The News
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ended martial law early Wednesday morning local time just hours after the country’s parliament vetoed the late-night declaration.
“I will accept National Assembly’s request and lift it,” Yoon said. Under Korean law, the president must lift martial law if a majority in parliament vote against it.
On Tuesday, Yoon said he had taken the emergency step to “safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements.” The surprise announcement sent shockwaves through the country; South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party and members of Yoon’s own People’s Power Party immediately condemned the declaration. Martial law has not been imposed in South Korea since the 1980s.
After the declaration, police barricades were erected outside the country’s National Assembly, briefly restricting lawmakers’s access to parliament, according to local reports. Armored vehicles reportedly continued patrolling Seoul early Wednesday morning local time.
Yoon has struggled to push his agenda through the opposition-controlled parliament, and in his address Tuesday, he cited the Democratic Party’s rejection of a government budget plan and a motion to impeach the country’s top prosecutors, Reuters reported.
SIGNALS
South Korean democracy at risk from polarization
South Korea’s government has been plagued by political infighting that has effectively hamstrung the administration from tackling numerous crises, including a faltering economy, low birth rates, and a severe healthcare worker shortage. “The ruling and opposition party lawmakers are more concerned about their own future than the country,” the editor of the Joong Ang Daily newspaper wrote. President Yoon is too focused on defending his reputation amid his numerous political scandals, while opposition lawmakers similarly defend their leader Lee Jae-myung, who is himself embroiled in corruption charges and allegations of campaign irregularities, the editor noted: “They are not the servants of the people, but the servants of the leader.”
International community has ignored Yoon’s growing political problems
US lawmakers have long ignored President Yoon’s “domestic train wreck” because he was “playing nice with Japan” and was considered crucial for containing China, Chicago Council on Global Affairs fellow Karl Friedhoof said. Now, a question may be asked as to whether the re-election of US President Donald Trump “empowered” Yoon to declare martial law, or if the South Korean leader felt that “taking such authoritarian action would now be less damaging to his relations with the USA,” a University of Ottawa security expert wrote. Globe and Mail international affairs columnist Doug Sanders went further, writing on social media that Yoon’s declaration and subsequent barricading of parliament “seems to be his January 6 taking place.”
North Korean reaction likely to be muted, security experts say
The martial law declaration was so unforeseen that North Korea may take days to officially comment on the matter, a University of Notre Dame international affairs expert told Newsweek. Pyongyang could see an opportunity to bolster its claim that “Yoon is paranoid,” taking his hostility to the North to an unprecedented level, the expert said. Meanwhile, Pyongyang has its “hands tied in Ukraine,” a Peterson Institute researcher said, and may choose a quieter, albeit still potentially destabilizing, response, such as to “covertly encourage its operatives and fellow travelers in the South to make noise.”