#democracy in south korea

[waitmyturtles]

Once again, South Korea does it best. A South Korean Democratic Party member, Ahn Gwi-ryeong fights off a soldier during the martial law protests.

[financia012]

South Korea's Emergency Martial Law Declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol: A Comprehensive Overview

Introduction South Korea, a nation known for its dynamic economy and democratic institutions, finds itself under the lens of history once more. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of emergency martial law marks a pivotal moment, underscoring the nation’s volatile political and security environment. But what led to this drastic measure? And what are the implications for South Korea and the…

[contemplatingoutlander]

"Here's what a functional democracy does after its president abuses his power and declares martial law: remove him from office."

--Steven Beschloss

"Protesters reacting as the vote to impeach the president was announced on Saturday."

Opposition lawmakers needed eight supporting votes from Mr. Yoon’s party to impeach him. When they called an impeachment vote last weekend, Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted it, saying that he should be given a chance to resign rather than be impeached. Only three of its 108 lawmakers participated. On Saturday, the party said that it officially opposed impeachment, but its lawmakers were allowed to cast their secret ballots. The result indicated that 12 lawmakers from Mr. Yoon’s party had joined the opposition to impeach him and another 11 abstained or cast invalid votes, sealing his fate. [emphasis added]

Why couldn't the Republicans in the U.S. Senate have voted to convict Trump in 2021 after he incited an insurrection and attempted to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power?

Once again, Republicans make America look bad in the eyes of the world.

_______________ Note. The video caption was added to the video to mimic the video on the front page of the digital New York Times on 12.14.24. The video was originally from Reuters.

[not-so-rosyyy]

PUBLIC ENEMY #1 and ULTIMATE BOZO of today goes to this clown 🤡 for declaring martial law in his country in the middle of the night for no particular reason other than to secure his position and then lifting it just a few hours later because lawmakers and citizens immediately mobilized and stormed parliament to fight off his soldiers and vote against it

[without-ado]

more at CNN

more at The Economist

more at REUTERS

---

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in an unannounced late-night TV address Tuesday, accusing the country’s main opposition party of sympathizing with North Korea and anti-state activities. But soon after, South Korean lawmakers voted to block the martial law decree.

The president is obligated to comply with the vote under South Korean law. However, it is unclear whether that will happen. The martial law decree published shortly before lawmakers assembled in parliament declared all political and parliamentary activities to be prohibited.

Regardless, the president’s cabinet must “deliberate” and review the decision to lift martial law, according to the constitution. more at CNN

......

No words to describe what we Koreans feel like now. But we know what we should do next and we will do it.

[tomorrowusa]

A right wing president who was elected by a tiny margin and with less than 50% of the vote by appealing to resentful bros has been impeached.

No, not THAT president. It was Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea who finally got the boot after an unsuccessful attempt to impose authoritarian martial law.

South Korea’s parliament has voted to impeach the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, almost two weeks after his short-lived declaration of martial law plunged the country into its worst political crisis for decades. In dramatic scenes at the national assembly in Seoul, 204 lawmakers voted for an opposition motion to impeach Yoon, while an estimated 200,000 protesters outside demanded he be thrown out of office. Saturday was the second opportunity in a week the assembly’s lawmakers had to begin the process of ousting Yoon, whose approval ratings have plummeted to 11%. To succeed, the opposition parties, which together control 192 seats, needed at least eight members of Yoon’s People Power party (PPP) to vote in favour to reach the required two-thirds majority of 200 in the 300-seat chamber. In the end, it appears that more PPP members were willing to throw their support behind impeachment. South Korean TV said 85 MPs voted against, while three ballots were spoilt and eight were ruled invalid. Huge cheers erupted outside the chamber as the results were announced, and MPs left to applause from onlookers. The spotlight will now move to the country’s constitutional court, whose six justices must vote unanimously in favour to uphold parliament’s decision. Yoon will now be suspended from office while the court deliberates, with the prime minister, Han Duck-soo, becoming interim president. The court has 180 days to rule on Yoon’s future. If it approves the motion, South Koreans must elect a new president within 60 days of its ruling.

