Six Hours of Emergency Martial Law in South Korea during December 3-4 2024: Some Explanatory Notes  

 Without warning, in an act of desperation, and  empowered by South Korea’s Constitution, President Yoon Suk-yeol informed his audience on the 24-hour YTN (Yonhap Television News) channel, at 10:23 PM local time on 3 December 2024, that he was proclaiming emergency martial law, thereby banning all political activity (protests, rallies, and other actions), placing the media under the control of the Martial Law Command, and ordering the country’s striking doctors to return to work within 48 hours. Yoon claimed to be protecting his nation from “shameless, pro-North Korean anti-state forces” within the opposition, without any supporting evidence, and expressed a desire “to protect the constitutional democratic order.” He also cited the rejection of his tax-cutting budget proposals for 2025 and a Democratic Party-led attempt to impeach three public prosecutors. These prosecutors have been accused by the opposition of failing to investigate corruption charges against South Korea’s first lady, Kim Keon-hee, who has been accused of stock manipulation and also caught on camera in the act of accepting a Lady Dior handbag worth £1,800 from a Korean-American pastor.

As soldiers advanced on the National Assembly, protesters took to the streets of the capital city and held a rally at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul. Some members of the public joined parliamentarians as they attempted to prevent the military from entering the home of South Korea’s unicameral legislative body. There was little overt support for Yoon’s actions. Han Dong-hun, leader of Yoon’s own conservative People Power Party (PPP), was quick to denounce the martial law decree. Martial law was inevitably lifted around 4:30 AM on 4 December, when 191 members of the 300-seat National Assembly, including Speaker Woo Won-shik, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, and 18 PPP lawmakers, who had breached the security cordon and entered parliament, unanimously rejected the decree. Six opposition parties, led by the centre-left Democratic Party, then submitted articles of impeachment during the afternoon of 4 December, in response to Yoon’s “unconstitutional and illegal declaration of martial law.” An impeachment motion requires the support of at least two-thirds of National Assembly members, followed by all six judges of the nine-member Constitutional Court, from which three justices have retired and their positions remain unfilled. Impeachment proceedings will also be started against Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who stepped down on 5 December, and Interior Minister Lee Sang-min.

The current troubles in South Korea are the direct result of a power struggle between the executive and the legislature- a pattern of conflict simultaneously playing out elsewhere across the world. Yoon defeated Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung by a narrow 0.7 percent majority to win the 2022 presidential election, only for the Democratic Party to then win a landslide victory in the April 2024 general election, creating a power imbalance almost halfway into Yoon’s five-year term in office and forced him to depend on presidential vetoes to take his agenda forward. The opposition bloc currently holds 192 National Assembly seats, while the PPP and its satellite party secured only 108 seats.

 South Korea’s liberal democracy, which is also Asia’s fourth largest economy, is not new to military intervention in the political sphere. Martial law was first imposed by the new president, Syngman Rhee, in 1948 as part of a crackdown on Communist uprisings, and then invoked during the Korean War of 1950-1953. A coup engineered by Major General Park Chung-hee on 16 May 1961 was followed by eighteen years of military rule, during which Park declared martial law in October 1972. Following Park’s assassination by his own intelligence chief, ending the Yushin period, the military soon regained control in a second coup, led by Major General Chun Doo-hwan in December 1979. Shortly thereafter, the pro-democracy Gwangju uprising of May 1980 was ruthlessly suppressed. Democratization was finally achieved after months of demonstrations culminated in the June 1987 Uprising and Great Workers’ Struggle. South Korea’s first direct elections were held later that year, since when the nation has taken its place among the liberal democracies of the world. Ironically, General Roh Tae-woo, the initiator of political reform, also took over as the first democratically elected president of South Korea.

But all is not well in the homeland of chaebols (corporate business-industrial conglomerates which have fuelled impressive export-driven economic growth) and the birthplace of many popular Korean cultural exports- including its cuisine, music (K-Pop), TV soaps, and cinema. Long-standing difficulties with its antagonistic and belligerent northern neighbour, an economic slowdown, and political corruption help explain South Korea’s current predicament. The Republic of Korea Armed Forces, boosted by 28,500 American troops stationed in the nation, remains essential to the integrity of South Korea, which never signed the armistice that officially ended the Korean War of 1950-1953. For now, conservative political elites, potentially backed by a military that is ranked fifth in the world in terms of its firepower, are pitted against a liberal left-of-centre opposition in a developing scenario, the outcome of which is eagerly awaited.  

Ashis Banerjee

PS: President Yoon Suk-yeol apologised to the nation on 7 December 2024. He was granted a temporary reprieve as members of the ruling PPP boycotted his impeachment vote in the National Assembly.