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A focus now on this week's political turmoil in South Korea.
To do that, we're joined by George Washington University Celeste Arrington.
She serves as director of the school's Institute for Korean Studies.
And Professor Arrington explained what we saw on Tuesday in South Korea leading up to that surprise and short-lived declaration of martial law.
Good morning, John.
Thank you very much for having me today.
So because of the time difference, we got to watch what unfolded in Korea in the middle of the night during the day here in Washington.
Basically, the president of South Korea, Yoon Song-yeo, called a surprise emergency press conference without notifying many of his members of cabinet or even his own ruling conservative party, the People's Power Party.
And at that press conference, he declared martial law.
This is the first time since 1980 that a South Korean leader has declared martial law, and certainly the first time since South Korea became a democracy in 1987.
Within just two and a half hours of that declaration of martial law, the 190 members of the National Assembly, which is the unicameral legislative body in South Korea, voted unanimously to ask the president to withdraw the declaration of martial law.
So this was basically from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., the drama that we watched unfold live with lots of media coverage.
The military in South Korea surrounded the National Assembly, and officially martial law prohibited political activity by lawmakers, but these 190 out of 300 lawmakers that made it to vote in the National Assembly got through the cordons of police and military to get into the building to vote.
The Speaker of the National Assembly even had to climb over a wall to get into the building and they resoundingly denounced this declaration of military law with a unanimous vote, including 18 members of the president's own conservative party voting against the motion.
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-yeal 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 are 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 rollercoaster 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, 202-748-8002.
We'll also look for your texts and your tweets.
Here's one of them for you, Professor Arrington.
This is J.D. Reding 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?
Yeah, the last time we had a martial law declaration in South Korea was in 1980, and this was to suppress a pro-democracy uprising in the southern city of Kwangju, and that led to the violent deaths and injury of hundreds of South Korean civilians.
And that memory lives on very strongly in the minds of South Korean citizens as a moment in 1979, 1980 when South Korea could have become a democracy.
It was ruled by military dictators.
But the military and dictators suppressed democracy with martial law.
That was the key tool, plus the violence that ensued thereafter.
And so to hear that martial law is declared again immediately calls back up the moment of Kwangzhu, this violent episode of failure to bring about democracy.
And that through the 1980s, that spirit of Kwangju lived on and sustained pro-democracy activism, which gradually spread to more and more sectors of society to the point where in 1987 the regime capitulated and agreed to allow direct democratic elections.
And so it is central, it's core to the pro-democracy legacy, the movement's legacy in South Korea, that they fought, suffered martial law back in 1980.
And so for the first time since then, to have martial law declared is really a shock.
And we're starting to see polling coming out, but 74% of South Koreans, according to a RealMeter poll, opposed the use of martial law.
So there's pretty...
Koreans don't agree on a lot of things.
They are politically polarized, as your previous commenter mentioned.
But they seem to have quite a bit of unanimity against the use of martial law.
George is in Westminster, Maryland, Independent, waiting for Dr. Arrington.
Go ahead, George.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
My question, just to get a little bit more clarity on the topic.
Is the current government in Korea, does it lean more conservative or liberal, would you say?
the current government is conservative george and does that i was just going to follow on Do you see that as something typical for a conservative government when compared to other governments across the world?
So Korean conservatism means a harsh line towards North Korea, pro-business policy, upholding the U.S.-Korea alliance, and maintaining a strong anti-communist stance.
And so for conservatives who ruled from 2008 to 2017 when the previous conservative president was impeached, Maintain those policies in general.
On the liberal side, what characterizes South Korean liberals is the legacy of pro-democracy activism lives on in the liberal side primarily.
And they want to establish a more equal partnership with the United States in the alliance.
And they tend to favor engaging North Korea more.
And they have a little bit more attention to social minorities and rights issues.
But the current government, the current president is conservative, but the National Assembly is controlled by the Liberal Party, the Democratic Party of Korea.
And in April 2024 elections, they overwhelmingly won the majority in the National Assembly.
