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Comment by ANewFormation | Hacker News Reader

I doubt this has anything to do with anybody outside of South Korea, but this is precisely the sort of man adversarial states would want.

Think about what's going to happen next! You have an extremely unpopular leader trying to sieze power by force, presumably soon banning opposition parties and more.

It's going to create extreme discontent at the minimum, and civil war at a maximum. And once he's eventually overthrown, his allies and interests often become anathema to the next regime, and the people.

This is is like an enemy successfully carrying out a color revolution on fast forward.

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> You have an extremely unpopular leader trying to sieze power by force, presumably soon banning opposition parties and more

By this logic America won when Assad won the Syrian civil war. In geopolitics, power trumps popularity.

Very ironic given the ruling party in SK is called "People Power".

more or less ironic than the official name of their northern neighbor, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea?

What about ism?

Assad had majority approval prior to the war [1] (can't find any more recent adversarial polls, which may be telling) and his family has been in power for decades. The comparison is inappropriate.

It's more akin to saying that states adversarial to the US won after the CIA overthrew a popular secular democracy in Iran, and installed a extremely unpopular puppet monarchy that was obseqious to the US.

In general maintaining power without relatively widespread support is quite difficult - probably even more so in the digital era which makes conspiracies so much easier to organise.

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/syrian...

> Assad had majority approval prior to the war (can't find any more recent adversarial polls, which may be telling) and his family has been in power for decades

"Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war" is not 55% approval rating, it's 55% making the pragmatic choice against civil war.

> maintaining power without relatively widespread support is quite difficult

Strange claim in a thread about the Korean peninsula.

So protestors, and other politicians, rejected his claim of martial law - it's now over, and he will likely be arrested.

Seems there yet remains more to power than titles and declarations.

> he will likely be arrested

He hasn't done anything illegal. Being asked to resign or forced to by impeachment are more likely.

You should check out South Korea's history. Presidents ending up in prison or killed is a national tradition.

If there were a prediction market for this within 3 years, I'd expect the line to be around 70%. He just did a weird spin on the 'if you go after the king, don't miss' and missed.

difficult seems like the right word. it's definitely not a walk in the park to run a brutal dictatorship like North Korea.

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