Lessons from South Korea’s martial law crisis: NPR

SEOUL, South Korea — More than a month after now-impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, the country remains mired in a political crisis.

The month since the Dec. 3 martial law order comes just before Monday’s fourth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. .Analysts examine both cases, however different they may be. – as examples of self-inflicted wounds to democracy, and exploit them for lessons on how to prevent them from happening again.

Challenges to democracy in South Korea and the United States

The South Korean and American examples present clear differences. The attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago was an attempt to overturn the election results. Yoon’s martial law decree was aimed at breaking down resistance from an opposition-controlled parliament.

But “the essence of the action is similar”, estimates Aurel Croissant, political scientist at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He says both moments were attempts by a sitting executive branch “to prevent another branch of government from fulfilling its constitutional duties and holding the government accountable.”

Political scientists call this a “self-coup.”

“The South Korean declaration of martial law is a classic example of such a coup,” Croissant says, and many see the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States as an example as well.

For many South Koreans, their experience naturally raises comparisons to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. That includes impeached President Yoon, who has argued that he should have the same absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official actions that the Supreme Court upheld for U.S. presidents last year.

South Korean law indeed grants presidents immunity from prosecution, except for accusations of insurrection or treason. Yoon is charged with insurrection.

At a press conference in Seoul on Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We were seriously concerned about some of the actions taken by President Yoon and we communicated them directly to the government.”

But, he added, “we have great confidence in the resilience of South Korean democracy,” whose institutions the United States says have held up.

Resistance to self-coups versus resilience

Croissant argues that if South Korean institutions had stood their ground, Yoon would not have been able to declare martial law even for a few hours.

“South Korean democracy is strong in reacting to crises,” he says, “but it is very weak in preventing crises.”

While South Korean law requires the president to notify parliament of the declaration of martial law and parliament can demand that the president rescind the declaration, parliament does not have the power to veto it.

Part of the problem is the way South Korea’s political system was designed and constructed, says Kang Won-taek, a political scientist at Seoul National University.

“So far, most of Korea’s democratization has focused on holding fair and democratic presidential elections,” he explains. »

Kang says the system has reached its limits and some of the president’s powers now need to be redistributed. A debate on this question has been going on for several years.

The “muscle” behind self-coups

Another reason why Yoon’s self-coup failed is that the military was reluctant to use force to impose martial law.

Kang said this was partly due to the events of May 1980, when South Korea’s then-ruling military junta sent troops to crush pro-democracy protests in the city of Gwangju, killing about 200 civilians. . “The soldiers were extremely ashamed after witnessing the Gwangju incident,” he said.

South Korean author Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year for his books, including Human actswhich dealt with the Gwangju trauma.

In South Korea’s parliament last month, opposition leader Park Chan-dae mentioned two of the questions Han raises about Gwangju: “Can the past help the present?” and “Can the dead save the living?”

“As I live through the civil war provoked by the martial law decree of December 3,” he said, “I would like to answer ‘yes’ to the question: ‘Can the past help the present? ‘ Because May 1980 saved December 2024.”

Croissant, the German political scientist, argues that because leaders who stage self-coups often require the use or threat of force to achieve their goals, lawmakers must strictly supervise the military and security apparatuses to ensure that they respect the constitution.

The last line of defense

Ultimately, Croissant points out that South Korea and the United States are both representative democracies, where citizens choose representatives to govern for them. When representatives fail, he adds, citizens must mobilize to protect their rights themselves.

“Civil society is democracy’s last line of defense,” says Croissant, quoting Daron Acemoglu, Nobel Prize winner in economics.

South Koreans have been mobilizing for more than 100 years, Croissant adds, drawing lessons from 35 years of Japanese colonial occupation and more than 25 years of military dictatorships.

NPR’s Se Eun Gong contributed to this report from Seoul.