The dramatic scenes in South Korea, which took place in the night from 2nd to 3rd December Korean time, could have been taken from the South Korean feature film 12.12: The Day. This film, which premiered a year ago, depicts the coup d’état carried out by General Chun Doo-hwan in December 1979 after the assassination of the country’s strongman Park Chung Hee by his own security chief two months earlier. For the first time since the introduction of democracy in 1987-88, the boot-stomp of soldiers in full combat gear and the caterpillar tracks of tanks were once again heard on the streets of Seoul, while military helicopters hovered over the capital.
It was the current right-wing president Yoon Suk-yeol who had ordered the army out, after – in connection with a televised address to the nation – imposing a state of emergency, motivated by claims that the left-wing opposition sympathized with North Korea. The state of emergency meant in practice that all political activity, including ongoing strikes, was banned, and that the military took control of the media, while citizens were ordered to stay at home under threat of arrest and punishment if they went outside.
In addition, the military seized Yeoui Island, where the parliament is located, surrounded the building and started to stop and arrest MPs.
For six hours, the dictatorship of the years 1948-87 was back, until the MPs who had managed to stay in the plenary hall voted in unison against the introduction of the military laws and then turned the tide. According to South Korea’s constitution, the president can impose a state of emergency, but then the parliament also needs to approve it afterwards. At the same time, a large crowd had gathered around the parliament and the trade union KCTU had announced a general strike to protest the state of emergency. It all ended with the army finally choosing to respect the vote and withdraw due to the widespread protests.
President Yoon, who represents the right-wing ruling People Power Party, came to power in 2022 by the slimmest of margins, and ever since he has accused the left-wing opposition, represented by the Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the parliament, of sabotaging his government. The 2022 presidential election took place in a thoroughly polarized country where the battle lines are strikingly similar to those in Sweden, and the West in general. Yoon and his party has the support of older voters who grew up during the dictatorship and who are marinated in a militant anti-communism, and of young men who have been radicalized to the right as a reaction to the fact that young women are outsmarting them in almost every field, in the same way young Swedish women do in relation to young Swedish men.
One of Yoon’s election promises was, for example, to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality to please the young men who had voted for him; which he did after coming to power. The right-wing radical wave that is sweeping the West has its counterpart in the non-Western world, and in East Asia South Korea’s President Yoon can definitely be counted as a part of this wave, even though he is not the leader of an upstart right-wing populist party, but of the old right.
The coup attempt was both about Yoon feeling under pressure by corruption charges levelled against both his wife and several associates, and a growing paranoia after the arch-rival in the North advanced its positions with North Korea’s direct participation on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine. In addition, Trump’s coming to power in the US is creating anxiety in an already troubled Asia Pacific region.
Yoon’s choice to impose martial law also reflects the fact that authoritarian reflexes are still deeply embedded in the South Korean right, as well as an anti-communist rhetoric that is directly drawn from the years of the dictatorship. The left in the country is in no way pro-North Korean, or communist, and a pro-North Korean movement has not existed in South Korea since the radical left student movement faded away in the 00s.
The same type of authoritarian reflexes was also exhibited by Park Geun-hye, who ruled the country between 2013-17 and who is the daughter of the old dictator Park Chung Hee. Park blacklisted a number of the country’s most famous cultural personalities as left-wing extremists – among them this year’s Nobel laureate in literature Han Kang. Park Geun-hye was eventually impeached on charges of corruption, deposed before her term expired and sentenced to a long prison term. It is likely that Yoon Suk-yeol will meet a similar fate, due to the strength of voices in the country that want to impeach, depose and imprison him.
The massive popular reactions to the introduction of martial law finally also show that South Koreans will not accept a return to the dictatorship years and that South Korean democracy, still relatively young, is today rooted in the depths of the people. The fact that thousands of ordinary South Koreans defied the curfew and went to Yeoui Island, where they risked their own lives to confront the soldiers appointed by Yoon and protect the MPs, is clear proof of that, as is the fact that the army ultimately chose to respect the remaining MPs’ unanimous decision not to approve the president’s state of emergency by withdrawing the troops from the streets.
Tobias Hübinette has a PhD in Korean studies and is associate professor in intercultural education at Karlstad University in Sweden.
The Swedish original of this text was first published by the Swedish daily ETC on 4 December 2024.