It’s been a controversial 24 hours in South Korean politics, after impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol avoided arrest for rebellion on Friday, a month after he declared martial law.
It’s the latest development in a month-long political meltdown that has not only thrown Korean politics into turmoil, but also brought to the fore the country’s deep political polarization, evidenced most dramatically by the protest movement — one calling for Yun’s ouster and arrest, and a smaller but still vocal one calling for him. trying to protect
The crisis took a dramatic new turn on Friday, when officials from the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) for high-ranking officials tried to enter Yun’s residence to arrest him for declaring martial law on December 3 – and possibly Tried a self-coup. While many South Koreans took to the streets to demand the arrests, counter-protesters blocked roads leading to the presidential palace and used social media to insist the arrests were illegal.
CIO officials eventually called off their attempt to detain Yun when his presidential security detail, aided by military personnel, blocked the CIO’s entry to the palace.
“On the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that execution was effectively impossible due to the ongoing impasse,” According to a CIO statement. “The decision has been taken to halt executions due to concerns for the safety of personnel on site.”
That doesn’t mean Yun’s troubles are over; A case is pending against him Constitutional Court of South Korea — which will ultimately decide whether the impeachment is upheld and Yun is permanently removed from power — and the arrest warrant is still valid as of Monday. If he is detained, he will be the first sitting president of South Korea to be arrested. (Although Yun has not yet been removed from office, an acting president has been serving since the National Assembly’s Dec. 14 vote to impeach him.)
The intensity and volatility of the past month means South Korea has no clear idea of what’s next. As Friday’s unrest underscored, however, whatever the fate of Yun’s political career, the future will likely revolve around the split between the country’s two main political parties: Yun’s conservative People Power Party and the more liberal Democratic Party.
How do we get here?
When Yun declared martial law, he was in the second year of his five-year term (South Korean presidents can only serve one term). His approval rating has plummeted during his tenure 20 percentas his political agenda Deadlock in South Korea’s legislatureThe National Assembly, which is controlled by the centre-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, Yun is “certainly unpopular and frustrated by his inability to politicize.”
“Yoon is the first president of democratic South Korea to rule without his party having a majority in the National Assembly, and so he has been blocked from making all his laws by a National Assembly that is completely opposed to his ideas,” Arrington said. In an interview given to Vox in December.
These frustrations appear to have contributed to Yun’s decision to declare martial law, which he first announced in a televised statement claiming, without evidence, that the opposition to his government was a “rebellion” and “attempting to overthrow a free” democracy.”
The move to impose martial law for the first time in South Korea Since 1980 – surprised Yun’s political opponents and allies as well as the South Korean public and the world.
In theory, South Korea’s constitution allows the president to declare martial law under certain “states of national emergency” – but Yun appears to have overstepped that authority, deploying the military in an attempt to block the assembly of the National Assembly. In the end — after some legislators were forced to scale walls to enter the assembly building — the body voted unanimously to repeal the martial law decree.
Yun’s announcement was almost universally unpopular among South Koreans, reviving fears of the country’s repressive 20th-century dictatorship, which ended in 1980 after mass protests demanding democracy and direct presidential elections. Decades later, South Korean citizens turned out in their thousands to protest Yun’s actions and call for his ouster.
The end of Yun’s term will not solve South Korea’s political problems
While the past month has been remarkable for South Korean politics, it also points to underlying tensions in the country’s politics, which in recent years have been defined by high levels of polarization between its two main political parties and their supporters.
“With every election that’s happened in the last couple of years, it’s been either very conservative to very liberal, recently very conservative,” Emma Whitmire, senior program officer at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told Vox.
Both progressives and conservatives claim they are defending democracy. But what conservatives are primarily concerned about, experts told Vox, is maintaining the stability of government — which could be a democracy — not ensuring that democratic systems are preserved and used.
The conservative view, Arrington said — the view of Yun’s party and supporters — is rooted in a post-Cold War conception of democracy as opposed to communism and centered on ensuring that “nobody threatens the state” rather than ensuring democracy. Principles remain intact.
This political party was “heavily influenced by anti-communist government propaganda, and [the] The North Korean threat,” Joanne Cho, professor of Korean politics at Wesleyan University, told Vox. According to them, “those who are trying to protest against the government are North Korean spies. They are pro-communist.”
In contrast, according to Arrington, South Korean Democratic Party supporters 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 passed on to younger generations.
“I think the controversy and anxiety around stability [have] To do with polarization, and that’s both at the elite level and at the mass level,” Cho said. “I think that first became clear with the impeachment. [of former President Park Geun-hye] – It was more evident at the mass level as these pro-impeachment, anti-impeachment protests were going on.”
At a mass level, polarization is expressed through South Korea’s strong protest culture; At an elite level, it looks like the kind of legislative challenges Yun has experienced in a Democratic Party-dominated National Assembly.
According to Whitmire, Yun’s impeachment — on top of Park, who was impeached in December 2016 and removed the following year — created a sense of frustration with the system, even though Yun’s actions were also widely unpopular.
“It is beginning to feel that, [one impeachment] There was one thing, but now it happened again, and again,” said Whitmyer. “Whoever the next president is [will be]Whether they are a liberal or a conservative, are they going to face the same challenge of impeaching opponents, either for legitimate reasons or maybe for smaller or smaller claims?”
A sense of chaos and ineffectiveness has fueled distrust in the government, but experts say there is no clear path to reform that would allow a political consensus to reemerge — and may not bode well for the future.
According to Whitmire, “the pendulum seems to have swung too far in either direction, [and] There’s really no more middle ground for both sides to work together.”
