Can someone ELI5 if this is a huge deal (like declaring martial law would be in the west), or if this is the equivalent of a "government shutdown" when similar budget impasses occur in the US?
They are very proud of the country they built over just a few generations(and really since about 1990); no way they take this sitting down.
They've had seven leaders since 1993 (before which they really did have a military junta in power). Three of them ended up impeached or jailed for corruption or wrongthink [0], a fourth has just attempted to use the military to crack down on the opposition. This is more like what I expect from Argentina or Brazil than a fully fledged democracy with peaceful transitions of power, say France.
That said, the Economist has it at #22 on its Democracy Index [1], one of the worst "full democracies" but ahead of France #23, USA #29, Brazil #51.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
[1] https://x.com/BigBreakingWire/status/1863964015376089313
Seems like a coup.
> Yoon’s conservative People Power Party had been locked in an impasse with the liberal opposition Democratic Party over next year’s budget bill.
Yeah, just like in France where the government is expected to fall within the next two days. Not a reason to attempt to force the way: the fact opposition can actually sometimes fulfil its purpose which include blocking a budget is a normal thing in democracy.
This is instead a rejection of the democratic process. I don't know enough about SK's internals to say if the democratic process is already dead because of corruption (as the leader claims), or if the leader is trying to kill the process using corruption as a scape goat - but everyone should strongly lean towards the later.
The longest a French Republic has lasted is 70 years. The fifth republic is today 66 years old. The ordinary can turn into the extraordinary in an afternoon.
No, De Gaulle created the V republic with a military coup [1]. There were troops all over France, including paratroopers in Fontainebleau at 60km from Paris [0], while the "président du conseil" of the 4th republic transmitted peacefully the power to De Gaulle, to mitigate a civil war.
Wikipedia:
"The May 1958 crisis (French: Crise de mai 1958), also known as the Algiers putsch or the coup of 13 May, was a political crisis in France during the turmoil of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962) which led to the collapse of the Fourth Republic and its replacement by the Fifth Republic led by Charles de Gaulle who returned to power after a twelve-year absence. It started as a political uprising in Algiers on 13 May 1958 and then became a military coup d'état led by a coalition headed by Algiers deputy and reserve airborne officer Pierre Lagaillarde, French Generals Raoul Salan, Edmond Jouhaud, Jean Gracieux, and Jacques Massu, and by Admiral Philippe Auboyneau, commander of the Mediterranean fleet. The coup was supported by former Algerian Governor General Jacques Soustelle and his activist allies.
The coup had as its aim to oppose the formation of Pierre Pflimlin's new government and to impose a change of policies in favor of the right-wing partisans of French Algeria."
When the military woke up again in 62 in Algiers, De Gaulle crushed them.
You got it reversed.
Massu, who had gained prominence and authority when he ruthlessly suppressed Algerian militants, famously declared that unless de Gaulle was returned to power, the French Army would openly revolt.
> When the military woke up again in 62 in Algiers, De Gaulle crushed them.
Because then, the coup was directed against him!
Rene Coty himself said he would resigned if the national assembly didn't pick him as a prime minister.
Then the national assembly vote him with a huge majority margin.
And finally, he wins the november election in a landslide.
So if a coup means that you get power by following all the rules and the decorum and win the election, then the term "coup" does not mean anything.
Additionally, during the 1958 coup itself he did basically give his support for it in the sense that he explicitly said he was "ready to assume the powers of the republic" if asked for (which is what the leaders of the coup demanded be done).
Legislative elections take place at the midpoint between presidential elections, and the opposition kept their majority in 2024, so there was hardly a mandate, if anything the legislative elections indicated a rebuke.
Yoon Suk Yeol is the one of the most unpopular democratic heads of state with 19% approval and 72% disapproval.
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It's worth noting that it seems like he didn't talk to anyone about this and even the head of his party in the National Assembly said they would vote to overturn it.
You don't become the leader of a developed, stable, democratic nation by pulling crazy stunts like that.
Is there any other factor to influence or any big group that would benefit from such extreme measures?
I do think he was acting by himself; he’s generally got weird political instincts. Part of how he got walloped in the legislative elections was by remarking that green onions were cheap normally because of his policies, when it turned out the supermarket he was electioneering at was running a 75% off sale on them. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/political-leeks-...
South Korea has had exactly one president in the modern democratic era who hasn’t been indicted after their term or impeached.
Broadly Parliament is split into 3 camps, the left, the centr, and the right, all pretty much even. Any two could work together as a coalition and agree to a leader, but that is proving harder.
There was a parliament election, with three blocks each gaining roughly a third of the seats.
The block that won the most seats (but not enough to have a majority) immediately declared they would never compromise/ally with anyone else. Essentially, if they were called on to form a government, they were almost certainly going to be immediately censured.
