pose questions that connect support for impeachment with support for the opposition party; the wording may even suggest that the impeachment was part of a larger conspiracy to replace Yoon with a new opposition party president. Such a politically charged presentation of the issues may push people to take either a pro- or anti-Yoon stance or an anti- or pro-opposition party position. Moreover, this framing obfuscates the origins of current political turmoil and sidesteps the question of whether violent political measures are an acceptable means of advancing a domestic political agenda. Thus, answers about the legitimacy of martial law and Yoon’s impeachment may tell us more about the agenda of the pollsters than about South Koreans’ support for Yoon’s government.
The Yoon conundrum seems to be the latest flashpoint over presidential authority and power in recent years, as we're seeing not only with Donald Trump, but elected leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Do you see any parallels in South Korea? What makes South Korea's situation unique?
This question touches upon two critical issues: the potential challenges that such contestations pose to democracy, and how and why certain ideas and movements spread beyond national borders, essentially becoming global in their scope of influence and impact. Developing a comprehensive understanding of the commonalities and differences between these national struggles as well as the causes, effects, and processes of global trends will require further scholarly interventions that utilize complex approaches that transcend geographic and disciplinary boundaries.
That said, there are certain commonalities. The first is the political exploitation of people’s vulnerabilities that pushes them into a binary, zero-sum framework in which there are only two possible outcomes, and one party’s gain equals another party’s loss. A parallel development is the rise in nationalist and ideological slogans that promote conspiracy theories, especially about election fraud. When these developments go unchecked at the local, national, or global level, political polarization increases and cooperation, unity, and consensus building decrease. Heightened polarization has catalyzed a rise in political extremism and in the use of violence to achieve political ends, and also has led to an overreliance on judicial institutions to safeguard democracy and resolve political conflicts. In the long term, relying on judges to check presidential power and save democracy cannot succeed, because polarization also affects the selection of judges; the longer a person or party remains in power, the more it can reshape the judiciary in its image, precipitating an abandonment of social and constitutional norms that would undermine the rule of law.
South Korea has been plagued by unlawful efforts to expand presidential power and by growing social and political division. However, the South Korean people’s reaction to Yoon’s declaration of martial law is also a cause for hope. Within hours of the announcement, Koreans had mobilized against Yoon’s presidential overreach, blocking it through a combination of legislative action and large-scale demonstrations. Additionally, the current crisis has triggered creative and productive grassroot discussions about how Korea can combat political polarization, the rise of right-wing extremist groups, weakening trust in institutions, and the temptation to weaponize investigations for partisan gains.
These efforts, I believe, would benefit from an examination of Korea’s political and economic development in the 20th century—one that pays close attention to the embedding of democratic practices in Korean society as well as to the institutional and ideational legacies of authoritarianism.