Great Chaos Under Seoul Sky

On December 3, 2024, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, in a televised address, declared martial law and a ban on the National Assembly and any political activity. Although this coup attempt lasted only a few hours and ended with the resignation of the president, it sheds an interesting light on the limitations of a regime born in the late age of military dictatorship.

Before that, no one objected to Yoon Suk-yeol promoting a form of authoritarian liberalism. In the end, domestic political considerations are unimportant compared to the higher stakes of geopolitics on the Korean Peninsula. The fact remains that the former president was a staunch economic liberal. Citing eagerly economist Milton Friedman, he tried to increase the work week from 52 to 69 hours. He implemented a massive privatization program to reduce the size of the state and its budget deficit.

His practice of presidential pardons shows that he has effectively turned himself into an instrument of private interests. This has benefited billionaire Lee Jae-yong, the head of Samsung Group, convicted of corruption and embezzlement in January 2021, and then to other businessmen including Shin Dong-bi in 2022. As an instrument of powerful capitalist interests, Yoon Suk-yeol has taken measures hostile to freedom of expression and has not hesitated to censor some media outlets to consolidate his power. This censorship was all the more stringent because Korea had a tradition of loud talking that had struck Europeans as early as the nineteenth century: “In Korea, people always speak in a very high-pitched tone of voice, and the meetings are unusually noisy. To shout as loudly as possible is to show good manners, and anyone who speaks in a socially normal tone of voice will be met with disapproval by those around him and considered an eccentric who seeks to stand out” (1).

The political realignment in Korea has elicited some pretty hollow comments from cheap analysts of phantom democracies. However, the common clichés about the undermining of democracy in South Korea do not reflect reality.

In fact, since ancient times, the kingdom of Baekje, which was formed in southwestern Korea, taking advantage of the amazing fertility of the Han River basin where it was founded, represented a bridge to China for Japan’s maritime empire. In contrast, the Russian power, which reached the Bering Strait in 1648, sought access to the ice-free sea by conquering Korea. However, the clash of land and sea empires never broke the cultural unity of the peninsula. The idea of the complementarity of the two Koreas has long been present in the traditional expression namnam pungnyŏ, which suggests that the ideal Korean couple is one formed by a man from the South (namnam) and a woman from the North (pungnyŏ). This perfect couple is at the heart of the plot of many Korean television series. Here we touch on one of the most puzzling realities of geopolitics: dyads of twins oppose each other because they resemble each other. In the biggest military confrontations, we often see two powers on both sides, as has happened with Korea.

As for the political interpretation of events in the light of individual rights, this is just a chimera created by laboratory analysts. In fact, individualism was invented only by the people of the West. Asian societies are holistic, they put the whole above the part, the interests of the community above the interests of the individual. This often makes them stronger in the face of external dangers. What is the specific political interpretation of this holism?

It is manifested in the unicameral national assembly. In this connection it will be remembered that the unicameral French revolutionary assemblies, under the constant pressure of tribunes who violently opposed and threatened the deputies, led to the most terrible tyranny. In fact, there was no one to moderate this unique, constantly cleansed aggregate. The second manifestation of Korean holism was ilminism, the ideology that structured South Korea during Syngman Rhee’s presidency.

The goal of this ideology was to form a unified and obedient nation around a strong central Rhee government, with calls for nationalism and ethnic supremacy. Some argue that Rhee’s time has passed. Our digital absolutism holds an even greater danger. Indeed, any digital plutocracy that does not give its name risks endlessly frustrating the holders of the last remaining right to peoples’ freedom: the right to remain silent.

For now, Yoon’s impeachment is dragging on, dividing South Korea and plunging it into chaos. This is all the more damaging because in Ukraine the highly disciplined North Korean army quickly adapted to war, gaining – according to the Japanese press – invaluable military experience.

Since North Korean soldiers refuse to surrender at all costs because of the shame associated with surrender, we have little information about their perception of events, but for the North Korean general staff, war by foreign hands appears to be a laboratory for modernization. This is creating fear in South Korea.

To date, despite the impeachment motion passed by South Korea’s National Assembly, only the Constitutional Court can rule on Yoon’s removal. The latter will apply all his talents as a lawyer to defend his viewpoint in court starting Tuesday, January 14. The president has two trump cards: domestically, he is protected from police intrusions by presidential security. These heavily-armed soldiers resemble the Roman Praetorians, who constituted the emperor’s personal guard as well as a military reserve under the emperor’s direct command. Being the only ones allowed armed into the sacred confines of Rome, they were rewarded with large sums of money and food after the failure of each conspiracy plot.

On the external front, Yoon Suk-yeol skillfully used the communication tools of the pro-Trump camp to his advantage, drawing a parallel between the protests sparked by allegations of election fraud in the USA in 2020 and the current situation in South Korea. While Joe Biden’s dying diplomacy has sent an emissary to his adversaries, the president is counting on the new American president to rely on this adage: unpredictability is power.

(1) C. Dallet, A History of the Church in Korea, vol. 1, p. CLVI