In the past 24 hours, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, only for his decision to be unanimously rejected by a parliamentary vote. Andrew Chang explains the turmoil that led to the president's declaration, and what it says about the state of South Korean politics.
Category
🗞
NoticiasTranscripción
00:00Late-night TV in South Korea very suddenly became very serious.
00:05I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces.
00:16South Korea's president declared martial law basically in the middle of the night,
00:20effectively accusing the opposition of trying to destroy the country from within.
00:25I have to stress that this is a shocking development. Nobody expected that.
00:32We understand that it would prohibit political activity.
00:37Protests are prohibited and the media is censored.
00:39It was a complete shock. I don't think any Koreans would accept that.
00:44The president says the opposition is undermining core functions of government,
00:49turning the country into a drug haven, putting public safety into a state of chaos.
00:54These are all his words, not mine.
00:56They will definitely eradicate the anti-state forces who are the main culprit of the country's ruination
01:01and conduct vicious activities.
01:04And then, almost as quickly as the declaration had been made,
01:07parliament, including members of the president's own party, pulled the rug out from under it, reversing the call.
01:14South Korean lawmakers were able to convene tonight and vote unanimously.
01:19Martial law and military rule declared by President Yun earlier in the day have now been lifted.
01:25A lot of people are scratching their heads and there's a big question mark.
01:28Why did the president, you know, make this announcement?
01:32The more I read into this story, I very quickly realized that this is just the latest in a series of bizarre events in South Korean politics.
01:40Because for years, the land of Samsung and semiconductors has been locked into an all-out political war
01:47with the president repeatedly facing impeachment, an opposition leader who was nearly killed by being stabbed in the neck,
01:54a parliament unable to agree on a path forward.
01:57And somehow, this also involves a very expensive Dior handbag and green onions.
02:03Lots of green onions.
02:06Let's dive in.
02:11When South Korea's president made an offhand remark about produce at a grocery store,
02:16he had no idea how such a small thing would spin out of control.
02:21President Yun Suk-hyen visited a food market and marveled at how reasonably priced the spring onions were.
02:29And they were. Something like 875 won or about 86 cents in today's Canadian dollars.
02:35But this was a heavily discounted price because of a government subsidy and green onions were normally three, four, five times that price.
02:44All food in South Korea has become increasingly expensive.
02:47And this quip from the president felt, to many voters, hopelessly out of touch.
02:52Opposition candidates started bringing spring onions to election rallies and accusing the president of being out of touch with reality.
03:01Powerful symbol, those green onions.
03:03And ahead of an election, voters had a clear outlet for their anger.
03:08He had the narrowest margin of victory in the history of the vote by less than one percent.
03:13And he actually enters office with the lowest approval rating of any new president here in South Korea.
03:19The 2022 election that saw Yun narrowly win the presidency was also a crushing defeat.
03:26His opponents won parliament and that all but neutralized any hope of achieving the agenda that he had laid out.
03:33Now, to be sure, of course, this wasn't just about green onions.
03:37But even in the most recent elections, this past April, the opposition increased their majority.
03:44Yun's party leader resigned.
03:46The prime minister offered to do the same.
03:48And South Korean politics would become so bitter that on the very day marking the reopening of parliament this past September, Yun just refused to show up.
04:00A president failing to attend the opening of parliament?
04:04That hadn't happened in 30 plus years.
04:06But Yun was frustrated.
04:09Calls for his impeachment had been building momentum.
04:12Here's a petition dated just a couple of months after the most recent elections.
04:17Two years since Yun took office.
04:19It's in Korean, but two things I'll point out.
04:21These characters here, tanhaek, that's Korean for impeachment.
04:25But importantly, look at how many people signed.
04:27More than 1.4 million people.
04:30The president is deeply unpopular and has been unwilling to compromise to deal with the opposition and to focus on cost of living issues that a majority of Koreans are worried about.
04:41He's been facing so many calls for impeachment, not only from the public, but from other politicians.
