Martial Law in South Korea (Cancelled)!

It’s Christmas Day. A lovely white Christmas here in South Korea. From up there, where I took this photo, you can just see what must be, bar a few utterly failed states in Africa, the worst country on Earth: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They’ll be no Christmas Day over there. Just more misery.

For one reason or another, I haven’t written any blog entries since the summer. Mostly, this is because I’ve been busy working on two new book projects and  making art in my wonderful new studio. I’ll write more about these soon.

But I feel compelled to comment on the recent drama here in the Republic of Korea. I refer to President Yoon Suk-yeol’s martial law declaration on 3rd December, which turned out to be the shortest period of martial law in history, as it was cancelled the next day.   But it’s certainly been a wake-up call about how vulnerable democracy is, but also how robustly it can protect itself. 

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Martial law officially involves the armed forces stepping in when civilian authorities have stopped functioning, as in the case of war, insurrection, or natural disaster. In democracies it is usually used in times of war, or in relation to a specific threat or crisis within the nation, in which case it’s not imposed across unilaterally. But the ROK’s relationship with martial law is unique, in that the nation was founded in 1948 under martial law due to the communist threat both from the DPRK and from within the ROK itself. Then the Korean War began, lasting from 1950 to 1953.  In May 1961 there was an army coup, which brought General Park Chung-hee to power and began another long period of martial law. When Park was assassinated in 1979, a brief moment of non-military rule began, but this was stamped out that same year by the military, and another eight year period of martial law began, including the brutal suppression of the  Gwangju uprising in 1980.   In 1988 the first democratically elected President of the ROK was Roh Tae-woon heralded a period in which, until the 3rd December, there has never been martial law. A lot has changed in the republic of Korea since the 1980s, but this seems to have been missed by President Yoon.

The most important difference is that the ROK is now a working democracy. Another is that it is a powerful world economy. And another is that despite the threats of the DPRK, including nuclear threats, the two Korea’s are now living in totally unequal worlds, a situation that’s been acknowledged by the DPRK leadership’s decision to stop pretending they want a re-unified Korean peninsula. They recently even blew up on their side the roads that traverse the DMZ., effectively announcing their status as a prison-nation. Kim has also sent a large quantity of munitions to Russia, and several thousand of his elite forces are currently being put in the meat grinder in Ukraine. The DPRK is therefore as unlikely now to invade the South as at any time.

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Here are some choicer extracts from President Yoon’s statement announcing martial law.

He begins by accusing his rivals, the Democratic Party, of the very thing he is about to attempt:

This is a clear anti-state act of conspiring to incite rebellion by trampling on the constitutional order of the free Republic of Korea and disrupting legitimate state institutions established by the Constitution and the law.

The lives of the people are of no concern, and state affairs are in a paralyzed state solely due to impeachments, special prosecutors, and the opposition party leader's shield (against prosecution).

Now, it’s true that Yoon has been a lame duck President for some time because his party lost out big time in local elections, and the winning Democratic Party has been blocking more or less all Yoon’s attempts at legislative reform. His wife is being investigated for accepting expensive gifts (bribes), and his popularity has plummeted. Yoon must have felt very frustrated. But this is hardly grounds for martial law. Therefore, like the military rulers of the pre-democratic Republic, Yoon sought to justify his actions by evoking the imminent threat from the DPRK:

 Dear fellow citizens, I am declaring a state of emergency martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threats of the North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the shameless pro-North anti-state forces that plunder the freedom and happiness of our people and to safeguard the free constitutional order.

 And here’s the best bit of all, from towards the end of Yoon’s short statement:

 Due to the declaration of martial law, there may be some inconveniences for the good citizens who have believed in and followed the constitutional values of a free democracy, but we will strive to minimize such inconveniences.

‘Inconveniences’! ‘Strive to minimize such inconveniences’! Yoon’s low assessment of the South Korean people is summed up here. Did he really believe they would only experience martial law as an ‘inconvenience’, as if it was nothing more than roadworks slowing down their commute home? What was in Yoon’s deluded mind? He seems to have lost touch with reality, or perhaps its more accurate to say reality got funneled into a very narrow space full of his petty political problems. He lost any sense of the Big Picture.

In the end, I felt very proud of the South Korean people, and most particularly of the army, whose top brass showed themselves to be far more wedded to democracy than the President and his cronies. Huge numbers of South  Koreans rallied to democracy and sent the scoundrel packing. Unfortunately, Yoon is still at large. But not for much longer. Several Presidents  (5, including the President  and former general who led the 1979 coup, Chun Doo-hwan) have been impeached  and/or given prison sentences, including death sentences. But all - except Roh Moo-hyun (President from 2003 -2008) who committed suicide - received pardons. Yoon Suk-yeol will therefore in all likelihood soon be the sixth ROK President to go to prison, and maybe will even be given the death penalty if he is found guilty of treason. But history suggests he will also be pardoned.

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I was also struck by the timing of Yoon’s declaration of martial law, which was almost exactly one month after Trump was elected President (5th November). I can imagine that Trump will try the martial law card in the US in the not too distant future if it seems necessary. In fact, federal and state governments  in the USA have declared martial law over 60 times during its history –  for example, after Pearl Harbor in 1942 and until the end of World War Two. The last time was limited to a single town in Maryland during in 1963 Civil Rights Movement crisis.

What Yoon’s action exposes is the influence of the trend towards populist and authoritarian leaders which is undermining democracy and emboldening half-baked wannabees like Yoon to accelerate the process. In the case of the ROK, he totally underestimated the sound commitment of his country to democratic government of the kind that has checks and balances put in place to make sure no one person can try to do what Yoon did. He also underestimated the sea change in the minds of South Korea’s military leaders, who refused to be employed as his bully boys.  

But I’m wondering if the Constitution of the United States, which is famously buttressed by such checks and balances, is going to be able to take the strain of another Trump Presidency. The US seems so utterly ravaged. To borrow Ezra Pound’s words, it’s almost beginning to look like the US is a ‘botched civilization’.

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Here’s a glimpse of one of my new ‘LP Paintings’, in which I make monochrome paintings based on the covers of LP’s, preserving only the original typography of the title and artist. In this case, its an LP by Bob Dylan. The title seems timely. I liked the way the sunlight in my studio played over its surface, so I turned it into a New Year’ card.