The ensuing 24 hours were controversial in South Korean politics, after deposed President Yoon Suk Yeol narrowly avoided arrest for insurrection on Friday, a month after declaring martial law.
It is the latest development in a months-long political collapse that has not only thrown Korean politics into turmoil, but also exposed the country’s deep political polarization, most dramatically demonstrated by the movements opposing protests – one calling for Yoon’s departure and arrest, and another smaller but still vocal one trying to protect him.
The crisis took a dramatic new turn on Friday, when officials from the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) attempted to enter Yoon’s residence to arrest him for his declaration of martial law on December 3 – and possibly attempted self-coup. Although many South Koreans took to the streets to demand the arrest, counter-protesters blocked the road leading to the presidential palace and used social media to insist the arrest was illegal.
IOC officials ultimately called off Yoon’s attempted arrest after his presidential security agents, aided by military personnel, blocked the IOC’s entry to the palace.
“Regarding the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that execution was indeed impossible due to the current impasse,” according to an IOC statement. “Concerns about the safety of on-site personnel led to the decision to halt the execution. »
That doesn’t mean Yoon’s troubles are over, though; a case is pending against him Constitutional Court of South Korea – which will ultimately decide whether the indictment stands and whether Yoon will be permanently removed from power – and the arrest warrant is still valid until Monday. If arrested, he will be the first sitting South Korean president to be arrested. (Although Yoon has not yet been removed from office, an interim president has been serving since the National Assembly’s Dec. 14 vote to remove him.)
The intensity and instability of the past month means there is no clear idea of what comes next for South Korea. However, as Friday’s unrest underscored, whatever the fate of Yoon’s political career, the future will likely revolve around the division between the country’s two main political parties: Yoon’s conservative People Power Party and the more liberal Democratic Party.
When Yoon declared martial lawhe was in the second year of his five-year term (South Korean presidents are only allowed to serve one term). During his term, his popularity rating fell below 20 percentlike his political agenda blocked in South Korean Parliamentthe National Assembly, controlled by the center-left Democratic Party.
According to Celeste Arrington, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and director of the George Washington Institute for Korean Studies, Yoon “is certainly unpopular and frustrated by his inability to do politics.”
“Yoon is the first president of a democratic South Korea to govern without his party holding a majority in the National Assembly, and he has therefore been blocked in all his legislative initiatives by a National Assembly quite opposed to his ideas” , Arrington said in a statement. December in an interview with Vox.
These frustrations appear to have contributed to Yoon’s decision to declare martial law, which he first announced in a televised statement claiming, without evidence, that the opposition party to his government was in the midst of an “insurrection” and ” attempted to overthrow free power. democracy.”
The decision to declare martial law – for the first time in South Korea since 1980 — took Yoon’s political opponents and allies, as well as the South Korean public and the world, by surprise.
In theory, South Korea’s Constitution allows the president to declare martial law in certain “states of national emergency” – but Yoon appears to have overstepped this authority, also deploying troops to try to prevent the Assembly from meeting national. Ultimately – after some lawmakers were forced to scale the walls to enter the Assembly building – the assembly voted unanimously to reject the martial law decree.
Yoon’s statement was almost universally unpopular in South Korea, reigniting fears of a repressive 20th-century dictatorship, which only ended in the 1980s following mass protests demanding democracy and presidential elections direct. Decades later, thousands of South Korean citizens gathered to protest Yoon’s decision and call for his ouster.
Ending Yoon’s term wouldn’t solve South Korea’s political problems
While the past month in South Korean politics has been extraordinary, it also underscores the underlying tension in the country’s politics, which in recent years has been defined by a high level of polarization between its two main political parties and their supporters. .
“In every election that has happened in recent years, the party has oscillated between being a very conservative party and a very liberal party, most recently being very conservative,” Emma Whitmyer, senior program manager at the Asia Society, told Vox Policy Institute.
Both progressives and conservatives claim to protect democracy. But what conservatives largely worry about, experts told Vox, is maintaining the stability of government — which happens to be a democracy — not ensuring that democratic systems are preserved and used.
The conservative vision, Arrington said — the vision of the party and Yoon’s supporters — is rooted in a post-Cold War conception of democracy as opposition to communism, and focuses largely on “making sure no one threatens the ‘State’ rather than ensuring that democracy is respected. the principles remain intact.
This political faction has been “heavily influenced by government propaganda about anti-communism and the North Korean threat,” Joan Cho, a professor of Korean politics at Wesleyan University, told Vox. According to them, “those who try to protest against the government are North Korean spies. They are pro-communist.
In contrast, according to Arrington, supporters of the South Korean Democratic Party grew up in an era of pro-democracy protests in the 1970s and 1980s, which became a guiding force in their politics and which they carried forward to the young generation.
“I think the controversies and concerns about stability (have) to do with polarization, and it happens both at the elite level and at the mass level,” Cho said. “I think it first became evident with the impeachment (of former President Park Geun-hye) – it was even more evident at the mass level because of these pro-impeachment and anti-impeachment protests that were taking place.”
At the mass level, polarization is expressed through South Korea’s strong protest culture; at the elite level, this resembles the kind of legislative challenges Yoon experienced with a National Assembly dominated by the Democratic Party.
According to Whitmyer, Yoon’s impeachment — in addition to that of Park, who was impeached in December 2016 and removed from office the following year — created a sense of frustration with the system, even though Yoon’s actions Yoon were also extremely unpopular.
“It’s starting to feel like (an indictment) was one thing, but now it’s happening over and over again,” Whitmyer said. “Whoever the next president is, whether liberal or conservative, will he face the same challenges from the opposition who want to impeach him, either for legitimate reasons or for demands perhaps more insignificant or smaller?
The sense of chaos and inefficiency has fueled distrust in government, but experts say there is no clear path to reform that would allow political compromise to re-emerge – and it might not be bodes well for the future.
According to Whitmyer, “It seems like the pendulum has swung very far in both directions, (and) there’s no longer much common ground for the two sides to work together.” »