The month of November saw the world creep ever closer to dangerous armed conflicts in Europe – with Russia using new hyper-velocity missiles and NATO nations preparing for possible war, and now South Korea – or the South Korean president – has declared martial law, rule by the military, in what was presumed to be one of the globe’s most stable, wealthy, and sophisticated democracies. South Korea also has over 20,000 U.S. troops stationed in bases on the border with its nuclear-armed neighbor to the north. For the last few decades, when people envisioned a new global war, near all assumed that it could easily begin in Korea.

From all reports, this is wholly unexpected with no indication that there was anything beyond a heated political climate, nothing requiring the use of troops. The New York Times writes as background:

President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared emergency martial law on Tuesday, accusing the opposition of plotting “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy.”

It was the first time a South Korean president had declared martial law since the military dictatorship ended in the country in the late 1980s. Mr. Yoon, who was elected president in 2022, has been in a near-constant political standoff with the opposition, which controls Parliament.

A “near constant political standoff” is not a situation in which the president decides that the military should rule the nation, not in a constitutional republic. Schools can close, government shut down, programs end… All are expected in a political stalemate. Absent some kind of threat of force, there is no justification for putting people under military rule. The situation is made worse in President Yoon’s statement, read carefully:

“I am declaring martial law to protect a free South Korea from the North Korean communist forces, eliminate shameless pro-North Korean and anti-state forces that prey upon the freedom and happiness of our people, and protect the free constitutional order. I will rebuild and protect South Korea from ruin and despair through martial law.”

I don’t know a thing about President Yoon, but I do know that democracies and republics build themselves. The statement reads very differently without the aggressive use of the word “eliminate” and “shameless” along with declaring it to be his job – personally – to rebuild and protect South Korea from ruin and despair. Try the above statement again but insert: “We will rebuild South Korea… ” It is the first person that gives it away, the hallmark of a dictator and, as history teaches, it takes a dictator to start a war.

We have to be extremely careful about drawing any comparisons between “Left” versus “Right” in South Korea versus here, indeed – I purposefully didn’t look at the dynamic until I had inserted all the above. (That is 100% true.)  But according to CBS News, Yoon is a “conservative” who is embroiled in controversy:

Yoon’s conservative People Power Party had been locked in an impasse with the liberal opposition Democratic Party over next year’s budget bill. He has also been dismissing calls for independent investigations into scandals involving his wife and top officials, drawing quick, strong rebukes from his political rivals.

From an American standpoint, it couldn’t matter less which side of the equation took the steps, only that its leader did so in a country with a massive American military footprint and literally a stone’s throw from Kim Jong-Un, and his North Korean nuclear missiles. Please also note that Vladimir Putin is using North Korean troops in Ukraine – it eventually all ties together. A net-wrapped world with inter-continental ballistic missiles eventually binds us all.

Now – as I am editing, we have a split in authority as the opposition leader declares himself to be president:

The parliament has voted to void the declaration of martial law:

And yet this is what happens when troops answer to the president and not the national assembly. Imagine U.S. Army troops smashing windows into the Capitol:

The only real takeaway is that the world used to look to the United States as the ultimate bedrock of classic Western liberalism – a constitutional republic, the “indispensable nation” as some once termed it and things couldn’t get too out of hand in situations like this because the United States would fix it if necessary. To the extent it was ever true, that role is slipping away as the world; NATO, Russia, China, and others now await Donald Trump and what some see as a retreat into isolationism. But there is nowhere to hide on this planet. U.S. troops are now, in theory, under martial law in a country that is only miles from missile silos armed with nuclear warheads from a nation already fighting alongside Putin.

We are at a real tipping point in history. The relative peace of the last 75 years seems almost luxurious to some, or at least taken as a given by many. It is not. History teaches that “this” is more normal. Doubts about stability. Worry about economies. Fear over losing one’s liberties. All of it, is far closer to the normal human condition. Let’s hope that calmer heads prevail in South Korea because that little corner of the globe is rich, powerful, and ready to explode. Outward.

God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak and now on Bluesky. 

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5 COMMENTS

  4. “…I purposefully didn’t look at the dynamic until I had inserted all the above. (That is 100% true.) But according to CBS News, Yoon is a “conservative” who is embroiled in controversy…”

    I, too, played along with you And I even closed my eyes and guessed who the CONservative side was.

    Oh, gee, imagine my surprise when I correctly guessed who the goons were…:)

    4

    • Conservatives aren’t conservatives any more.

      They are far right wing radicals intent on seizing power. That is the model in the USA, now copied throughout the world.

      Would this have happened in South Korea without the precedent set in the USA by Trump and his apparatchiks?

      No.

      5

  5. Trump’s rocket man has literally thousands of big guns aimed at South Korea along that border line along with the ammo to make many shots deep into S. Korea, this whole mess is going to make things more dangerous for our local Troops …

    Rocket man has even had his own family members killed in horrible ways because he is THAT terrible … Do you believe he is stable enough co-exist with Putin’s folly?

    One thing is painfully true, Trump has NO BUSINESS messing with International Relations …

    4

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