#south korean politics

[geminisee]

ok so in the span of like 5 hours:

- the south korean president declared martial law (the first time since s korea stopped being a military dictatorship in the 80s)

- claims his political opponents are insurgents working on behalf of north korea and communism

- declares that all political activity must cease (inc the national assembly/parliament), all media must be under the control of the military, and all protests/strikes are illegal

- the opposing political party immediately assembles at the national assembly in the middle of the night

- holds an emergency vote that goes thru 190-0 to declare the end to martial law (while barricading the entrances to prevent the military from entering and removing them)

- the president concedes an hour later

- civilian protesters in the streets are calling for the impeachment & arrest of the president

please feel free to add details/correct me

as of 2:40 EST Dec 3 2024

[destielmemenews]

source 1

source 2

source 3

[unrealcosima]

This drunk Korean journalist is reporting on whats going on in South Korea on Bluesky and its pretty amazing tbh

[batboyblog]

I've seen this meme and the pop wisdom idea behind it a lot, that if Democrats just manned up like the South Koreans they could stop Trump. SO! its now my job to explain BASIC FUCKING facts to people because they're talking nonsense about easily googlable information.

This is South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol of the center-right, conservative, People Power Party. He was elected President in 2022. Like in the United States, South Korea has mid-term elections, where South Korea's Congress, the National Assembly is up for elections while the President isn't. Unlike America South Korea's National Assembly has only one House. Any ways they had their midterm in 2024:

The opposition center-left, liberal Democratic Party won, overwhelmingly. The election was April 10th, they took office May 30th. Soon the opposition was doing what an opposition given power does, it was fighting President Yoon about his disastrous budget plans and trying to hold the First Lady Kim Keon-hee to account for alleged corruption. If this all sounds a bit like Trump, good job Yoon has been called "South Korea's Trump".

any ways 6 months into having an opposition run National Assembly Yoon declared martial law and sent soldiers to try to shut down the National Assembly. Everyone watched Democratic Assembly Members bravely climb fences and barricade the chamber doors to vote to end martial law. Here's what you have to understand about that vote

190 National Assembly members voted, 172 of them? We're Democrats and their allies. The President's People Power Party mostly stood by him. They keep standing by him in the days that followed. Four Days after President Yoon tried to use the Military to throw out the elected National Assembly and make himself dictator, the first try to impeach him, failed

105 out of the 108 the President's PPP party in the Assembly stood by him, after he tried to coup the country. Only 7 days later after overwhelming public pressure and the arrest of many key Presidential aids did an impeachment vote pass (he still hasn't been convicted)

only 12 PPP members broke with their Party and its President, 12 was enough, but the overwhelming majority? voted to protect the President who just tried to overthrow the country.

SO! Much like Donald Trump President Yoon didn't need to overthrow the country for the first 2 years of his term because he had a puppet Congress willing to go along with his corruption. With-in 6 months of dealing with a National Assembly that stood up to him the wheels came off and he imploded. But even after the most spectacular implosion on the International stage I've ever seen his party stood by him. If the Democratic Party didn't have a majority? and most important a BIG majority, a majority where even a small number of PPP defections was enough to get the 2/3rds they needed Yoon would still be President right now, if Democrats had a 2-3 seat majority in the National Assembly? they would have never gotten the votes to impeach.

We can see overlap in the American experience. In Trump's first term his own party in Congress never challenged him and largely stayed united behind him. In 2018 he lost the midterm elections which meant he was held to account and in fairly short order impeached, it took 8 months from Democrats taking office to an impeachment inquire to get underway. Like President Yoon Trump was not able to function under any kind of pushback. But unlike the South Korean Democrats the American Democrats didn't have an overwhelming majority in the Senate (Koreans don't even have a Senate) so Trump was not convicted. And the second time he was impeached after like Yoon trying to overthrow the Congress and become dictator, there were like in South Korea a handful of defectors from his own party, but unlike Korea The Democratic majority in the 2021 Senate wasn't large enough to have those Republican votes matter

So brave displays are good and important, but they don't mean much without the power, the votes to back it up. Elect Democrats in 2026 and they will, in less than a year of taking office, impeach Trump. Trump can't function with an opposition, he can't do it, he'll do something and they will HAVE TO vote to remove him. But the key is they need to votes to do it, because most Republicans? will go down with the ship, there's no red lines for them, if Democrats don't have big majorities, Trump hanging onto 90% of his party in the Senate will save his ass, again.

[aminotvxq]

What happened last night in South Korea was horrible.

We were only a few backsteps away from sinking back into dictatorship. Three decades of hard-won peaceful democracy we had been enjoying after three decades of dictatorship was about to fall.

Fortunately, swift action was takan by veteran lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party, many of whom were survivors of and seasoned fighters against the bloody atrocity that once reigned South Korea back in the 1950s to 1980s. Equally important, some of the parliament members could make it safely into the National Assembly premise thanks to brave Korean civilians who rushed to the place to protest and block military vehicles that were trying to get near the parliament for the 190 lawmakers to make resolutions against the unjustified, out-of-the-blue martial law declared by President--a failed coup d'etat leader--Yoon Suk-Yeol.

