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Hello everyone.
I just read this article:
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-martial-law-997c22ac93f6a9bece68454597e577c1
that states that the South Korean president just declared martial law.
“I will eliminate anti-state forces as quickly as possible and normalize the country,” he said, while asking the people to believe in him and tolerate “some inconveniences.”
Now, despite being on this forum, i am not very well-versed in South Korean politics, but i know that a lot of people here are.
To my uninformed mind, this sounds a lot like a coup. Does someone here know more about what is going on, and can maybe give some better information?
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Russian Federation610 Posts
Opposition majority in parliament was preparing impeachment and, probably, criminal case against acting president. He responded with martial law, banning the activity of the parliament and censoring the media.
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On December 03 2024 23:48 Simberto wrote:Hello everyone. I just read this article: https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-martial-law-997c22ac93f6a9bece68454597e577c1that states that the South Korean president just declared martial law. Show nested quote +“I will eliminate anti-state forces as quickly as possible and normalize the country,” he said, while asking the people to believe in him and tolerate “some inconveniences.” Now, despite being on this forum, i am not very well-versed in South Korean politics, but i know that a lot of people here are. To my uninformed mind, this sounds a lot like a coup. Does someone here know more about what is going on, and can maybe give some better information?
Firstly, super weird of all the politics threads there isn't one for the ROK here.
Secondly from what I've gathered so far (like 10 mins of looking into it) is that he's protecting his and his wife's corruption by accusing his opposition (just libs/dems basically) of being communists.
Biden's nepotism and disregard for international law doesn't just lower the bar for US Democrats, it lowered it for "liberal democracy" around the world.
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It's staggering how fast you turn everything into "US bad"...
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On December 04 2024 00:41 Velr wrote:
It's staggering how fast you turn everything into "US bad"...
You don't understand, the South Korean prime minister decided on a whim to declare martial law because Biden pardoned his son 24 hours ago.
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Basically Netenyahooing the situation.
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On December 04 2024 00:39 GreenHorizons wrote:
Firstly, super weird of all the politics threads there isn't one for the ROK here.
Yeah, i was surprised, too.
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I'm going to be team nothing ever happens in this case. The parliamentary rules state they can just remove this order by a majority the opposition has. The police have surrounded parliment but aren't stopping lawmakers from entering so they haven't joined a countercoup it seems at this time.
This seems like an extremely dumb thing someone is doing to get attention that will Damm his party for a generation. The opposition is anti Ukraine so that's at least some effect on deveoplements for you when he gets carted out.
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A real authoritarian heyday we got lately
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+ Show Spoiler +Couple things:
1) SK parties are even worse than the US about constantly trying to impeach and throw each other in jail for not covering their nose when sneezing. While some of this is legitimate it's also anathema to functioning democracies to continue like this. The current case is people investigating and trying to impeach investigators.
2) Either he had a psychotic episode or did this out of bare self-interest or desperation. There is a structure for martial law and there are extensive military and government contingencies prepared due to the peninsular state of war, but in this case it seems he has declared martial law while not telling anyone, including the military. It's completely random and while complaints from both parties against each other are definitely warranted, the justification given is mostly rhetorical excuse.
Rather than Netanyahu the closest analogue I can imagine is Turkey 10 years ago, although the direction is wrong (the army trying to coup against a dictator in that case), the "scale" is similar, with so far less violence than that.
3) Seems he thought declaring martial law late at night was some kind of cheat code where you could make undoing martial law (a power held by parliament) illegal. But even his own party is not impressed.
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On December 04 2024 00:39 GreenHorizons wrote:
Biden's nepotism and disregard for international law doesn't just lower the bar for US Democrats, it lowered it for "liberal democracy" around the world.
You're better than this 
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Okay, interesting. So the question now is if the military and police agree with parliament or with the president? And it appears that they lawfully should side with parliament?
This looks like a pretty weird thing alltogether.
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Okay, first question - why is everyone in the world going nuts in the 20s, second - how it's even possible that South Korean politicians are that dumb to plunge the country in possible civil war in the peak of North Korea going nuts.
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On December 04 2024 01:29 Simberto wrote:Okay, interesting. So the question now is if the military and police agree with parliament or with the president? And it appears that they lawfully should side with parliament? This looks like a pretty weird thing alltogether.
Should mention there are 300 members so 190 was unanimous of those in attendance (and a sufficient majority regardless afaict) but didn't include all of parliament.
Yeah, it would seem they should side with parliament. I'd have no confidence in Democrats+ Show Spoiler + (to even muster into congress for such a vote tbh)
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On December 04 2024 01:36 hitthat wrote:
Okay, first question - why is everyone in the world going nuts in the 20s
In representative democracies politics have a direction, the world either goes to the left or to the right. When the world goes more towards the left things make more and more sense, when the world goes more towards the right things make less and less sense.
Currently the world goes more toward the right because liberals have a stranglehold on the electoral system of most of those democracies and because of climate change.
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It's staggering how fast you turn everything into "right bad"...
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Would you like me to do some introspection
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The president was basically on borrowed time, he's already used veto powers more than all previous SK presidents combined for all sorts of stupid reasons including proposals to investigate corruption of his inner circle etc. He also went on a pretty ridiculous rant about liberals and communist NK sympathizers trying to destroy our country in the TV address he made when declaring martial law -- maybe a desperate last ditch attempt to rally what little conservative support he had or something? -- anyway, military made a token effort in keeping the national congress building closed but this was realistically never going to amount to much. He'll probably be in jail before Christmas, which will make a nice New Years present for everyone because he's an incompetent corrupt asshole.
As for the comment about America making everything worse... honestly, I think there's at least some truth to that. I don't think it's a coincide that our politics are steadily degenerating into stupid us vs them between the two major parties at a time when the US dems vs reps tensions are the highest they've ever been; a lot of Koreans look up to Americans and imitate them, knowingly or otherwise. A lot of current popular issues are basically echoes of bullshit that's happening in the US, too, stuff that was never a real problem in Korea until recently.
For me, the economic situation in the country is a bigger concern than the clown that's currently in charge, at any rate. Our currency is dropping precariously at a time when overall economy is shaky as it is; inflation was and still is an issue but at the same time real estate is in a huge bubble with half the country leveraged up to their eyeballs, not only residential but also super expensive fancy conglomerate towers are at risk; one of the biggest corporations recently put up their pride and joy HQ building as collateral for their loans which is a huge alarm bell in its own right, banks are basically rejecting loans for all but the 'safest' of property purchases, meanwhile Samsung and LG profits are shit but they're like half our economy so the budget deficits just keep growing. It's not pretty, and nobody has any real solutions in mind.
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EPT