The crowd near the South Korean National Assembly with an effigy of Yoon in jail.

National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-sik signs the approved impeachment motion.

Overreach is a trait of rulers who overestimate the support they have as well as the extent of their power. It was well known in ancient times and appears in a number Shakespeare's plays. Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a classic instance of overreach. Overreach can seriously weaken or even topple those who do the reaching.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Everyone on south Korean who helped accomplish that have the right to brag about it for the rest of their life because that was undeniably awesome.

Asshole president: Maybe if I do this in the middle of the night I can get the army deployed before-

Thousands of South Koreans climbing out of bed: HELL NO!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 3, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 04, 2024

For an astonishing six hours today, South Korea underwent an attempted self-coup by its unpopular president, Yoon Suk Yeol, only to see the South Korean people force him to back down as they reasserted the strength of their democracy.

In an emergency address at nearly 11:00 last night local time, Yoon announced that he was declaring martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1980, when special forces under a military dictatorship attacked pro-democracy activists in the city of Gwangju, leaving about 200 people dead or missing. South Koreans ended military rule in their country in 1987, writing a new constitution that made South Korea a republic.

Yoon claimed he had to declare martial law because his political opponents were sympathizing with communist North Korea. It was a thin pretext.

A member of the conservative People’s Party, Yoon was elected to a five-year presidential term in 2022 after a misogynistic campaign fueled by young men who saw equal rights for women— whose average monthly wage is 67.7% of that a man, according to the BBC’s Laura Bicker—as reverse discrimination that is taking away their own rights and opportunities.

Before his election, Yoon had no experience in the National Assembly, and once he was in office, his popularity slid to record lows. In legislative elections held last April, voters crushed Yoon’s party, giving opposition parties 192 of 300 seats in the National Assembly. The legislature fought with Yoon over his budget and launched a number of corruption investigations into Yoon’s allies as well as his wife.

And so, Yoon declared martial law, bringing the media under his control and banning political activities, “false propaganda,” “gatherings that incite social unrest,” and strikes. Police officers formed a blockade around the National Assembly, and helicopters landed on the roof to prevent lawmakers from getting inside to overturn Yoon’s declaration.

The South Korean people reacted immediately. Reporting from Seoul, John Yoon of the New York Times recounted the story of a real estate agent who watched President Yoon’s speech, got in his car, and drove for an hour to get to the National Assembly. The man told journalist Yoon, “I thought, ‘The end has come,’ so I came out. The president of a country has exerted his power by force, and its people have come out to protest that. We have to remove him from power from this point on. He’s in a position where he has to come down.”

Editor of The Verge Sarah Jeong, who works out of the U.S. and does not cover South Korean politics, happened to be working in Seoul this week and was on site after a night of drinking, giving an informed and honest account of what she was seeing. “[T]he crowd is a pretty even mix of young people and the older folks (mostly men) who would have been young during the dictatorship…. I heard tanks were here but I haven't seen one yet. [O]ld men swearing "how dare the military come here.”

Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post Tokyo/Seoul bureau chief, reported that the National Assembly managed to pull together a majority of its members—190 of 300—in about two and a half hours to participate in a unanimous vote to overturn Yoon’s emergency declaration of martial law. That vote included members of his own party.

Political commentator Adam Schwartz shared a video taken by the leader of South Korea's Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, as he climbed over the wall of the National Assembly to vote against Yoon’s martial law declaration. Other videos showed people in the streets boosting legislators over the walls for the vote.

Yet another video showed South Korean soldiers trying to get into the National Assembly during the voting thwarted by people wielding a fire extinguisher and flashes from cameras.

While the law said Yoon had to abide by the legislators’ vote, it was not clear whether Yoon would do as the law required. About six hours after he had declared martial law, Yoon bowed to the National Assembly and the popular will and lifted his declaration.

