Martial Law: US backed Yoon pledges to “eliminate anti-state elements”, Koreans rise up in resistance
Dec 4, 2024
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared Martial Law for the first time in 45 years, suspended the South Korean legislature, and banned elected representatives from accessing the National Assembly building with massive police mobilisation.
However, South Korean legislators forced their way past blockading police and special warfare forces, while hundreds of citizens shouted “Arrest the Dictator [Yoon]” and overwhelmingly voted to lift Martial Law (I90-300). This sets up a confrontation between the legislature and the president.
President Yoon declared in a public address yesterday evening to the Korean people that the move was to protect a “liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements”. He stated “I will restore the country to normalcy by getting rid of anti-state forces as soon as possible.”
This action and rhetoric evokes the days of South Korea’s military dictatorships; the language and justification is exactly the same.
Recently and repeatedly, there had been signals that Yoon could declare Martial Law. This was because the public momentum to impeach him in South Korea was gaining ground. Yoon is despised by South Koreans for his abuse of power, his wife’s corruption, and his vitiation of South Korea’s sovereignty and economic wellbeing to serve US geopolitical strategy.
Particularly triggering and enraging for South Koreans has been his enmeshing of South Korea’s military with that of its former coloniser, Japan, through a formal military alliance–JAKUS–designed to wage war against China. This has also entailed radical historical revisionism and erasure to facilitate this extraordinary coalition. Last week 100,000 citizens protested in the streets demanding his immediate resignation–something that received absolutely zero coverage in the Western media. There is still little mention of this as a factor in current mainstream western coverage of the declaration of Martial Law.
Yoon does not want to lose power, but more importantly the US cannot allow Yoon to lose power: Yoon is essential in shoring up the alliances. agreements, and the force platform in North-east Asia that will wage war against China. If Yoon goes, the forcefield breaks. This is because South Korea is the proxy with the largest military force in the area (500,000 active troops plus 3.1 million reservists). This massive military manpower falls immediately under US operational control, the moment the US decides it wants to wage war. If Yoon falls, this military force becomes harder to appropriate for the US.
Yoon, who was elected with the narrowest electoral victory in Korean history (0.7%), is a US client politician, supported precisely for making promises of implementing a South Korean “Indo-Pacific strategy”, a mirrored clone of the US Indo-pacific strategy, the belligerent, escalatory military-hybrid strategy to encircle and take down China.
When Yoon was elected, the champagne corks blew up in Washington. If Yoon chooses to perpetuate rule through Martial Law, the US will close their eyes to it, as they did for decades under Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan. The stakes are very high.
However, unlike his Conservative Party predecessors, Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan, Roh Tae Woo, Yoon is not a former general. In fact, he is a draft dodger, something that usually destroys political careers immediately. The fact that Yoon was able to rise to the highest office signals that extraordinarily powerful forces (the US National security state) were instrumental in his ascension to power. Certainly, they gave him prime time coverage, including access to the most influential media platform in the world: a cover article in Foreign Affairs magazine where he professed his allegiance to the US doctrine of the faith. This however, complicates matters, as the declaration of martial law requires an undivided military.
Dangerous and dark times lie ahead, especially if Koreans rise up in resistance (as they always have) and President Yoon is able to respond with massive military and police repression. What remains now is to see how the military responds. According to the national assembly, Martial Law has been rescinded and all troops must go back to their bases. More than anything, this shows how precarious South Korea’s so-called democracy is.
KJ Noh
K.J. Noh is a political analyst, educator and journalist focusing on the geopolitics and political economy of the Asia-Pacific. He has written for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Asia Times, Counterpunch, LA Progressive, MR Online, and People's Daily. He also does frequent commentary and analysis on various news programs, including The Critical Hour, The Backstory, By Any Means Necessary and Breakthrough News. He recently co-authored a study on the military transmission of infectious diseases and its implications for Covid transmission.
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