Why South Korea’s Leader, Desperate and Frustrated, Made a Fateful Decision

For Yoon Suk Yeol, the unpopular president of South Korea, things appeared to worsen with each passing day. Thousands of doctors had been on strike for almost a year to resist his health care reforms. The opposition in Parliament repeatedly pushed for investigations into his wife, as well as the impeachment of his cabinet members, accusing them of corruption and abuse of power. And the lawmakers blocked many of Mr. Yoon’s bills and political appointments.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Yoon took a desperate measure, his boldest political gamble, which he said was driven by frustration and crisis. In a surprise, nationally televised address, he declared martial law, the first such decree in the country in decades. The move banned all political activities, civil gatherings and “fake news” in what he called an attempt to save his country from “pro-North Korean” and “anti-state forces.”

But it ended almost as abruptly as it had started.

Thousands of citizens took to the streets, chanting “Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol!” Opposition lawmakers climbed the walls into the National Assembly as citizens pushed​ back police. Parliamentary aides used furniture and fire extinguishers to prevent armed paratroopers from entering the Assembly’s main hall. Inside, lawmakers who included members of Mr. Yoon’s own People Power Party voted unanimously to strike down his martial law. Six hours after declaring it, Mr. Yoon appeared on television again, this time to retract his decision.

It was the shortest-lived and most bizarre martial law in ​the history of South Korea, which had had its share of military coups and periods of martial law before it became a vibrant democracy after the military dictatorship that ended in the late 1980s.

In the end, driven by his own impulsiveness and surrounded by a small group of insiders, who seldom said no to a leader known for angry outbursts, Mr. Yoon shot his own foot,​ according to a former aide and political analysts.​ Now his political future ​is on the chopping block​, thrusting one of the United States’ most important allies in Asia into political upheaval and leaving many South Koreans in a state of shock.

On Wednesday, the opposition parties, which control the legislature, submitted an impeachment bill after Mr. Yoon did not respond to their demand that he resign because his martial law declaration had been unconstitutional. An editorial in the leading conservative daily Chosun Ilbo, which has often been friendly toward Mr. Yoon, now accused him of “insulting” South Korean democracy. South Koreans have not seen their leader declare martial law since the military dictator Chun Doo-hwan used it to seize power in 1979​ and later massacre pro-democracy students.

“The best option Yoon has now is to resign,” said Sung Deuk Hahm, a professor of political science at Kyonggi University, west of Seoul. “As tragic as it may seem, what happened overnight showed the resilience and durability of South Korean democracy.”

Mr. Yoon did not immediately respond to the opposition’s demand. On Wednesday, all senior aides to Mr. Yoon tendered their resignations to Mr. Yoon, leaving him more isolated than ever. Analysts were skeptical about ​Mr. Yoon’s political future. (...)

Mr. Yoon was surrounded by a handful of aides, including former military generals, who were not used to second-guessing their boss’s decision, said a former presidential aide to Mr. Yoon who agreed to discuss the president’s leadership style on the condition they not be identified. That small circle raised questions about how thoroughly Mr. Yoon prepared for martial law.

The former presidential aide said that as soon as he heard the declaration of martial law, he called contacts in Mr. Yoon’s office and other branches of the government. But none of them had advance knowledge of what was coming, he said. (...)

Before he was catapulted into the presidential race in 2022, Mr. Yoon was a political neophyte. He was a star prosecutor who wielded the law to help imprison two former presidents, and was used to a strictly top-down culture.

He won the election by a razor-thin margin, thanks largely to the public’s discontent with his predecessor, Moon Jae-in. But, from the start, he laid out big ambitions, seemingly staking his claim for a legacy as a change maker in a gridlocked political system. (...)

But little of his domestic agenda has worked out. His opponents won even greater control in the National Assembly in parliamentary elections this year. His government was accused of using prosecutors and criminal investigations to intimidate opposition leaders and crack down on news media he accused of spreading “fake news​.” ​His approval rating plummeted to around 20 percent, as he repeatedly vetoed the opposition’s demands for independent investigations into allegations against his wife, Kim Keon Hee. The opposition also imposed large changes on his budget proposals for next year.

Mr. Yoon was often called a “tribal leader” by political analysts for his penchant for appointing loyal friends among former prosecutors and fellow high school alumni to key military and government posts.​ 

by Choe Sang-Hun, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
[ed. Hmm. Sounds familiar. Did the CIA secretly give him the green light to game out future US scenarios? Possible; I need to consult my Conspiracy Theories For Dummies encyclopedia set. See also: What South Korea’s short-lived martial law says about nation’s democracy and the autocratic tendencies of President Yoon (The Conversation).]