Yoon has been widely condemned, and South Koreans from all parties, including his own, are calling for his resignation or impeachment. Raphael Rashid of The Guardian reported today that on the morning after the attempted coup, South Koreans are bewildered and sad. “For the older generation who fought on the streets against military dictatorships, martial law equals dictatorship, not 21st century Korea. The younger generation is embarrassed that he has ruined their country’s reputation. People are baffled.”

For the rest of the world, though, South Koreans’ immediate and aggressive response to a man trying to take away their democratic rights is an inspiration. Among other things, it illustrates that for all the claims that autocracy can react to events more quickly than democracy can, in fact autocrats are brittle. It is democracy that is determined and resilient.

The events in Seoul also cemented the shift in social media from X to Bluesky, where news was breaking faster than anywhere else, in a way that echoed what Twitter used to be. Since Twitter was a key site of democratic organizing until Elon Musk bought it and renamed it X, that shift is significant.

And finally, the events in South Korea emphasize that for all people often look to larger-than-life figures to define our nations, our history is in fact made up of regular people doing the best they can. Journalist Sarah Jeong found herself entirely unexpectedly in the middle of a coup and, recognizing that she was in a historic moment, snapped to work to do all she could to keep the rest of us informed. “I’m f*cking blasted and hanging out in the weirdest scene because history happened at a deeply inconvenient hour,” she wrote on Bluesky. “[S]o it goes.”

When she finally went home, Jeong wrote: “I expensed my cab ride home. I’m tired so I put ‘korea coup’ down in the expense code field.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[bethanythebogwitch]

South Korea is having a coup and politicians are literally scaling military blockades to be able to stop it. Meanwhile in America we had jan 6 and Democrats couldn't even bring themselves to write some strongly worded tweets before letting the Republicans behind the coup go completely unpunished and continue to serve in congress. I think we can tell who cares more about democracy.

[davidaugust]

[ridenwithbiden]

[waitmyturtles]

“How will the K-pop industry weather a martial law crackdown” was not something I was expecting to Google this morning.

[krockdove]

I'm sure you've all heard about it on breaking news, here in South Korea, the president has staged a coup against the people, it's very confusing and suffering from stress.

He declared martial law in the middle of the night, which was already illegal because he didn't follow procedure, and then he sent special forces to the National Assembly to harm lawmakers because they could vote to lift martial law. A tragedy was averted because unarmed citizens rushed out into the cold night to defend the lawmakers and stop the soldiers.

I watched everything live as they voted to lift martial law, and I was afraid that one of the soldiers would open fire. then the pre'stupid'ent said he would approve the lifting of martial law "on tape," which means he was prepared in advance, so there could be a Plan B. The lawmakers immediately started preparing impeachment charges and will vote on them later today.

For two days I couldn't think about TF at all, and I honestly still can't, I feel so angry and disgusted. That traitorous bastard deserves to be put on trial and sentenced to death, and the ruling party still fucks their minds and opposing his impeachment. They're all definitely complicit in this coup.

The former president-current traitor and those directly involved with him have disappeared from the eyes of the opposition and the people, and we haven't heard from them. I suspect they are either fleeing abroad or plotting another illegal military operation. I'm more angry than anxious, and I'm at a loss for words.

What makes me so upset is this has happened many times before in Korean history. Moreover, previous dictators have reimposed martial law under the guise of lifting it and slaughtered citizens. If we don't get rid of him, he could do it again at any time, and the situation in Korea is really dangerous right now. My TF fan friends have told me that we should do the same thing Megatron did to Sentinel, and I vehemently agree.

[kimkimberhelen]

Jettisoning progressive values in the name of some sort of illusionary (and most likely temporary) meme-fueled 'class solidarity' defeats its whole purpose. It's also hard to achieve class solidarity when over 70 million people willingly voted for a man who is cavalierly appointing billionaires, and a good portion of voters chose not to vote at all - allegedly due to said 'progressive values' that they are now willingly ready to renounce in the name of 'class solidarity.'

