What South Korea’s Turmoil Means for U.S. Interests

South Koreans have in the past week and a half gotten the answers to several questions they never wanted to ask. 

• What happens when a president who isn’t popular with the military declares martial law? A half-hearted military deployment to the national legislature, theoretically designed to halt political activity, but which mostly serves as an opportunity for photo ops by opposition politicians who defy its orders. 
• What happens when a president thoroughly discredits himself, but his party fears the consequences of impeachment, which include new elections they will almost certainly lose? A bizarre can-kicking exercise in which the party refuses to vote on impeachment, then makes a public declaration effectively sidelining the president from important decision-making (never mind the constitutional validity of such a move). 
• If the military has repudiated the president but the legislature fails to impeach him, who is actually in command of the armed forces in the event of a crisis? Theoretically it’s still the president, but, in practice, who knows? 

On the night of December 3, the conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, claiming that an “anti-state” cadre was, under direction from North Korea, seeking to undermine his government through impeachment inquiries and by blocking his legislative agenda. South Korea has a more recent history of such declarations than many people appreciate, with military coups displacing civilian governments in 1961 and 1979, using a daunting security environment as an excuse to break domestic gridlock or solve a lack of leadership. 

Nevertheless, these operations were led by actual military men, namely Major General Park Chung Hee in May 1961 and Major General Chun Doo Hwan in December 1979 (who was consolidated by a martial law declaration the following May) with credibility among the conscripts in a country with little experience with democracy bordered by a North Korea considered a credible conventional threat to South Korea’s armed forces. None of that is true now—Yoon is a career prosecutor who was exempted from mandatory military duty due to poor eyesight, the country has not only had regular elections for 40 years but developed a vigorous protest culture against potential infringements on their democracy, and North Korea’s military decay means it relies on nuclear brinksmanship to stay alive. Consequently, Yoon’s declaration, being short on specifics, inspired no deference from the armed forces or the public, the latter of whom want Yoon gone sooner rather than later. 

For conservatives, all of this is a painful reminder of 2016, when a scandal surrounding then-President Park Geun-hye—Park Chung Hee’s daughter—resulted in mass protests eventually leading to conservative defections and a successful impeachment effort. When the courts upheld her impeachment, a special election brought the progressive opposition to power. The conservatives fractured, sought to rebrand, but mostly watched from the sidelines as the Moon Jae-in administration shook hands with the hated Kim family. 

Something similar will happen if they agree to impeach Yoon—their party was already unpopular, based on the results of the April National Assembly elections, and Yoon’s catastrophic miscalculation will likely sink their reputation further. Unless he can somehow be persuaded to step aside, Lee Jae-myung, leader of the progressive Democratic Party, will almost certainly prevail in an election to succeed Yoon. Lee, who shares progressive skepticism toward Japan, as well as interest in closer relations with North Korea and China, would then proceed undo the broad policy alignment between Seoul and Washington, as well as Tokyo, in the years to come. Plus, the investigations that Yoon has thus far been able to ward off with his veto power come to fruition, and members of his administration may join Park Geun-hye in acquiring criminal records. The party will then be forced to rebrand—I have avoided using their name, “People Power Party,” which has only been in circulation since 2020 and will almost certainly be out of currency by this time next year—and hope a new conservative prophet will emerge to lead them out of the wilderness. 

This may help to explain why the conservatives refused to stay for a vote on impeachment this past Saturday, denying the progressives the two-thirds majority needed. It also helps explain why the prime minister—who would temporarily replace Yoon as a caretaker in the event of impeachment or resignation—and leader of the conservative party went public with a confusing plan to sideline Yoon from important decisions and prepare the way for his eventual, but undetermined, date of departure. Whatever the intent of this move, neither of these men were elected by the public to make executive-level decisions (in South Korea the prime minister is appointed by the president and functions more like a chief of staff than head of state). Naturally, there is no constitutional provision for the president to hand his duties to someone else so that he may avoid the embarrassment of impeachment and attendant legal consequences. 

Nevertheless, their hesitation is only delaying the inevitable. Failure to impeach Yoon will only threaten more domestic protests hampering economic activity and building public resentment for the conservative politicians and causes. At some point voters will have their say, and Yoon’s party will pay a steep price. 

They should make way for this inevitability so that public attention can turn to scrutinizing Yoon’s successor—especially if it is Lee Jae-myung. Yoon was a deeply flawed, gaffe-prone candidate in 2022, yet nonetheless managed to defeat Lee, who has himself been plagued by scandal and who is popular with few people outside of Western media outlets, which have somehow been convinced that he’s a Korean version of Bernie Sanders. Lee would likely be plagued by poor approval ratings and give ethics watchdogs much to focus on from the start of his term.  

They should also not cry over the spilt milk of trilateralism, as the mounting weaknesses in both Korea’s and Japan’s current ruling coalitions will likely not encourage the new Trump administration to invest much time in them. The focus now, from both South Korea and the U.S., should be on transitioning to a South Korea that takes the lead in deterring the North, while the US forces there prioritize deterring China. Trilateralism will have its day again, probably once the public tires of Lee and his party. If there’s any consolation in the events of the past week, it’s that South Korea probably won’t have to answer the question of who will command the armed forces in responding to North Korea during a crisis. Pyongyang did not seek to capitalize on the Park impeachment in 2016, and probably won’t in this case, either. Pyongyang is probably far more concerned about the loss of its partner in Damascus, and what the impotence of Russia’s response there means for their burgeoning partnership. 

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