After the South Korean coup attempt

From stopping martial law to the articles of impeachment

On December 3, 2024, at 10:30 p.m., President Yoon Seok-yeol suddenly declared emergency martial law. It had been 45 years since martial law was declared in South Korea by the military coup forces led by Chun Doo-hwan on October 27, 1979, the day after the assassination of former President Park Chung-hee. Stunned by the shocking pro-government coup in December, and despite threats from the military and police, thousands of activists and citizens rushed to the National Assembly in Seoul’s Yeouido district to oppose the declaration. By midnight, more than 5,000 people had gathered there. This included myself and about twenty members of Platform C. With our bare hands, protesters stopped the armoured vehicles of the martial law-supporting troops and helped opposition lawmakers to enter the parliament building despite the efforts of  police officers who tried to block access. With the assistance of the protesters, at around 1 a.m., the National Assembly was able to convene and acted to revoke martial law in accordance with the constitution. 

It later came to light that Yoon and his cronies, including the defense minister and the chief of the National Police Agency, had ordered the arrest of key politicians who opposed him. This was in clear violation of the constitution. Yoon even attempted to arrest journalists and the leader of his ruling party who disagreed with him. He had mobilized hundreds of soldiers to break down the doors of the National Assembly in an effort to block the passage of the martial-law-repeal bill.

As has now been reported,  the tense situation the night of December 3 was fortunately resolved by the morning. Despite Yoon’s efforts to maintain martial law, but with no rationale and little support, he lost control of the lower-ranking soldiers and police, and the martial law effort ultimately failed.

But those efforts were only the prelude to a larger absurdity. When the National Assembly voted on December 7 to impeach President Yoon, the vote was defeated. Impeaching Yoon required support from two-thirds of the National Assembly, or 200 of its 300 members. The opposition parties had 192 seats and there were not enough defections from the ruling People Power Party (PPP, 국민의힘), which holds 108 seats. Despite the high level of public condemnation of the state of emergency, the PPP mainstream, still sympathetic to Yoon, used all means at its disposal to prevent the defection of minority lawmakers. A half-million people, many of whom were left feeling frustrated and angry, gathered in front of the National Assembly that day.

The protests in the squares and streets continued. On December 14, the day of the second impeachment bill, more than one million people gathered in front of the National Assembly. In the end, the all-encompassing public pressure shook the PPP, and the impeachment bill was narrowly passed. The struggle in the streets made all the difference between rushing to the National Assembly on the night of martial law and finally passing the impeachment bill ten days later. But South Korea’s political crisis had only just begun.

Civil war-like situation

After the impeachment motion was passed, it became clear that the emergency martial law had been prepared in advance, in a very planned and organized manner, and was based on illegal and unconstitutional efforts. It was also revealed that Yoon had been talking about the need for martial law since March 2024, that he had been replacing top military officials with sympathizers, and that, since the summer, he had been postponing regular personnel changes within the armed forces in preparation for the coup. 

Yoon’s lame excuse for rescinding martial law, after only a few hours, was that he had no intention of actually enforcing it in the first place, and that he had only declared it to “warn of the anti-state behavior of a large opposition party.” This is, of course, a blatant lie designed to shield himself from punishment and to rally support. 

The reason why martial law was rescinded was because of the citizens’ resistance to it, and the reason why state violence under martial law was not implemented as Yoon had hoped was because there remains, in South Korean society generally, a living memory of recent and successful democratic struggles, a history of popular resistance. South Korea’s liberal media proudly proclaims that the country’s democracy is still intact. Four days after the declaration of martial law, author Han Kang, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, in a lecture just before the award ceremony, said that “the past was indeed helping the present”, “the dead were saving the living,” referring to the efforts which overthrew the military dictatorship in the late 1980s. These facts are enough to make ordinary South Koreans feel a sense of pride. I, too, felt a sense of pride when I joined hundreds of thousands of people in the square, chanting the same slogans for democracy and equality and against our broken politics.

However, looking from the end of December to the present, it is difficult to assess the situation. Yoon has not left the presidential residence and has not participated in the investigation by the prosecution, police and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), or the Constitutional Court trial process. The calculation of Yoon and his supporters is to wait until the spring when an appeals court may uphold the criminal convictions against opposition (Democratic Party) leader, Lee Jae-myung, former governor of Gyeonggi Province, which would disqualify him from running for the presidency. Yoon hopes this will turn the tide. Although the police and courts were investigating charges of insurrection, and all the coup plotters had been detained, Yoon’s standoff continued until he was arrested on the morning of January 15.

