And then we waited for the president to respond, which he did in Korea time at about 4 a.m.
And he, without any fight, withdrew the martial law.
So essentially, Korea was under martial law for about six hours on Tuesday night.
Was this a play for political power?
Was it a political stunt?
How do you interpret what happened?
To be honest, a lot of observers are kind of scratching their heads and trying to understand what the political objective was here because some observers have called it the nuclear option or this was political suicide for him.
It's hard to see exactly what political benefits he saw out of doing this.
Over the entirety of his term since May 2022, President Yoon Song-nyal has faced a National Assembly that's controlled by the opposition party, and they are increasingly at loggerheads with each other and building over the last few months our not just legislative presidential deadlock, but really mutual mudslinging and attacks.
And for example, the opposition party in the National Assembly has tried to impeach dozens of government officials in the Yoon administration.
They haven't tried yet until yesterday to impeach the president himself.
They've also tabled many special investigations of the First Lady and other members of the Yoon administration.
They have passed a variety of different laws that the president then vetoes and he's used the presidential veto with unprecedented frequency.
So really we have this kind of mutual attack and an unwillingness to compromise.
So there's legislative deadlock.
Increasingly the president seemed isolated and frustrated.
And it may have been that this week there were a couple of triggers that led him to take such extreme steps as declaring martial law.
But I think few people watching his increasing frustration would have expected such an extreme move as martial law.
And of course so important here because South Korea is such a key U.S. ally, tens of thousands of U.S. service members stationed in South Korea along the border with North Korea.
Reaction around the world, including Anthony Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State, he was speaking with a Filipino media company, ABS-CBN, about the martial law declaration.
This is about a minute and a half.
We were not aware.
We're obviously watching this very carefully.
Very good to see that the martial law edict was withdrawn by President Yoon after the parliament voted against it.
And for us, this is one of the most critical alliances that we have anywhere in the world.
South Korean democracy is one of the most powerful stories anywhere in the world.
It's very important that any disputes, differences, political differences be resolved peacefully and pursuant to the rule of law.
That's what we're seeing now.
That's what's so important to sustain.
You're saying you welcome the rescinding of the martial law.
Does that mean that you don't think there was justification for it?
Look, I'm not going to get into the decisions that were made, political decisions that were made in South Korea.
All I can say is as Korea's staunch ally, as a country that also believes that Korea has such an important story to tell to the world because of the extraordinary emergence, not only of a democracy, but a strong, resilient democracy, we want to see that sustained because it's in our interest and it's a partnership that's critical to us, but also because of what it says to the world.
So I think it's very important how our allies resolve any internal differences.
As I said, we're watching it closely, but it's good to see that the martial law declaration was rescinded and that the political process is moving pursuant to the rule of law.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken there in that interview.
Professor Arrington, what do you think what happened this week in South Korea?
What does it do to the U.S.-South Korea alliance?
Yeah, I think the election of former President Donald Trump has led to a lot of uncertainty among Korean officials about what's going to happen for the alliance starting in January when he takes office.
And this just throws that much more uncertainty into alliance management.
Under the first Trump administration, we sort of rocketed or roller coaster from a year of fire and fury and coming close to war with North Korea in 2017 to then in 2018, lots of summit meetings between the leaders of the United States and South Korea and the leader of North Korea.
And so that level of uncertainty and volatility in the alliance, many officials in South Korea were already worried about with the new Trump administration coming in.
But now the political domestic South Korean political instability adds a whole new level of uncertainty.
The cabinet of President Yoon Song-myl offered to resign en masse yesterday.
And so we have leadership turnover in the foreign policy and military administration in South Korea, as well as the uncertain future of the president himself.
If you have questions about South Korea, what happened this week, now would be a good time to call in Professor Arrington with us for about the next 10 or 15 minutes.
Phone line split, as usual, 202748-8000 for Democrats, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, 202748, 8002.
We'll also look for your texts and your tweets.
Here's one of them for you, Professor Arrington.
This is JD Redding asking, how does this incident of declaring martial law reflect on the health of South Korea's democratic institutions and what implications might it have for political polarization going forward?
Yeah, I think this is an extreme symptom of political polarization in South Korea.
And it's a deeply historically rooted polarization that tends to be sort of a manichean division of us versus them.
Rather than tolerating the opposition and trying to work together towards a compromise, which is essential in a democracy, it's really about destroying the other side.
And I think both the Conservative Party and the opposition party, which controls the National Assembly, bear some blame here in terms of escalating the level of vitriol and rhetoric and accusation against each other to a point where basic governance has grown really difficult in South Korea.
And that may be expressed in the frustration of Yoon Sun-myl declaring martial law, but declaring martial law is not a normal democratic procedure.
Under the Constitution, there are very specific conditions under which the president is allowed to declare martial law, and those conditions did not obtain this week in South Korea.
So this is kind of stepping beyond the bounds of normal democratic procedure because the normal democratic institutions are not working.
What I worry about for political polarization is that we are now seeing the second impeachment of a president within the last eight years in South Korea.
And just because you don't agree with the other side doesn't mean you should immediately leap to impeachment.
Like there needs to be a more civil discourse in the public sphere in South Korea and a willingness to not tar the other side as the president did as pro-North Korean anti-statist forces, and that's a quote, or as the opposition party is saying, that Yoon Sun-myl is an authoritarian dictator who abuses his power and illegally declares martial law.
This doesn't leave much room for compromise in the middle.
You talk about normal democratic procedure.
Can you speak to the history of martial law declarations in South Korea and democracy movements in response?