▲ Opposition party member Ahn Gwi-ryeong, grabbing a soldier's gun to block the coup from arresting lawmakers inside the National Assembly. (Source: JTBC)

▲ Korean civilians gathering to barricade vehicles of the armed forces from entering the National Assembly. (Source: @woochick2 on Twitter)

▲ Korean citizens helping a parliament member go over the fence of the National Assembly to annul the martial law.

We still don't know the dick-for-brains Yoon's whereabout, neither what he's doing right now after the shitshow he created last night. Allegations are that the footage of him announcing to lift the martial law wasn't a live one; that it was actually pre-recorded at the same time as the footage of him declaring the martial law. Many suspect that some of the military leaders responsible for the failed coup d'etat attempt have already escaped this nation. The majority of the far-right ruling party gathered in their Party headquarters quite near the parliament last night, instead of heading straight to the parliament to vote against martial law, waiting for either the dawn of a new dictatorship or getting ready for being opportunistic. Only 10 ruling party lawmakers who are now known to belong to the opposing faction of Yoon within the party participated in lifting the martial law.

---------------

By the way, I'm much calmer now...😭 I was born soon after the end of the decades of dictatorship. I grew up in democratic South Korea, although there are still so many problems that need fixing. I barely slept last night. To my generation, it was literally an existential dread. I wished I could've run to the National Assembly to join the protest, but I lived too far away to do so. I owe the brave civilians and opposition party representatives my whole life.🥹🥹

Last night's experience was truly a solemn reminder that the flamboyant Korean pop culture, or Kpop, that we all love is built on a delecate hard-won democracy. Contemporary Koreans including me are only one generation away from brutal dictatorship that killed thousands.

[memento-mariii]

Meanwhile in Korea: there have been overnight protests calling for Yoon's arrest, amidst the freezing snow.

The protesters brought these foil blankets(?) to protect themselves from the cold, and have jokingly started referring to themselves as human Kisses chocolates.

(art by @youru_mille on Twitter)

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

Is this anything?

[mamaspidershit]

not south korea speedrunning through a coup, martial law, a dictatorship and then overthrowing a dictatorship in the span of three hours?????

[superbeans89]

France and South Korea are imploding in unison. It’s the romance of the year

[hamletsleftball]

die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die

[bobcatmoran]

Absolutely wild that in the time I was at work (which was, to be clear, the middle of the night in South Korea) the following happened:

a) The South Korean president declares martial law because. Uh. North Korea? Exists?

b) 190 of the 300 members of their National Assembly manage to make their way into the Assembly Hall, skirting police and soldiers who were enforcing the martial law, which includes no parlimentary activity. Some of them literally climb the walls around the building to get in, and others are aided by the MASSIVE amounts of protestors that have shown up at, like, 1 AM local time. Barricades are put up to keep the police out of the Assembly Chamber.

c) The vote is unanimous to overturn martial law. This means that the president's declaration has to be lifted.

d) The military says they'll keep enforcing martial law until the president says not to.

e) Three hours after the vote, the president says martial law is lifted.

People are now calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol to resign or be impeached, and rightly so.

(Sources: BBC liveblog, Guardian liveblog, Associated Press, this thread from The Verge reporter Sarah Jeong who just happened to be in Seoul and doesn't usually report on Korean politics)

[weevil-mastermind]

Okay this can not possibly be what it says in the original Korean. There’s no damn way that’s their defense of an attempted coup in the middle of the night.

[phoenixfeathersinfall]

So, absolutely everything is happening with the South Korean government (martial law, vote to overturn martial law, talk of impeaching the president) AND the French government might be about to fall apart (vote of no confidence for the prime minister expected today...) Very normal times in geopolitics for all.

[aminotvxq]

I'm so proud I was part of this crowd😍😍

Yesterday on 8 December 2024, Koreans had the biggest ever protest since a series of impeachment vigils 8 years ago. Reports say around 1 to 1.4 million gathered. I'd never thought we got to do this again. But here we are. All the crowds vowed together in our hearts that we won't stop until not-my-president, not-our-president, and botched coup d'etat leader Yoon Suk-yeol is taken down in the most miserable way possible.

The protest was more than just a solemn and serious action for the greater good. It was also about festivity for democracy we all love. Hundreds of thousands of korean pop music fans, mostly in their 10s to 30s, brought their lightsticks they use for concerts and other music events. I would dare to say a club scene was there at the parliament plaza💜🩷💙🩵💚💛🧡❤️🤎

Get a taste of what it felt like from this short footage I took:

Some close fellow TVXQ fans and I also brought our lightsticks to "join the party"💋❤️🍓🍑 I mean literally.

In just a couple of days, we've been bombarded by strings of frustrating and terrifying news. Emotional pain and distress, and coup-induced sleepless nights ensued. I got a beautifully sound sleep last night. The protest was where we all could heal our souls via solidarity.

I'm joining even more protests next week, and the next, and the next💋 until the lunatic pig Yoon gets politically slaughtered💋💋❤️

[memento-mariii]

Happy Yoon got impeached day!!!🎉🎉🎉

The National Assembly voted to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol with 204 for, 85 against, 3 abstention and 8 invalid votes.

(Fyi Yoon isn't impeached just quite yet, his case needs to go through the Constitutional Court of Korea (think like the american Supreme Court) first, but I still think this warrants celebrating.)