The ruling party’s approval ratings have since rebounded. Yoon’s siege, far-right propaganda, and use of hundreds of security guards as his personal soldiers, has given the far-right in the streets a boost of confidence. Of course, the ruling party’s approval ratings don’t necessarily indicate support for the far right. But there are bad signs here. The clear difference is that the PPP, which has traditionally taken a conservative line in South Korean institutional politics, has become much more right-wing and has stepped up its hatred of immigrants, LGBTQI people, attacks on the labor movement, while engaging in McCarthyist attacks on the Left.

The turn to the far right by the PPP is likely to lead to a rightward shift of the liberal Democratic Party (DP), which, in turn, will likely lead to a rightward shift of South Korean society as a whole. So even with the CIO arrest of Yoon, and even if the Constitutional Court upholds the president’s impeachment, there are larger concerns about the future. Yoon sought to instigate a fight through his announcement of martial law, and simultaneously through the month-long siege. Inside the official residence, he instructed his security forces to “use guns and knives to prevent the police from executing the arrest warrant.” (The possession and use of firearms is largely illegal and almost unheard of in South Korea.)

A growing radicalization 

Since the imposition of martial law, the Left in South Korea has organized discussions and strived for joint action. The Left has been fragmented over the past decade, losing its centripetal political power that ensured greater cooperation among individual movements actors in the past. As a result, it initially organized multiple separate events to oppose the coup effort.  Some groups of activists have gathered around the three major left-wing parties (the Labor Party, the Green Party, and the Justice Party) outside of parliament, while queer, disability, and anti-poverty movements have also cohered. Platform C, which is associated with various movement tendencies, has helped to bring these forces together. 

Meanwhile, at a broader level, in early December, the Emergency Action for Social Reform! (hereinafter Emergency Action) was formed. The coalition is a united front that includes liberal political forces, the Left and social movements, and also (as of January 14) 1,721 social organizations, mass organizations (such as trade unions and student associations), and religious groups. On the day it was formed, there was an intense debate about including in the name of the front, the word “Kook-min” (國民, 국민, national people). In common usage, this term has a nationalist and anti-communist meaning. The term excludes migrants, who make up 5 percent of the population, and includes the nation-state ideology that a mythologized narrative of a “mono-ethnic nation” gives it.1As an emerging industrialized country, South Korea has been a host country for migrant labor since the 1990s, and given its position in the global supply chains of transnational capital, the social climate of exclusion and discrimination against migrants has been the same under both conservative and liberal rule.The decision to ultimately exclude this term was an important win for the inclusion, under the banner or Emergency Action, of pro-migrant and LGBTQI movements. In the historical context of Korean social movements, this was a significant change.

The nationwide square protests, which have been going on for over a month, are being organized by the Emergency Action. Political tensions are rising as the Left, which has led the social movement in South Korea, has a different analysis of the crisis from the pro-democracy civic groups. While liberals see this front as simply a battle between traditional democracy and anti-democracy, martial law is seen as a revival of the struggle that was the driving force behind the social movements against the dictatorship in South Korea in the 1980s. On the other hand, left-wing social movements see the current political crisis as the result of a neoliberal system led by capital, and believe that the social crisis exacerbated by the neoliberal nature of the Moon Jae-in administration has given rise to Yoon Seok-yeol, which in turn has exacerbated the crisis of democracy. Similarly, the contradictions of inequality in the U.S., which Barack Obama inevitably failed to resolve, led to Donald Trump’s election by inciting swathes of small business owners and sections of the white working class, a coalition that, in important part, has led to Trump’s re-election in 2024. 

The social movement Left is working to radicalize the current impeachment movement by coming together under the umbrella of Emergency Action, while simultaneously working to expand its agenda through separate networks. If successful, these efforts will allow the Left to become a more prominent voice for social change in South Korea in the context of an early presidential election, and to create its own distinctive outlook and presence that is not beholden to the two major parties in the United States. Of course, none of this is an easy task, and the easiest prediction is that after the impeachment of Yoon, it may not work out.