So Macron, rightly or wrongly depending on who you ask, decided to not call on them since he estimated it was bound to fail and waste time. Instead, he nominated someone from a (now) minor political force because, at least in theory, they were enough people willing to negotiate with them to form a majority. Looks like it didn't work in the end and now France will be stuck because no one is willing to compromise.
South Korea is a new democracy and sudden impositions of martial law harken back to the 1970s-80s when military rule existed.
Best case, this is a blatant attempt at a self coup d'etat.
Worst case, North Korea actually engaged in war.
That reason would be awful, and most likely the consequences too, but it's not readily obvious to me that the timing would be.
The North marching South would get little to no support from their allies and would be repelled rapidly before returning to the current status quo.
So yes, I am sure. Neither sides allies have any desire to be the agressor. Not to mention that simply starting a war to cling on to power might be the stupidest reason there is to start a war.
What if they didn't do that (at first), but instead (as an intermediate step) annexed the north as a colony with its own economy but South Korean governorship; and then opened said colony to worldwide foreign aid?
This would be very similar to the short-term arrangement negotiated between West Germany and East Germany after the fall of the Berlin wall. For analogous reasons, West Germany didn't want to immediately absorb/unify with East Germany; instead, they held political and military stewardship over East Germany until it could be built back up.
It's one of the richest country in the world, right next to one of the poorest. Unification in any sense at this point is suicide by the South. The misery inflicted upon the southern Koreans will be immeasurable if both countries are unified. The leaders of both Koreas know this.
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Or, alternately, given that literally everything in NK would need to be rebuilt at some point... rather than "swallowing the elephant whole", they could take incremental bites: annex a few miles of North Korea into themselves; revitalize/gentrify that part; repeat. Slowly, over 50 years.
(How? At the end of the war, they'd do a census, figuring out where every NK citizen lived as of the end of the war. Then, for each annexation, anyone already living in the annexed area as of the end of the war, would automatically become a South Korean citizen. Anyone who moved to the area after the end of the war would not, and would instead be required to vacate northward, with the SK government compensating them for the [very low value of the] home they're being displaced from, per eminent domain.)
Of course, any NK citizen would be free to apply at any time for a South Korean visa — just like a citizen of any other country can. They wouldn't be especially prioritized.
And an NK citizen would also be equally free to apply for a visa to move to literally anywhere else — possibly as a refugee. SK would probably encourage this and even assist with it.
Remember that much of the reason North Korea is the way it is currently, is due to active suppression of many types of economic activity that would otherwise be happening naturally. There's a lot of economic "potential energy" in NK waiting to be unleashed — e.g. many NK entrepreneurs currently doing grey-market activity while hiding from the regime, who'd love to become reputable businesses and market their services in the open; many NK workers who'd love to take jobs in the inevitable call centers SK would build there (NK would instantly become to SK as the Philippines is to the US — a country full of native speakers of your language, that you can put in front of phones); etc.
Also, probably one of the first things to happen, as soon as it was allowed to happen, would be that North Korean land-owners would sell their land to South Korean farming conglomerates (at ridiculously low prices); those farming conglomerates would then come in and apply modern agriculture practices, and be growing 100x more food within the year than the NK farmers were able to grow on the same land area.
Yes, by default those SK agro-businesses would be growing for export ("extraction economy"), because SK could pay far more than NK could for the produce. But the NK government could just tax that economic activity — it's not an SK business, after all, but an NK-incorporated subsidiary of an SK business, subject to NK laws. The NK government could then use the tax revenue to turn around and buy the food grown by those businesses, to distribute it in social welfare programs. (Or they could just levy taxes directly in the form of produce, ala historical agrarian-economy taxation systems.)
(Interestingly, there should also be at least some things you can grow cheaply in NK but not SK, due to the latitude difference. SK is parallel to Spain/Greece; while NK is parallel to France/Northern Italy. Agro-businesses love expanding into these alternative growing regions to expand their TAM.)
All these positive things would happen quickly and easily (i.e. within a 3-year period), just by converting North Korea into a capitalist-market-economy + social-welfare state and enabling free trade between NK and SK (and between NK and everywhere else, too.)
North Korea failing is a terrible prospect for South Korea.
By a curious geographical coincidence, neither North Korea nor North China nor North Post-USSR are known for their independent reality-based reporting and I take it as a given that North Korea would never start a war of aggression. If the North should ever march South (again) it will of course be as a completely righteous response against intolerable provocation and aggression from its eternal enemy, as confirmed by media duly approved by Moscow and Beijing.
They're looking more ready and eager to do that by the month, and with the present Global political situation, the respect for current status quo seems to be at a low.
If you perceive the respect (NK has) for current status quo is at a low then it is most likely that NK desperately needs food or fuel for the coming winter, for every other player in the world/region the desire for the status quo is at an all time high.
Obviously none of us know the details yet but there are clearly better possible outcomes than a full on coup.
Makes me think of the Gwangju Uprising in 80s, which happened after martial law was instated, after a military dictator was put in place. IIRC, the US was also involved with the newly installed military junta.