04:47And this was actually something that he had cited in his reasoning for declaring martial law.
04:53Yun saw this as the opposition weaponizing its majority.
04:58Weaponizing the system against him and eventually his wife, too.
05:03Now the bag scandal, as the incident is being called, is sending shockwaves through President Yun Suk-yol's administration.
05:10A scandal erupted when Yun's wife was captured with a hidden camera accepting a Dior handbag as a gift.
05:17This, under South Korean law, is illegal, because public officials and their spouses can't accept gifts worth more than $750 US.
05:26She was interrogated by prosecutors.
05:29The president apologized for her error, even called it reckless, but accused the opposition of blowing the whole thing out of proportion.
05:37First Lady Kim Gun-hee received a Dior handbag, which led to accusations of violating the anti-corruption law.
05:45President Yun was a prosecutor for 25 years. He's supposed to be really tough on corruption and on crime.
05:52But of course, he's also extremely wealthy.
05:55And his answer to those allegations was that she behaved badly.
06:01So he dismissed it. He didn't take it seriously.
06:03The opposition, by the way, has had problems of their own.
06:07And it was earlier this year, the opposition leader only barely survived an attempt on his life.
06:16This summer, a man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to kill opposition leader Lee Jae-myung.
06:25He was apparently pretending to ask for an autograph.
06:28But instead, and just a warning, you're going to see it happen here.
06:33He lunges at Lee with a knife, stabbing him in the neck.
06:37Lee needed surgery, was in hospital for eight days.
06:41He survived, but almost a full year later, he'd face a different sort of reckoning.
06:47A one-year prison term for making false statements before the 2022 elections.
06:52But he would claim, in effect, what the president has claimed, that the system was being weaponized against him.
07:00In a statement online, his party wrote,
07:02Today's first trial verdict is clearly a political verdict and that this was an attempt by the Yoon administration to eliminate its political enemies.
07:12The opposition leader plans to appeal.
07:14But this is how polarized politics have become in South Korea.
07:19It's all personal.
07:21South Korea historically, certainly for the last 40 plus years, has been seen as a strong liberal democracy in Asia.
07:29It's obviously a sign of the times that we're living in, in terms of disinformation, polarization and divisions within democracies.
07:36Starting out the year with an assassination attempt, I think really highlighted the discontent with politicians in general that we are seeing in South Korea.
07:47But even after all this, it seems the direct trigger for Yoon declaring martial law is something else altogether.
07:55An impasse in parliament over his party's budget.
07:59The opposition wanted to slash trillions of won, that's equal to billions of Canadian dollars, out of the budget.
08:05And because the opposition has a majority, they were looking to force their amendments through.
08:10The parliamentary speaker has urged both parties to come to an agreement by next week.
08:16But it doesn't seem like the president sees a path forward.
08:20President Yoon's speech declaring martial law also used some really inflammatory language,
08:25accusing the opposition of being essentially working in collaboration with North Korean communists and being enemies of the state.
08:34The opposition has made it clear that the president and the party are incompetent, that they are corrupt, that they're elite.
08:42And they have been calling for them to step down and to essentially call for fresh elections.
08:47As Yoon himself faces accusations of corruption and being unfit to lead,
08:52he sees the opposition and its majority as tyrannical, putting the country on a dangerous path.
08:59But his problem is his own party, too.
09:04The National Assembly demanded the lifting of martial law, so the troops deployed for martial law affairs were withdrawn.
09:11Martial law will be lifted immediately by accepting the National Assembly's request through a state council meeting.
09:18Over the course of a few hours, he declared martial law, sent South Koreans and the world into a confused frenzy and then backtracked on it.
09:28So not a good look for him.
09:30The president appears increasingly isolated.
09:33His last-ditch effort to grab hold of the reins of power rebuffed by his own party allies.
09:39His approval ratings have never been lower.
09:42And now it's not clear what, if any, agency or legitimacy the president has left.