Over the past decade, the South Korean labour movement has made remarkable progress. The rate of union density, which had been declining since 1987, began to rise again in 2016 after the campaign to oust Park Geun-hye from office. It has now surpassed 14.2 percent, the only country of the world’s developed economies to do so. This is due to the continuous organisation and collective struggle of precarious workers in the post-neoliberal system and the strategic efforts of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) to organise them. This connection between mass democratic struggle and the rise in labor organizing and militancy is important to note. A similar dynamic evolved in the late 1970s through the 1980s with the overthrow of the military dictatorship. 

Ironically, however, in recent years the political movement of the socialist Left has retreated, and the political prospects of the labor movement have dimmed. The split of the Democratic Labour Party(민주노동당) in 2011 intensified conflicts within the Left, and, like in many other advanced capitalists countries, runs in parallel with the crisis of the party system engendered by the impact of neoliberalism on politics and society. As a result, the Left has not been able to overcome its divisions and stagnation. It should see this phase of the struggle against Yoon as an important opportunity. The key to progress will be the extent to which the Left can broaden its fronts, organise new actors, and unite itself.

South Korea’s far-right populist

The current political situation in South Korea is a testament to the fact that the country’s ruling system was in deep crisis. Yoon, while  highly opinionated, is a chronic alcoholic, and neither a great orator nor a particularly charismatic leader. But this crisis is about much more than a single individual’s personality. The attempt to institute martial law did not happen by accident. As early as the summer, Yoon had signaled his determination to pursue the government’s agenda regardless of political opposition.

During the spring 2022 presidential election, Yoon made it his campaign’s strategy to stir up hateful sentiment against Chinese migrants. In South Korea, where migrants make up less than 5 percent of the population, Chinese migrants, especially ethnic Koreans, make up an overwhelmingly large portion of the population, numbering around 1 million. This is another example of Yoon’s connections to, and similarities with,  the global far-right movement.

Throughout his presidency, Yoon has proven more than willing to respond to the demands of capital. In the summer of 2022, when subcontracted workers at Hanwha Ocean (formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering), a large shipyard in southern South Korea, went on strike against wage cuts, Yoon feigned ignorance of the union-busting practices of the prime contractor and vowed to use “police force in accordance with the rule of law” against the subcontracted workers. In the winter of that year, when freight forwarding workers struck to demand the maintenance and expansion of the safe rate system—designed to protect drivers’ living standards and  health and safety—Yoon issued an unprecedented business start-up order, violating the freedom of association of specially employed workers. Around the same time, the Korean Construction Workers’ Union (KCWU) was demanding collective bargaining for the more precarious sector of the building trades. Yoon accused strikers and KCWU of using their rallies and actions as means of “intimidation and coercion.” This led to the investigation of more than 2,000 union members, raids on union offices and dozens of union members’ residences, and the detention of 41 labor activists. Such retaliation resulted in a decline in the organizing rate of KCWU. In the process, labor activist Yang Hoedong committed self-immolation in protest of the repression. 

Yoon has also sought to repress feminists and has pushed back on Korea’s pro-women policies. In early 2023, he forced the removal of the term “gender equality” from the government’s policy, removing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family’s 20-year policy goal of “spreading gender equality values” from his work plan, and drastically reducing budgets related to women and LGBTQI people. During his campaign, Yoon publicly called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family to appeal to right-wing, largely male, internet-driven public opinion. On March 8 of that year, women activists staged a large-scale demonstration against the government’s regressive policies that drew 15,000 protesters. The struggle of women workers to improve poor working conditions has also spread. As a result, women in their 20s and 30s now make up the largest portion of the protesters in the current movement against Yoon.

Yoon has sought to win the support of capitalists and the far right, but paradoxically, this has hurt his approval ratings. In that sense, he is more of a stubborn and ignorant man of power than a successful far-right populist. If Yoon had succeeded in imposing martial law, the consequences are horrifying to imagine. It would have had a negative impact not only on South Korea, but on the entire East Asian region. Before the coup, Yoon’s approval ratings had been plummeting, hovering around 20 percent, and street protests calling for his removal had been ongoing for nearly a year. The unrelenting struggle of organized workers, women, and LGBTQI people against the regime have provided the organizational base to stop the coup and fill the squares in the immediate aftermath of the declaration of martial law. This is why social movements that don’t rely on mainstream political parties are so important.