So for the entirety of this conservative president's term, he's had the opposition party in control of the National Assembly, which is part of why this frustration about being unable to get his policies done has built over the last two years.
If a goal of Korean liberalism is a more equal partnership with the United States, what do they envision that looks like?
Yeah, it takes a variety of different forms and depends a little bit on North Korean behavior and actions.
So in 2018, as I mentioned, the then president Moon Jae-in, who was a liberal, he proposed a lot of dialogue with North Korea.
They reached agreements.
He even visited Pyongyang in North Korea to give a speech in front of 200,000 North Korean citizens.
He advocated for more consultation, more equal partnership in the alliance management.
But both the conservatives and the liberals still value the U.S. alliance and the presence of 28,500 troops on the peninsula, in part because North Korea maintains this belligerent stance and is still at war technically with South Korea.
So this is a little bit of a tricky balance to hold while engaging North Korea, also maintaining the U.S.-Korea alliance.
Headline from the Wall Street Journal: South Korean president faces removal vote in parliament.
Walk us through what could happen here, the process, how long it would take, and how long it would be if he is removed for a new leader to emerge in South Korea.
Yeah, there are a variety of different scenarios.
The easiest one is that he decides to resign, but he's said he won't, and he continues to defend the martial law declaration.
The next is, as we'll see on Friday or Saturday, the vote in the National Assembly, which requires 200 votes to pass to impeach him, then his powers would be suspended if that vote succeeds.
But that vote requires eight of the ruling party, his own party, the conservatives, to vote against him for impeachment.
The faction, there are factions within the ruling party, but it's not clear yet how much discipline the party will exert over its members.
So we'll have to stay tuned for that.
If he is impeached, the prime minister becomes the acting president and the powers of the president are suspended.
And then the constitutional court has 180 days in which to rule to uphold the National Assembly's impeachment motion.
In 2017, the Constitutional Court did rule to uphold the impeachment of then President Pak Gun-hye.
But in 2004, the Constitutional Court overturned the National Assembly's impeachment motion against then-President No Moo Hyun.
So how the Constitutional Court rules is still unclear.
There are also, they're missing one justice, it seems like, or one judge enough to rule to uphold the impeachment motion.
If he is impeached by the National Assembly and then the Constitutional Court upholds that decision, South Korea is required to have an election for the president within 60 days.
Who are the people you're watching?
If there is an election, another election in South Korea, who are the names we should know about?
I think part of the challenge for the Conservative Party now and the factions within it trying to decide whether to vote for impeachment or not is that the likely Liberal Party candidate for president is currently undergoing four different trials and he's a very polarizing figure.
He's been convicted in one of those trials for abusing the election law and a variety of other corruption scandals.
So he's not a paragon of virtue and Democratic ideals, I guess.
So for the conservatives, they would see that he would be a likely candidate.
But within the Democratic Party, if that leader of the Democratic Party of Korea decides to step down, there are a variety of other figures who are trying to jockey to become the next candidate.
And they've already been doing so for the next 2027 election because South Korea has a one five-year term presidency currently.
There is a possible other scenario that is probably unlikely where there'd be constitutional revision to switch from a one five-year term to a two four-year term for the president, in which case, if Yoon survives the impeachment motion and the opposition party doesn't decide to keep impeaching him until it works, then his term would not last until 2027, but it would be over in 2026.
And just so we're clear on the terms, the Democratic Party of Korea that you're talking about is what we've been describing as the conservative party, correct?
No, the Democratic Party Korea is the liberal opposition party, and the People's Power Party is the Conservative Party.
And we're likely to see some reconfiguration of those parties as we head towards a potential election.
There have been more than 40 different parties in Korea over the time.
They frequently reform and rename, in part to distance themselves from disgraced leaders like it appears President Yoon is currently because of his rash decision to declare martial law.
Celestia Arrington, thanks for helping to sort it out for us.
Stay tuned down the road.
Professor Arrington of George Washington University, thanks for the time.
Thank you very much.
We'll take you live now.
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