America is stuck in a nonsense loop, and it kind of feels like we're past the point of no return. Between MAGA zombies and bare minimum left-wing 'activism,' the brain rot seems to be too deep-seated.

Nihilism, ignorance, and violence is all we know. It's just easier.

This is not a personal takedown of any specific individual. I'm speaking to a larger systemic issue in this country.

In South Korea, people are literally flocking to the streets to protect and vouch for democracy. What are we doing? Posting memes, violent thoughts, and thirst posts.

Something's wrong.

Again, I fully anticipate folks to tell me to shut up and kill myself, which is fine - this country knows no other way.

[kkachizip]

[번역/TRANSLATION] 임을 위한 행진곡—March for the Beloved

민중가요 [Minjung-Gayo] (South Korean protest music)

Literally translating to "people song", or, "song of the people", Minjung-Gayo refers to a kind of song that is sung by the people during protests. First beginning in the 70s and 80s with songs that had its roots in protesting Japanese colonial powers being used to protest the governments of military dictators such as Park Jeong-hee 박정희 and Jeon Doo-Hwan 전두환, Minjung-Gayo has grown to encompass not only the classics but also more recent pop songs such as Girl's Generation 소녀시대's "Into the New World 다시 만난 세계".

In this post, I introduce a classic Minjung-Gayo titled 임을 위한 행진곡 [Im-eul Wihan Haengjingok], or, March for the Beloved.

사랑도 명예도 이름도 남김 없이 한평생 나가자던 뜨거운 맹세 The passionate oath that we swore, that we would go forward our whole lives without leaving behind love, honor, or a name 동지는 간데없고 깃발만 나부껴 Our comrades are gone, and only a flag flutters 새 날이 올 때까지 흔들리지 말자 Let us not be shaken until a new day comes 세월은 흘러가도 산천은 안다 Even if the times pass, the mountains and streams will know 깨어나서 외치는 뜨거운 함성 We come to consciousness and roar a passionate cry 앞서서 나가니 산 자여 따르라 We march forward; may the living follow us 앞서서 나가니 산 자여 따르라 We march forward; may the living follow us

March for the Beloved was originally composed in 1981 for the 영혼결혼식 Yeonghon-Gyeolhonsik, or soul wedding, for activist 윤상원 Yoon Sang-won, martyred during the Gwangju Democracy Movement of 1980, and labor activist 박기순 Park Gi-sun, killed while contributing to the education of laborers. The soul wedding was a traditional act intended to unite unmarried dead and placate them (or, more accurately, give closure to surviving family). The two were married posthumously, although they knew each other while teaching night classes for laborers.

While the author of the original poem 백기완 Baek Ki-wan wrote it, novelist 황석영 Hwang Seok-yeong edited the lines and composed the music to insert it into a musical. The finished song was revealed in February 1982 during the soul wedding and was quickly distributed, settling in as a protest song representing the Gwangju Demicratic Movement.

In 1998, the original author of the poem that became March for the Beloved refused to claim copyright of the song, stating, "I do not have ownership nor copyright of this song. It's because the song has become that of all the people who wish for a new day on this land." It is with his wishes in mind that I translate and redistribute this song, hoping that it will inspire hope in at least one person who reads the lyrics.

In these turbulent times, we find ourselves being made to bear witness to history. The choice is ours; do we stand still and preserve ourselves, or do we go out and demonstrate our desire for democracy? I ask now that the international community does not turn its eyes away from the scene of struggle for democracy that is taking place in Korea.

References:

한국 민중가��, Wikipedia

임을 위한 행진곡, Wikipedia

영혼결혼식, Encyclopedia of Korean Folk Culture

Note:

I use the term "Gwangju Democratic Movement" as opposed to the official English name for the incident, "Gwangju Uprising", in order to reflect the renaming of the incident in Korean.

[without-ado]

Not Our President. Let's Impeach "Yoon" l 2024. 12. 7

art: olddog