Geopolitical Crisis and Yoon’s Militarism

At a time of global geopolitical crisis, Yoon’s militaristic stance is extremely dangerous. As is well known, under the previous Moon administration, South Korea invested heavily in the defense industry, becoming one of the world’s top five arms exporters. This past summer, Yoon slept on military bases during his vacation, showed up in military T-shirts, hastily declared Armed Forces Day a “temporary national holiday” and organized a massive military parade, and visited the Army Operations Command during Ulchi-Freedom Shield 24, where he belligerently encouraged the troops, saying that “an invasion would be the end of Kim Jong Un’s regime”. When held in 2024, the UFS, a joint U.S.-South Korean war game that simulates a preemptive attack and occupation of North Korea in the event of an emergency, was the largest in history. In this, Yoon has revealed his far-right true colors and has otherwise used several events in the past year to prepare for the imposition of martial law.

To make matters worse, Yoon’s government sent armed drones to Pyongyang last year. On October 11, 2024, North Korea announced that a South Korean drone was spotted over the North Korean capital in the late night hours of October 3, 9, and 10. Since then, the South Korean military has said that it “cannot confirm” whether it sent a drone to North Korea. At the time, the North Korean government publicly protested the South’s military provocations, surprisingly avoiding an “eye for an eye” response. North Korea may have been preoccupied with providing military assistance to Russia, but it also seems to have realized that escalating military tensions was precisely what Yoon was aiming for. Recently, a South Korean military official testified that the drone infiltration operation was ordered directly by the National Security Office. This can only be seen as a direct order from President Yoon himself. The imposition of martial law could have pushed the entire Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia much closer to war. 

Yoon Seok-yeol and his cohorts were willing to stoke the flames of war for their own political ends, and by weaponizing anti-communism, they were not afraid to fan the flames of a global war crisis. In the context of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalries, this had a mutually detrimental effect, as it was linked to geopolitical crises and escalating military tensions in East Asia, further jeopardizing domestic politics. In particular, Yoon took advantage of the war in Ukraine to export massive amounts of arms to Poland, and while it maintained a public stance of “not providing weapons of mass destruction to Ukraine,” it was revealed that the amount of artillery shells it “diverted” through the U.S. was more than the rest of Europe combined.

The social movement Left in South Korea unequivocally opposes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recognises that the rivalry between U.S. and Russian imperialism threatens world peace. Since the war, U.S. defense companies have seen their stock prices rise and made huge profits, while ordinary people, including Ukrainians and Russians, have been dying on Ukrainian soil. The real beneficiaries of this protracted war are the military contractors and defense industries that produce the weapons. In this respect, the Left must clearly recognise the nature of these wars and refuse to take sides on issues such as the funding or deployment of weapons. Instead, it should focus on solidarity with the labor movement against the wars in Ukraine and Russia, and on raising the voice of the anti-war movement and supporting class struggle. From this perspective, Yoon’s policy of armament build-up and belligerence that escalates the war crisis is something that must be resolutely fought against.

Gender conflict and backlash

More than 40 days after martial law was declared, and with Yoon now indicted for the right-wing insurrection, the situation shows no sign of ending. Even if Yoon’s arrest is successful, it is unclear whether it will result in his imprisonment. And even if imprisoned, he will not abandon his political struggle and will continue to incite far-right forces. It is not difficult to see why the far-right Liberty Korea Party still stands by Yoon despite the obvious legal consequences of the rebellion charge: it does not yet have a viable candidate to run in the next presidential election, and sees its political life as dependent on appealing to organised conservative Christian groups. Even if there is a change of government following Yoon’s departure, these groups will seek to expand their organisational power through activism, like the attitude of the U.S. far-right during the Biden administration as it prepared for the re-emergence of Trump.

There is another issue as well. There remains a polarized gap in the perception of gender issues among 20 and 30 year olds. On the one hand, there exists a young feminist movement against patriarchy. This is linked to their political radicalization. In recent years, 80 to 90 percent of young people entering left-wing social movements are women, and this is no different in the organizations I work with. 

On the other hand, there is growing right-wing populist sentiment. There commonly exists a patriarchal and narcissistic inferiority complex among young men, as well as the tendency to blame women and migrants for the economic crisis rather than those in power. Far-right YouTubers, conservative Protestant churches, and conspiracy theorists are contributing to this trend, and they could rise to power at any moment. Just as the far-right populists did.

