South Koreans Prove Democracy Can Survive in the Face of Authoritarianism

On the cold winter night of December 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol appeared on national television to declare martial law due to “threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements.” It was the first time that martial law had been declared in the country since 1980, when Gen. Chun Doo-hwan deployed the South Korean military to massacre hundreds of pro-democracy activists in Gwangju — an attack that led to the downfall of dictatorship and birthed South Korean democracy.

Reminiscent of a bygone era of military dictatorships, in the middle of the night, thousands of South Koreans poured into the streets after Yoon’s declaration and reasserted their democratic power. South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said that Yoon “betrayed the people” and urged lawmakers to gather at the National Assembly, which quickly became ground zero for defending democracy.

Nearly 300 armed special warfare troops stormed the National Assembly to block and arrest lawmakers from entering the building, smashing windows and firing tear gas on citizens and legislative aides who used their bodies, furniture and whatever they could use to push back the military as lawmakers voted on a resolution to rescind Yoon’s order.

Within two hours, 190 legislators in the 300-member South Korean National Assembly (including members of Yoon’s own People’s Party) cast a swift, unanimous vote to revoke martial law. Even the leader of Yoon’s party and his close ally, Han Dong-hun, criticized Yoon’s action as “wrong” and pledged to “stop it along with the people.” By dawn, during a meeting with his cabinet, President Yoon called off martial law.

“Although the crisis was quelled within six hours, the damage inflicted on South Korea’s democratic institutions is profound,” Youngmi Cho, executive director of the Korean Women’s Movement for Peace, texted me on Signal.

Today, South Korea’s Democratic Party initiated an impeachment bill for President Yoon. Under the South Korean constitution, the National Assembly can impeach the president with two-thirds of the vote. Although many members of the People’s Party voted to rescind martial law, with 108 seats, opposition parties will need to secure at least eight votes from Yoon’s party to impeach the president. If the impeachment motion passes, Yoon’s power is suspended and the Constitutional Court will deliberate for 90 days on whether the president is guilty of the crimes and warrants removal from office. If Yoon is convicted, he will be removed from office and South Korea will hold a snap election in 60 days.

Yoon’s top aides, including his chief of staff, have resigned, and the morning after Yoon called off martial law, thousands of protesters gathered at the National Assembly to call for his impeachment. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, which has more than a million members, demanded that President Yoon resign and called for a national strike.

The Lead-Up to Martial Law

Yoon exploited South Korean fears of growing tensions with North Korea by taking a page from the McCarthyist playbook that uses anti-communist fear tactics to justify violating the constitution. He has used these repressive tactics before his December 3 declaration. He has red-baited opposition politicians as “pro-Pyongyang ‘Juche faction’” and has called former President Moon’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea as “false peace.” I know this well because last month, I was banned from entering South Korea where I was to deliver the keynote speech at an international youth peace summit in Gyeonggi Province, with no explanation or due process.

Yoon, a former prosecutor who rose to prominence by investigating former presidents, narrowly edging out other candidates by less than 1 percent of the vote. But the South Korean people, whose candlelight revolution in 2016-2017 led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye after a wide-ranging corruption scandal, showed their fierce commitment to defend their hard-won democracy and hold leaders accountable.

“What this has shown me is that South Korea’s democracy is resilient,” veteran journalist Kap Seol told me. “I choked up thinking about the possibility of people dying as a result of this coup.” Seol, who was beaten many times during South Korea’s dictatorship for exercising his democratic rights, still lives with pain after South Korean military police beat him with a baton and nearly cracked open his skull. “The physical and emotional scars are still fresh,” he explained referring to the mass beatings, detentions and torture millions of South Koreans suffered during decades of dictatorship.

Yoon exploited South Korean fears of growing tensions with North Korea by taking a page from the McCarthyist playbook that uses anti-communist fear tactics to justify violating the constitution.

