South Korean coup attempt provokes democratic uprising
On 7 December, around 200,000 South Koreans braved freezing Seoul weather to demand the resignation and impeachment of right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol after his failed coup attempt four days earlier.
Yoon declared martial law, for the first time in 44 years, at 10.23pm on 3 December in a surprise national television broadcast, which was met with widespread shock and outrage across South Korea. During the broadcast, the South Korean president, who is from the People Power Party (PPP), justified the enactment of martial law by accusing the National Assembly, which is dominated by the opposition Democratic Party (DPK), of paralysing his administration and causing “political strife” by blocking the proposed national budget and “sabotaging the core functions of the state”, while also “turning Korea into a ‘drug paradise’ and causing panic over public security”.
In the announcement, Yoon noted that since his government came to power in May 2002, opposition lawmakers in the DPK had brought 22 motions to impeach government officials, including the minister of the Interior and Safety, the minister for National Defence, the chair of the Korea Communications Commission and the president of the Board of Audit and Inspection.
Yoon also accused the National Assembly of being a “den of criminals” engaged in a “legislative dictatorship”, as well as being North Korean agents, going on to say that martial law was necessary “to protect the Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces, to immediately eradicate the unscrupulous pro-Pyongyang anti-state forces that pillage the freedom and happiness of our people and to protect free constitutional order”.
At 11pm, the full text of the martial law declaration was issued, repeating Yoon’s claim that “anti-state forces” were secretly operating in South Korea and that all political activities by the National Assembly, political parties and associations were now banned, along with all political rallies, protests, strikes and workplace slowdowns. The martial law decree also announced that all press and publications would now be under the control of the military, and that any workers currently engaged in workplace protests must “return to work within 48 hours or face punishment under the Martial Law Act”. The decree concluded by declaring that “violators of the decree may face arrest, detention, and warrantless search and seizure” and other punishment.
Shocked and angered by Yoon’s declaration, thousands of Korean citizens defied the threat of arrest and flooded the streets outside the National Assembly in protest. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) issued a statement condemning Yoon’s actions, saying, “the people will not forgive this,” as they remembered and had never forgiven the previous dictatorships that had “suppressed citizens and violated democracy”. Opposition lawmakers also raced to the National Assembly to vote to overturn the martial law declaration. Under South Korean law, martial law can be overturned by a two-thirds vote of the 300-strong National Assembly.
Many of the politicians, including DPK leader Lee Jae-Myung—whose party holds 175 seats in the South Korean parliament—had to scale the walls of the building to enter, while other politicians and staff already inside barricaded the main entrances to stop the military from taking control of the building.
Footage of Ahn Gwi-Ryeong, a former news anchor turned lawmaker, attempting to stop troops from storming the building also quickly went viral. Ahn, a deputy spokesperson for the DPK, was filmed grabbing the rifle of a soldier, saying: “Don’t you feel shame?” In an interview with Reuters on 6 December, Ahn downplayed her actions, saying that they were not “particularly special” and that “there were many people braver than me who stood up to the martial law troops”, including “people who even managed to stop armoured vehicles outside”, referring to the actions of ordinary citizens who had massed on the streets.
Failure of the Coup
Despite Yoon’s office contacting the national police to “stand by” approximately four hours before his declaration of martial law, it appears that only a small number of Yoon loyalists within the military and his political party were aware of the coup plot.
In testimony given on 6 December to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, the first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Hong Jang-Won, described how, minutes after the declaration of martial law, the president contacted both himself and the national director to demand they carry out a series of arrests of Yoon’s political opponents, which they refused to do. According to Hong, the Yoon had ordered him to “use this opportunity to round everyone up. Wipe everything clean”.
Hong went on to state that Yoon’s arrest list included the head of the KCTU, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court and left-wing journalists, as well as the head of Yoon’s own People Power Party, Han Dong-Hoon, who had been critical of the presidential imposition of martial law. Yoon also sought to target for arrest key members of the opposition party, including the DPK’s national leader Lee Jae-Myung, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-Shik, the DPK’s National Assembly floor leader Park Chan-Dae and DPK Supreme Council member Kim Min-Seok, who four months earlier had warned that Yoon was preparing a coup.
According to a Korea Times article published on 3 September, Kim Min-Seok raised concerns about a possible coup during the confirmation hearing for Yoon’s newly appointed defence minister, Kim Yong-Hyun. The DPK lawmaker noted that the government was “suddenly replacing the minister of national defense with [former] Presidential Security Service chief Kim Yong-Hyun, a Cha Ji-Cheol-style suppressor of the opposition”, referring to the long-term political ally and security chief of military dictator Park Chung-Hee, who was assassinated along with Park in 1979. He argued that this, along with Yoon’s sudden use of the phrase “anti-state forces”, signalled “a strategic operation to prepare for martial law by stoking fear of North Korea under considerations of a regional war”.
The DPK member has further noted that the newly appointed defence minister was also a member of the “Chungam faction,” which included Yoon contemporaries and loyalists who all attended Chungam High School with him. Other loyalists within Yoon’s faction included Park An-Su, the chief of the army, who would later enact the martial law decree following Yoon’s national broadcast, the Defence Counter-Intelligence Commander Yeo In-Hyung and Army Special Forces chief Kwak Jong-Geun and Special Forces Commander Lee Jin-woo.
According to a report on 5 December by Yonhap News Agency, it was Kim Yong-Hyun who recommended that Yoon implement martial law and was also responsible for ordering troops to “infiltrate the National Assembly and block lawmakers from entering the compound during martial law”. The former defence minister was subsequently arrested in the early hours of 7 December on charges of insurrection and abuse of power. On Sunday, 8 December, Yonhap reported that another of Yoon’s loyalists in the Chungam faction, Defence Counterintelligence Commander Yeo In-hung, in November had ordered the preparation of plans to implement martial law. Due to his role in the botched operation, Yeo has been suspended, while investigation into the plot continues.
