Dangerous choices for South Korea and democracy around the world

America leads the world away from the established order

In Seoul, echoes of 2021 in Washington, D.C. rang as troops broke windows to gain entry to the National Assembly building, where some members of parliament were briefly barred from entering. When members did vote, they overturned President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law over the nation. Yoon then removed the declaration on his own, as the opposition party filed impeachment charges against him. If you think American politics is supercharged, we got nothing on South Korea.

대한민국 국군 Republic of Korea Armed Forces, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also incredibly dangerous for President Yoon to have done what he did. It could have restarted the hot Korean War, with North Korea which technically is still being fought, but under a cease-fire. A quick story. The only time in my life I’ve ever had a rifle pointed at me was in South Korea. I was in a marked American military motor pool vehicle, with a uniformed American Army driver, going from a small joint base in the mountains of the east, about 20 miles south of the DMZ, to a larger ROKA-controlled air base. Security at the larger base consisted of several troops behind a concrete barrier, and two privates pointing their M-16s at our faces while their NCO checked our papers. I have no doubt they’d have shot us if the NCO gave the order. This was peacetime, normal operating procedures.

There’s a huge difference in how the U.S. Army in South Korea (the 8th Army) operates, combined with college-educated, English-speaking, and very smart KATUSAs, versus how ROKA, which depends on mandatory conscription, runs things. When President Yeol ordered martial law, urged on by Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun (who has now offered his resignation), the army did as they were told. South Korea has a history of military-dominated juntas that used repressive tactics to end protest. As recently as 1980, the military cordoned off Gwangju as Chun Doo-hwan, leader of the junta, ordered thenm to crush a movement opposing his rule. Crush it they did.

Read differently, what Yoon conducted could have been seen as a coup attempt, an attempt to seize power from the National Assembly, which is controlled by his opposition, the Democratic Party (of South Korea). Yeol’s retreat left somewhat of a power vacuum as to who is really in charge. And the huge shadow that dominates South Korea’s politics, the North, is always watching. Even the smallest opportunity to create mayhem could be used, and could spark a new hot war on the peninsula.

If you think North Korea is a paper tiger, you’d be wrong. If their war plan hasn’t changed much since the early 2000s, it consists of firing tens of thousands of chemical rounds from thousands of artillery pieces pre-registered on every military and defense site in range (that’s about 30 miles), along with medium range missiles to handle further targets, without warning. The plan is to eliminate or remove at least half or more combatants in that zone, as DPRK troops storm over the border. Many of those troops have orders to wear ROKA uniforms (some taken from corpses) and use ROKA weapons. They want to flood the zone and blend, as the retribution from U.S. and South Korean air power will be devastating. The North, if it goes in, will be all-in. And of course, there’s always the nuclear card.

Making even the barest of mistakes dealing with two militaries designed to operate on a trip-wire, is foolish. Therefore, President Yoon is a fool. He deserves to be impeached, and likely will suffer exactly that fate.

I don’t pretend to know enough about South Korean politics to understand why Yeol did what he did. But I do know that the echoes of January 6th, and before that, 2016, are ringing around the world. In places where democratic processes elect leaders, technocrats and world-unite-DAVOS-and-EU-loving industrial planners are out, and autocrats, populists, and nationalists are in.

France can’t seem to keep a government in power. The latest prime minister, Michel Barnier, who was appointed to lead a fragile coalition government last September by President Emmanuel Macron, faces a vote of no confidence today. Barnier might be the French equivalent of Britain’s Liz Truss—the “lettuce Prime Minister.” Voters in England kicked Tories to the curb last summer, bringing in Keir Starmer, leader of the EU-loving Labour Party. It was more a “kick the bums out” moment than a selection of a technocrat, though they got one in the bargain.

There’s a definite bent by countries who elect leaders toward anti-incumbencies, which leads to new leaders believing they have some kind of revolutionary manifesto to be—well, authoritarian. In Latin America, only four incumbent governments have survived an election since 2018.

And in 2016, the U.S. elected a zero-experience, huckster, womanizing, reality star businessman to run the country. During COVID, our voters kicked him to the curb. And when that president attempted what Yoon Suk Yeol tried to do yesterday, using citizens instead of the army, our Congress failed to ban him from running again. And he ran again, and the voters once again chose Donald Trump over the incumbent (and the incumbent’s replacement).

The U.S. still leads the world—what we do, other nations imitate and follow. During Barack Obama’s administration, countries got in line to be part of the big, happy, trade blocs. The industrial planners had big elaborate parties where they planned out a green, happy future. The willing “science writer” press toed the line. Objectors of the common good were labeled agitators and purveyors of conspiracies and “fake news.” But the voters didn’t buy the package without a good salesman to continue selling it—Trump was selling something else, a freedom from the “it’s good for you” oppression.

And the world has gone the same way, but with its own twists and national, cultural tents. In South Korea, this means a bold attempt to return to authoritarian rule by military junta. That lasted less than 24 hours. But don’t count it out. Once the ripples of that action continue like earthquakes coming from a fault, there may be other attempts in the future, and those attempts may succeed. Or they may backfire in the worst possible way—leading to war.

With Trump in the White House, we don’t know how America will react to a war in the Korean peninsula. We may decide to sit it out, which will leave China in the catbird seat. Or we may decide to collaborate with China to achieve a new division, or some other political solution. Or we may go to war with China like we did in 1951 (without a Gen. Douglas McArthur to lead us). The not-knowing and instability injected into Korean (both South and North) politics is dangerous—we do know that.

And that’s not going to be the only realignment taking place as America shifts back to daily drama of a Trump presidency. The question is whether Democrats—both the big “D” in the U.S. and the small “d” around the world, will find a way toward peaceful solutions to big problems, or will they resort to authoritarian answers, whether those are run by technocrats claiming “for your own good” or autocrats seeking raw power.

South Koreans, like many others around the world, have that choice to make. And it’s a dangerous time to make it. More dangerous than I think most Americans know.

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