2024-12-05
7 分钟As South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol attempts to undo last night’s shock announcement of martial law, Andrew Mueller explains the real reasons behind the attempted coup. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The dramatic day of developments in South Korea, a country now in the grip of a major political crisis.
Stunning development in South Korea, a vibrant democracy and critical US ally thrown into chaos today, where a political crisis clearly tested the strength of one of Asia's youngest democracies.
In fairness to South Korea's President, at least as of this recording, Yoon Suk Yeol, we've all said some things, had some thoughts around 11pm of an evening which seemed significantly less shrewd a few hours later.
Perhaps the best way of understanding what happened in South Korea earlier this week is to reflect that most of us, with our dander up and a few sherrys inside us, are restricted in our career ending options to teeing off precipitously on social media.
A president can barge into a nation's television schedules to declare martial law.
This at least is what President Yoon did at around 23:00 Seoul Time on Tuesday night.
Yoon's surprise statement was pretty blood freezing stuff.
It summoned the specter of forces allied to North Korea conspiring to subvert South Korea's conflict constitutional order.
It provided for the suspension of parliament, the banning of public assemblies, the censorship of media, and enjoined all medical staff to report for duty inside 48 hours.
The object of all of which, said Yoon, was to, quote, crush anti state forces that have been wreaking havoc before we get into what happened next, richly entertaining as it was, we should pause to ponder why Yoon would have pulled such a stroke.
His stated reason that he was seeking to thwart malefactors conspiring in cahoots with Pyongyang is difficult to take seriously.
The people at whom Yun was pointing a quivering, accusatory finger were mostly South Korea's Democratic Party, who aren't great fans of President Yoon but are basically stolid centre leftists who have never displayed any obvious interest in uniting the Korean peninsula under the revolutionary leadership of Kim Jong Un.
Possibly more pertinently, the the Democratic Party are also the largest party in South Korea's national assembly and have been making President Yun's life difficult.
They have strangled his budgets, threatened his ministers with impeachment, and made considerable hay with scandals relating to President Yoon's wife, Kim Kyun Hee, whose Wikipedia page boasts a controversies section perhaps longer than is ideal for a first lady.
President Yoon may also have been vexed by the fact that South Korean presidents are these days term limited to a single five year stint, his ends in 2027 and as things generally stood this time yesterday, his chances of getting much done with the remainder of his time in charge may have looked annoyingly slender.
It would appear, therefore, that what South Korea has witnessed is an attempt at an autogalpe, a rare variant of a coup d'in which the act is undert taken by someone who was already in charge to entrench their own power and or undercut opposition.
South Korea has previously witnessed one Such back in 1972, President Park Chung Hee, a former general who'd arrived in power in a common ore garden coup d'in 1961, then actually got an elected president three times.
Apparently wearied of the whole democratic rigmarole, President park suspended parliament and imposed martial law and though he stayed in charge another seven years, neglected to consider the tendency for authoritarian rule to end messily for the authority.
In 1974 he survived one assassination attempt in which his wife Young Soo was fatally injured, and in 1979 he was shot dead by his own intelligence chief when a dinner party argument escalated.
All coups are a high risk endeavour, but the autogolpe arguably carries an inflated risk of humiliation, of ending up as thoroughly beclowned as, to cite one recent example, President Pedro Castillo of Peru, who two years ago this week attempted to dissolve Congress, impose a curfew and rule by decree, only to end up bolting for sanctuary in the Mexican Embassy and getting arrested en route by his own police escort.