Jason Barker & Hoduk Hwang in Sidecar:
On 3 December, the thirteenth President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law. Looking tired and frustrated in his televised address to the nation (it is rumoured that he may have been drinking), he justified this decision by accusing the parliamentary opposition of establishing a ‘legislative dictatorship’, ‘conspiring to incite rebellion by trampling on the constitutional order of the free Republic of Korea’ and colluding with ‘North Korean communist forces’. The state of emergency didn’t last long – all of six hours, in which opposition leader Lee Jae-myung and his fellow lawmakers wrestled through a police cordon at the National Assembly and barricaded themselves inside, where they unanimously voted down the presidential decree. They were supported by a large crowd of Seoul residents who had rushed to parliament, forming a human shield to ward off paratroopers wielding assault rifles.
Yoon appeared on television again and agreed to revoke the measures, of which he evidently had not informed South Korea’s closest ally, the US. On 14 December he was impeached by the National Assembly; the constitutional court is deciding whether to remove him from office. The public has breathed a sigh of relief, and the liberal opposition, headed by the Democratic Party, has proclaimed that democracy has been saved. But the episode reveals a striking feature of South Korean political culture: the centrality of anti-communism to the constitutional order. It is in this context that Yoon’s apparent act of madness should be understood.
More here.
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