Squiz Shortcuts - South Korea's political turmoil

Your Shortcut to… South Korea’s political turmoil

Months of political upheaval in South Korea have come to a head recently with the impeachment and removal of President Yoon Suk Yeol from office, following his attempt to invoke martial law last December. A snap election has been called, but the country’s economic and social challenges mean the crisis is far from over. So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll cover:

• what’s been happening

• where things stand going into the election

• and what comes next

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Tell me a bit about South Korea
South Korea is a democratic country that sits on a peninsula of land separated from China by communist North Korea. To its east, over the Sea of Japan, is Japan, and to its west, over the Yellow Sea, is China. It’s Asia’s fourth-largest economy, and it’s a key ally of the United States in the region. 

Got it. What’s been happening there?
There have been months of political unrest which kicked off late at night on 3 December last year, when the country’s President, Yoon Suk Yeol, went on TV and declared he was invoking an emergency state of martial law. 

What’s martial law?
It’s where authority is temporarily given to the military in place of civilian or government rule. It means that the military is not only in charge of keeping order, but also policing and the courts. 

Is that a normal thing for a President to do?
Not at all… Martial law is usually only put in place in extreme circumstances like when a country goes to war, or there’s been a rebellion, or a natural disaster like an earthquake - something big that prevents the government from functioning normally.

Why did Yoon make the decree?
He said it was to “safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-State elements”. We’ll get to what was actually underneath it all shortly, but for now, back to 3 December… 

What happened after the announcement?
An emergency vote was called by members of the National Assembly, which is South Korea’s parliament, and MPs rushed over to vote against the martial law order - some of them had to climb fences and break through barricades to get into the voting chamber. Then the military moved in…

That’s extreme
It sure is… The military marched on the National Assembly building and tried to force their way inside - but parliamentary staffers blocked the entrances and pushed them back with fire extinguishers so that the MPs could continue with the emergency vote… 

Sounds dramatic
It was... While that was happening, the media was reporting the whole thing, and hundreds of people turned out in freezing temperatures to protest outside of the building. There were TV cameras filming it all from helicopters overhead; it was a really tense few hours. 

Did the vote pass?
Yep. In the end, there were enough lawmakers inside the National Assembly to vote for lifting Yoon’s martial law decree. But it was in place for around 6 hours, and political experts say the incident has left South Koreans shaken. The opposition Democratic party (DPK) said it amounted to a military coup which was illegal and violated the constitution. 

What has the fallout been?
Yoon has since apologised and said he was trying to prevent “anti-state” opposition members with views sympathetic to North Korea from “destroying the country”, but critics say the real reason was more to do with pushing through his political agenda by force.

What led up to him going rogue?
Let’s rewind a bit… Yoon came to prominence in 2016 when, ironically, he led the prosecution case against the last leader to be impeached in South Korea - that was its first female president, Park Geun-hye, who was ousted over a corruption scandal in 2017 and later jailed… After that, he entered politics as a relative newcomer, and political experts say his conservative values struck a chord with young male voters. 

How so?
The country was divided over gender issues like inequality in the workforce and younger women breaking away from traditional societal roles. It was also struggling economically through the pandemic, and Yoon promised to lead the way out of all of that. He campaigned on an anti-woke, anti-feminism platform which saw him win the Presidency in 2022 by a very slim margin of less than 1% over the opposition leader Lee Jae-myung in the closest result the country had seen since elections began in 1987.

What was his term like?
After a couple of early personal gaffes, his ratings dropped and then last April he was relegated to being what’s called a “lame duck president” after the opposition (the DPK we mentioned) won the parliamentary election - so that’s the lower house - by a landslide, which was widely seen as a vote of no confidence in Yoon.

What’s a lame duck President?
It’s where the President is seen as being on the way out and/or has no real ability to influence policy, given their party is in the parliamentary minority. It’s a term commonly used in the US to describe outgoing presidents.

How did Yoon cope with that?
Not well… He took to liberally using his veto powers to block bills passed by the opposition. Experts say Yoon used the presidential veto at an unprecedented rate - which damaged his ratings further because critics began to call his leadership style “authoritarian". But the big blow came when the opposition voted against the budget proposed by Yoon’s party, the People Power Party (PPP)…

What happened then?
Things were tense, but experts say no one predicted Yoon to invoke such an extreme move as declaring martial law. He’s since tried to downplay the chaos he caused, saying it was never his intention to fully impose military rule, and he’s also pointed out that no one was killed. Still, the move was still seen as a direct threat to the country’s democratic principles, and the National Assembly voted to impeach him.

What does that mean?
Impeachment means charging someone who holds public office with misconduct.

Got it. Was that upheld?
It was… Judges in the country’s Constitutional Court voted unanimously to uphold the impeachment of Yoon and he was removed from office. Last weekend, he and his wife (and their 11 dogs and cats) moved out of the presidential palace and back to their apartment. But there were still crowds of people who turned out to see him leave.

So he’s still got supporters?
According to political analysts, around a third of the electorate is still supportive of Yoon and believe the presidency was taken from him by left-wing judges... But that said, polls show the majority of voters believe he overstepped his authority - and he’s now facing criminal charges of leading an insurrection. 

What’s the penalty if he’s found guilty?
He’s facing life imprisonment or, on the extreme end, the death penalty - although South Korea hasn’t carried out an execution since the late 1990s.

When is the trial?
It kicked off this week, so that’ll be one to keep an eye on - but reports say it could take months to get through the evidence… And as that plays out, the country is now turning its attention to who'll take over when it goes to the polls on 3 June.

Who’s running things at the moment?
The Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is currently acting President, but political analysts say the PPP - he and Yoon’s party - is likely to be relegated to the political wilderness following this scandal.

Who’s tipped to get the job?
The opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, is considered to be the frontrunner. Support for him has risen to a 3-month high, but he’s got his work cut out if he wants to stabilise the economy, which analysts say is heading for recession, and lead the country out of its deepening social divisions over issues like youth unemployment, high cost of housing, and that split between the genders we mentioned which has led to the lowest birth rate in the world…

Onto our Recommendations

Reading: If you’d like to go deeper into South Korea’s social and political challenges, this article published in The Conversation is a good explainer

Watching/Listening: Remember this? Professor Robert Kelly - aka BBC Dad - is still providing analysis on Korean politics, and he gives a little update on his daughter (who’s now 12) in this interview about Yoon’s presidency…

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