Even botched plots to seize power damage democratic institutions and norms.
A right-wing wannabe authoritarian president—a leader who attacks the press, is accused of abusing power for personal gain, uses his power to block investigations into his family’s potential corruption, hopes to stay in office to avoid heading to prison, and only seems to have concepts of a plan to address his nation’s inflation and health care—declared martial law earlier today.
This is not a dystopian fever dream for what may soon come to pass in the United States, but instead a rapidly unfolding crisis in South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked his nation with a hastily executed surprise power grab under the pretext of an unspecified military threat from North Korea and enemies within. Late Tuesday evening in Seoul, Yoon issued a statement calling the country’s National Assembly a “den of criminals” and claiming that it was undermining governance. Martial law was needed, Yoon claimed, to stop the “anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people.”
Within hours, protests broke out around the assembly building, and the lawmakers within it unanimously voted to overturn Yoon’s martial-law declaration. Clashes between protesters and law enforcement have continued since the announcement, and the demonstrations are likely to keep growing, demanding Yoon’s resignation.
“I think Yoon is done,” Karl Friedhoff, a Korea expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told me. “In his mind, he may have imagined this as a power grab, but this was more about sheer incompetence.”
Korea’s civil society is strong, and mass protests have long been a signature element of its political culture. “If you’ve been to Korea and haven’t seen a protest, you haven’t really been to Korea,” Friedhoff quipped.
Yoon essentially has been a lame-duck leader since South Korea’s April 2024 legislative elections, in which his party suffered devastating losses. Like many incumbents, Yoon faced the global headwind of high inflation. Yet much of his unpopularity was of his own making. One of Yoon’s top power brokers was allegedly paid to ensure that a certain candidate would be selected for their party’s nomination to a legislative seat; this scandal also linked the first lady to allegations of election interference and dominated headlines in recent weeks as potentially implicating audio from Yoon’s phone calls leaked to the public.