While evidence continues to emerge about the planning of the coup, the narrowness of the plot resulted in a lack of communication and confusion between military, police and intelligence commands. This delayed not only the dispatch of the special forces and other military, providing a 40-minute window for both opposition lawmakers and ordinary citizens to mass at the National Assembly to try to stop martial law.
According to a report on 6 December in the conservative Chosun Daily, one of Yoon's closest allies, Interior Minister Lee Sang-Min, lamented the failure of the plot, saying, “Frankly speaking, if we had successfully shut down the National Assembly, the vote on the lifting of martial law would not have happened at all. We could have held back the legislators with ease if we had chosen to”.
Yoon’s lame duck presidency
Yoon has faced turmoil since becoming president in May 2022. A former prosecutor, Yoon only very narrowly defeated the DPK’s Lee Jae-Myung. During his presidential campaign, Yoon ran on an anti-labour and anti-union platform, threatening to cut the minimum wage, remove limits on working hours and enact policies that would allow corporations to operate free from “excessive” regulation.
Yoon also sought to capitalise on the growing anti-feminist sentiment among many young male Korean voters impacted by rampant economic inequality caused by decades of neoliberal capitalism but who have blamed the modest gains made by Korean women for their plight. Courting the 20-30-year-old male vote, Yoon called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, claiming that systemic “structural discrimination based on gender” did not exist in South Korea. This is despite the economic and social indicators for women in South Korea being some of the worst in the developed world.
After winning the presidency, the new president moved to crack down on South Korea’s union movement. Yoon’s anti-labour attacks, however, have sparked widespread opposition. On 24 November 2022, more than 25,000 truck drivers walked off the job for sixteen days to demand job security and for minimum pay rates to be extended to all truck drivers. Seoul subway workers joined the truck drivers on the streets, launching their first strike in six years after negotiations about worker redundancies had collapsed. Yoon’s response was aggressive, invoking a law not used for 18 years to issue a “back-to-work order” five days after the strike had begun. Under the order, workers who failed to comply faced jail terms of up to three years and/or fines of 30 million won (USD $22,400).
In January 2023, just weeks after the back-to-work decree was issued, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was surrounded by 1,000 riot police as 30 National Intelligence Service agents stormed the building, conducting a ten-hour raid. The NIS accused members of the KCTU and the KCTU-affiliated Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union of being North Korean spies and charged union members with violating South Korea’s anti-communist laws. The KCTU, which has a membership of more than 1 million workers, denounced the raids. In a statement issued by the confederation’s Central Executive Committee, KCTU President Yang Kyeung-Soo accused the president of trampling on democracy, say the union would not stop its criticism of the government and would continue to fight again Yoon’s anti-democratic and anti-labour regime.
Yoon’s popularity has continued to plummet, dropping from 53 percent at the start of his presidency to just 17 percent in August 2024. Already unable to pass much of his legislative agenda, Yoon officially became a lame duck president after the DPK won a landslide victory in the April 2024 general elections. While the DPK increased their seats by 19 to give them 175 and a super-majority with other oppositionists in the National Assembly, Yoon’s PPP lost six seats, reducing their parliamentary number to 108.
The DPK and opposition super-majority has meant that the National Assembly has been able to pass a range of opposition legislation, while actively stymieing Yoon’s legislative agenda, including his national budget. Yoon, however, has repeatedly used his presidential veto powers to stop opposition legislation moving forward.
Public anger has continued to grow over Yoon’s abuse of the presidential veto, including his vetoing of a legislative investigation into allegations that his wife had been involved in stock manipulation and had interfered in the nomination process in a June by-election and subsequent local elections. In response to Yoon’s abuse of the presidential veto, the DPK and the KCTU have organised a series of mass rallies with between 100,000 and 300,000 workers and other anti-government protesters taking the street each time, the fifth such rally being held just three days before Yoon’s declaration of martial law.
Candlelight Protests
The fallout from Yoon’s failed coup has been swift. The morning after the botched coup, the KCTU announced that they would “commence an indefinite general strike until the Yoon Suk Yeol regime steps down” and that their members would stage ongoing public protests. Trade union members and workers have been joined by tens of thousands of ordinary Koreans each day on the streets. The public’s anger has been further fuelled by 105 of the 108 People Power Party lawmakers in the National Assembly boycotting the impeachment vote on Saturday.
As word filtered out to the 200,000-strong candlelight protests outside the National Assembly on Saturday night that the vote to impeach Yoon had automatically terminated due to the failure to reach a quorum because of the PPP boycott, protesters demanded they “get back in the chamber” and vote. People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, one of the many groups that helped to organise the Saturday rally, called the boycott of the vote “an act of sympathizing with insurrection that tramples on the will of the people, the true owners of the country”, going on to say that the public would “not tolerate the existence of the People Power Party”.
While the DPK has scheduled a motion on 11 December for another impeachment vote in the National Assembly to be held on 14 December, newspaper Hankyoreh, reporting live from the Saturday protest, noted the widespread determination from protesters, who vowed they would “not give up” despite the failure of the first impeachment vote. One student told the newspaper “our candles will only grow brighter” because of the PPP’s lack of action. True to their word, tens of thousands of KCTU workers and other protesters returned to the streets again on 9 December to demand both Yoon’s arrest and impeachment. As both Yoon and his party continue to try to cling to power, hoping to wait out the crisis, pressure from the streets will only continue to intensify as people vow to continue their protests until he is arrested and impeached.