South Korea’s fertility rate is notoriously one of the lowest in the world, and it is clear that this is linked to the economic contradictions of the capitalist system, including the gender wage gap, the production of precarious and migrant labor, and anxiety about an increasingly unclear future. This political crisis is a Korean manifestation of the crisis of the capitalist system.

Immediately after the emergency martial law, KCTU and its affiliated unions declared a general strike, saying, “We must immediately arrest the rebel Yoon Seok-yeol and punish the members of the State Council who participated in his unconstitutional and illegal martial law . . . We must drive out Yoon Seok-yeol, who is destroying our society irretrievably.” In the most recent phase of the  struggle, it is clear that the KCTU’s organizational presence is a major force in the square. Moreover, the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU)’s appeal went viral on social media, bringing many non-unionized people to the streets.

However, this did not lead to an actual general strike. In the second week of January, as the arrest of Yoon reached a stalemate, many voices within and outside the labor movement have called for a general strike that goes beyond unions. However, there is also a significant amount of “not ready” assessment, which means it’s hard to say whether a general strike will be successful. Radical activists recognize that a priority is to implement a variety of initiatives to increase union leadership on the ground. For example, unions at all levels are hanging banners in workplaces and civic spaces, sharing speeches and videos from public rallies with members, running rush hour and lunchtime campaigns, writing “My Free Speech” statements, supporting public rallies, and organizing member education and discussion opportunities and rally participation. As these efforts accumulate and unions increase their solidarity efforts, they will be able to organize political strikes outside of the workplace.

It must be remembered that Yoon’s  Presidential Guard collapsed under the pressure of social opinion and the National Assembly. This allows us to understand how the working class and oppressed can overcome the army of the ruling class even when it is armed with tanks and heavy weapons. The historical legitimacy of the working class, its overwhelming numerical superiority, and its confidence in its hegemony combine to neutralise the armed groups’ superior equipment. We have learned an important lesson from this incident.

There is no denying that KCTU has demonstrated a high level of organizational strength and militancy that is rare in East Asia. However, labor activists also understand clearly that this militancy and organizational strength is not immutable and can be reversed. As mentioned earlier, the number of members of KCTU continued to grow from 2016 to 2022, and the proportion of precarious workers and women increased. However, quantitative growth does not guarantee qualitative development. The challenge for the KCTU is to improve its organizational quality.

Recalling when, and in what context, martial law was last imposed in South Korea can help clarify the structural perceptions of this event. In October 1979, former President Park Chung-hee was shot dead by his loyal subordinate Kim Jae-kyu, sparked by a struggle by women workers. At the time, workers at a factory with poor working conditions called YH Trading staged a sit-in, which led to a series of uprisings in the southern industrialized cities. As the regime faced a crisis of its own, with public support deteriorating, divisions within the ruling class exploded. The martial law situation that erupted 45 years later in the winter of 2024 is no different. It is set against the backdrop of a series of struggles by organized workers, a socio-political crisis, and chaos within the regime.

South Korean workers also remember that regime hostility and attacks on labor rights can lead directly to dictatorship. In December 1979, during the political vacuum created by the assassination of the dictator, Chun Doo-hwan led a military coup to create a new military dictatorship, which a few months later led to the popular uprising in Gwangju and the horrific massacre that followed. The novelist Han Kang’s message of “Can the present help the past? Can the living save the dead?” is one that has been etched into the historical unconscious of the Korean people.

A leftist revision of Han’ Kang’s somewhat romanticized statement is in order. We must recall the memory of constant class struggle in South Korea. It is class struggle that has been able to put  pressure on the contradictions of the capitalist system, but this has been forgotten in the liberal narrative of events. South Korea’s ruling class elites, divided between the anti-communist right (PPP) and the neoliberal center (Democratic Party), have attacked labor movements, peasant movements, anti-poverty movements, and leftist political projects that have fought against neoliberal violations of the public sphere and exploitation, killing many in the process. While liberal political forces and the Left are fighting together in the public square, they face the challenge of expanding the front to include the struggle against inequality. South Korea’s social movement Left must summon the memory of those who struggled against capital’s exploitation. Its success or failure will change the Korean situation in the future.

The editors would like to thank SooKyung Vitale for her assistance in preparing this article. 

Featured Image Credits: Image by VoiceOfSeoul