Was South Korea’s Martial Law an Attempt to Warn the World?

2024-12-17, Sung H. Park

Bangmo (뱅모) YouTube Channel (Korean with English subtitles)

[Partial Transcript]

South Korea is known to be an advanced economy with a robust, resilient democracy. 

Then, on December 3rd at 10:30 in the late evening local time, President Yoon declared martial law totally out of the blue.

In just two and a half hours, at 1:00 early in the morning [4 December], the Congress [National Assembly] voted against martial law.

Immediately President Yoon pulled back about a total of 600 soldiers. They were deployed to two locations.

One is the Congress; the other the NEC (National Election Commission). No soldiers were deployed other than to these two institutions.

At 4:30 early in the morning, after a cabinet meeting required by law, President Yoon formally lifted martial law.

600 soldiers with rifles, but with empty magazines. No blood shed. No arrests.

Soldiers were deployed only to two places: the Congress and the National Election Commission. 

Soldiers did not try to stop the Congress from voting on martial law.

Some military IT experts made a search on the servers and network equipment of the NEC, which is suspected by some to have opened the backdoor to foreign intervention. Most of the servers and network equipment are made in China. For example, Huawei network security firewalls. It is not known what election-fraud evidence the IT experts secured. 

The two and a half hour military deployment and the six hour martial law process totally abided by the constitutional and legal process.

One thing is clear. This was NOT meant to be bloody military rule. It was meant to be a very short symbolic move.

Let me give you some evidence. The Congress is ruled by a heavily pro-China opposition party [the party calls itself the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) in English and Deobureo Minjoo Party in Korean; some translate it as the Minjoo Party of Korea or MPK.].  It was more than certain that the Congress would wield the constitutional power to nullify martial law. And President Yoon did not even try to block the meeting and voting.

The DPK is very much pro-China. The original version of the impeachment document made by the DPK states: “President Yoon uselessly antagonized North Korea, China and Russia, to the effect that the administration endangered the security and life of our people.” The DPK is an official partner of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Party School, whose head used to be Xi Jinping.

Then what is the message and who is the audience of the martial law, if it was a symbolic warning? Is this symbol worth political suicide to President Yoon? Is Yoon offering himself as a human indicator, human dye to expose the “unspeakables” heavily infiltrating every aspect and stratum of South Korean society?  Is Yoon offering himself as a human bait to lure the “unspeakables” to come out? What is his plan to cope with the humiliating stigmatization and purging? 

This is an open question. The answer is to be created by the South Korean people. Yoon may have had a plan based on a very complex matrix of contingencies and probabilities.   But in such a dynamic fluidity as this, nothing is fixed. We are seeing a most fascinating K-Drama, a political and societal one, in the real world.