Since May 2022, Yoon has been embroiled in endless scandals, including political corruption and alleged election interference. Under Yoon’s reign, South Korea has also undergone serious democratic backsliding as his administration has targeted critics, journalists, labor unions, and peace and reunification activists.

But what has sparked the public’s outrage, so much that over 100,000 South Koreans took to the streets to demand his impeachment in recent weeks before the martial law declaration is their frustration with Yoon’s incompetence. His approval rating hit an unprecedented 17 percent low last month.

The day before Yoon declared martial law, the opposition party, which controls the purse with its majority, submitted next year’s budget, which significantly cut the president’s special budget — an allotment which Yoon has used to prosecute his enemies. Inequality has deepened in South Korea under Yoon’s administration, which gave tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting social welfare spending for the poor and working class. The Yoon administration also slashed South Korea’s research and development budget, alarming scientists and academics who fear this may weaken the nation’s innovation and global competitiveness.

After 159 people were killed in a Halloween crowd crush in the Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul in 2022, Yoon not only failed to address the absence of public safety protocols and emergency response systems that contributed to the death toll, he also blocked a special investigation into the catastrophe.

Yoon gutted the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, controversially blaming feminism for South Korea’s low birth rates instead of the systemic patriarchy where women earn 31.5 percent less than their male counterparts.

Yoon has been a darling of the West as Washington views him as a willing partner in intensifying military cooperation against China, North Korea and Russia. After their first trilateral summit in Camp David in August 2023, the Pentagon issued a statement that the U.S., South Korea and Japan “agreed to elevate defense collaboration” by “launching annual multidomain military exercises.” For Koreans on the peninsula and throughout the diaspora who still remember the brutality that Koreans suffered under 35 years of Japanese colonial occupation, it was shocking to see Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani boarding a South Korean warship in November. Although a majority of South Koreans opposed Yoon’s 2023 deal with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan to force South Korean companies to compensate the families of forced laborers from World War II, Yoon accepted forced reconciliation with Japan to advance the U.S.’s geopolitical goals to contain China.

Even doctors and medical students have been protesting Yoon’s policies, which have exacerbated an already overburdened health care system hit hard by budget cuts and medical staff shortages. In February 2024, Yoon instituted a quota for medical degrees by increasing the enrollment of medical students over the next five years from 3,000 to 5,000, which led more than 90 percent of junior medical doctors to resign in protest. This has caused massive staffing shortages at hospitals, with 13.5 percent higher rates of death in emergency rooms than in the previous year. It’s been nearly a year, and they still have not returned. In his martial law declaration, Yoon ordered doctors and students to return to work, saying that if they failed to do so they would be punished. The threat demonstrated the president’s intention to resolve social problems by use of force or through military means, rather than through democratic processes.

Lessons From a Growing Resistance

Youkyung Ko, a longtime democracy and peace activist, described how South Korean netizens started to chat on SMS and decided that they would go to the National Assembly to protect the lawmakers as they voted to rescind martial law. “Everyone decided to sacrifice their own personal safety against the military’s violence,” and that they would “fight for democracy at any cost,” Youkyung told me. In her conversations with young people in their 20s, they told her that they had learned about martial law through the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Han Kang’s novel about the democratic uprising in Gwangju, when ordinary citizens resisted the dictatorship and fought for democracy and freedom.

As South Koreans across the political spectrum now demand that Yoon resign to safeguard their hard-won democracy, the rest of the world must learn from their example as authoritarian leaders become emboldened by Donald Trump’s election. Yoon is unfit to govern one of Asia’s biggest democracies, and before he further exploits military tensions and puts the Korean Peninsula at further risk of war, President Joe Biden and world leaders must support the South Korean people and their elected officials calling for Yoon’s resignation.

The international community, and especially people in the United States, have much to learn from the South Korean pro-democracy movements on how to fight back against authoritarian strongmen. Imagine if Americans and members of Congress responded as swiftly and boldly as South Koreans did back on January 6, 2021. We would be facing a very different future.