South Korea: Yoon Suk-yeol’s desperate martial law defeated within hours

Sung-yang Park 4 December 2024

A spectacular political whirlwind has taken place in South Korea, where the President suddenly declared martial law in the name of “defending the country from pro-North Korean forces,” only to be forced to roll it back in a matter of hours. Why did this extraordinary move turn into a farce so quickly, and what forces has this unleashed in the crisis-ridden country?

Yoon’s administration was widely reviled and embattled in crisis from day one. He managed to take advantage of the mass anger against the previous liberal Democratic government. However, he quickly exposed himself, along with the hard-right conservative establishment behind him, as equally reactionary, inept, corrupt, and completely incapable of addressing the deep crises experienced by the South Korean masses.

After Yoon’s election victory, there was a defeatist hue and cry amongst the liberals in South Korea and the West. The South Korean masses, however, behaved quite differently. Yoon’s election and his behaviour whilst in power has spurred on the masses from below.

Under the Yoon Administration, organised class struggles have intensified, including several large-scale strikes led by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU,민주노총) despite severe repression from the state, and a historic strike of Samsung workers, which halted the country’s key chip manufacturing industries.

There is also an ongoing nationwide doctors’ strike that has been going on for months, which the man named commander of martial law, Park, explicitly ordered the halting of.

A slew of other questions, such as innumerable allegations of corruption; escalating tension with North Korea; and Yoon’s penchant for suppressing the media also provoked tremendous anger and buoyed the call for his impeachment. In July 2024, an online petition for Yoon’s impeachment rapidly gathered more than a million signatures and briefly overloaded the National Assembly’s website. In November, over 100,000 people rallied in Seoul to demand the same.

To top this all off, scandals involving Yoon himself continue to surface. These include some that emerged even whilst he was running for president. Yoon’s wife Kim Keon-hee (김건희) has been particularly embroiled in controversy, from accepting luxury handbags, manipulating stocks, and most recently allegations of meddling in the ruling party’s parliamentary candidate nomination process. The last of these crises produced an open rift between Yoon and his People Power Party.

All this meant that Yoon, now also at odds with his own party, was essentially suspended in mid-air. He had no effective base in society. By the end of November, a Gallup Korea survey showed only 19 percent of South Koreans approved of Yoon, while another poll by OhmyNews showed over 58.6 percent of people wanted him to resign before the end of his term.

Facing roaring discontent from below, and isolation from even his own partners in government, Yoon took the nuclear option to save his own skin, especially from a probable prosecution. So, whilst he claimed that declaring martial law was done in the name of defending South Korea from “pro-North Korean forces,” in effect, this was a coup against the vast majority of society in defence of his own personal interests.
https://marxist.com/south-korea-yoon-suk-yeol-s-desperate-martial-law-defeated-within-hours.htm

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