Lee’s scandals, the U.S. and the world: how President Yoon has criticized the government and the media on social media
Lee opened up about his suspicions as recently as in September. It was brushed off as abrainwashed propaganda by his office.
Yoon has mostly denied or dismissed these accusations as political attacks and antagonized the opposition-led parliament, frequently blocking bills with veto power.
“Only a self-coup trying to extend his power and pushing through policies without any sort of negotiation or compromise with the opposition party is the only real way to look at it,” said Benjamin Engel, dean of the school.
The Korean Won and stock prices experienced large fluctuations amid uncertainties. A scheduled visit by the Swedish prime minister and a meeting of the Nuclear-Deterrent Council are among the delayed diplomatic and military schedules.
The U.S. believes President Yoon’s announcement to end martial law is a huge step in the right direction. The message stopped short of condemning martial law declaration.
The president’s office said it was relieved. But the politics professor Engel says Yoon’s disruption of democratic system “throws egg on the face of their whole trilateral cooperation efforts with the U.S., South Korea and Japan.”
Yoon has envisioned South Korea as a “global pivotal state” that promotes liberal democratic order and pursued “value-based diplomacy” with like-minded democracies.
His term had scandals involving him and his wife. His approval rating has dropped to 20% or 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 888-282-0465 in the last few weeks after allegations of his involvement in an influence-peddling scandal emerged.
South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law to defuse political crisis: “Our country has become an outdated country,” Lee said
Nevertheless, after his suspicion became a reality, Lee expressed disbelief. Lee said at the rally that he felt like he was in a cartoon. “This country – the 10th biggest economy in the world, a cultural powerhouse and an aspiring 5th biggest military power – was backpedaling to an outdated country.”
In recent years, the main opposition Democratic Party has warned against the possibility that a conservative government can declare martial law to defuse a political crisis. The military prepared a martial law plan under Park Geun-hye, the daughter of Park Hee, who was impeached and removed from office due to her corruption allegations.
The National Assembly’s Secretary General Kim Min-ki said in a brief that martial law troops storming the parliament flying in military helicopters, or climbing over the fence. Some smashed windows to enter the main building, he said. Kim announced that members of the defense ministry and the police will now be prohibited from entering the parliament, to protect the institution’s functions and lawmakers’ safety.
Over the chaotic and historic night, a growing crowd of protesters gathered outside the main gate of the parliament. Inside the compound, protesters and parliament staffers tried to block soldiers from entering the main meeting hall. Some people built barricades.
Opposition politicians in South Korea have submitted a motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol after his failed attempt to place the country under martial law. This is the first time a South Korean president has made such an attempt since the country went from military rule to democracy in 1987. It was caught by surprise by the citizens in South Korean and the US. The opposition politicians who control parliament are accused of aligning with North Korea and paralyzing the government.
In the speech, he accused the opposition-controlled parliament of “paralyzing” and “attempting to overthrow the liberal democratic system through legislative dictatorship.” Yoon said that by imposing martial law, his aim was “to crush North Korea-sympathizing anti-state forces and to preserve the free constitutional order.”
The martial-law command blocked all political activities, and put the media under its control, shortly after issuing a decree suspending the legislature. The command threatened violators will be arrested without warrant.
The leaders of both the People Power party and the Democratic party immediately decried the action as unconstitutional.
The Up First newsletter: Emergency Alerts for South Korea’s past, current threats, and tomorrow’s news in the era of social unrest
There has been no emergency alert. Cell phones in the country tend to buzz with mandatory push alerts for a lot of things, including elderly people who go missing, traffic accidents downtown and an alert for a North Korean balloon filled with propaganda and trash. Think of Amber Alerts, but broader.
Since the 1980s martial law has been imposed in South Korea. But in the early decades of the country’s modern history, dictators and military juntas enforced martial law to squash political rivals and pro-democracy movements, often citing unsubstantiated threats from North Korea as the reason.
“And the South Korean people, they know their history as well,” says Benjamin Engel, a visiting political science professor at Dankook University outside Seoul. “And they’re not going to accept a return of military rule or martial law. From the beginning, that was clear.
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How to Keep an Eye on Your Occulte: A Season of Peace and Light for the Biden-Biden White House
A battle for transgender children’s rights will be front and center at the Supreme Court today. At issue is a Tennessee law that blocks minors from accessing gender-affirming care. Within the last three years, over two dozen states have enacted laws that ban puberty blockers, hormones and other treatments for minors who say their gender doesn’t align with their sex at birth.
The French government could fall today as it faces a no-confidence vote brought by the far left and far right. If they get the necessary votes in the lower house of parliament, they will be able to oust Prime Minister Barnier, who has been in power less than three months. At issue is the 2025 budget, which attempts to address France’s spiraling deficit. Barnier used an emergency clause in parliament this week to push it through.
Local officials and retailers are warning Americans to remain vigilant this holiday season and not fall victim to porch pirates, who steal packages from homes. According to a SafeWise analysis, over 120 million packages were stolen in the US last year. You can take a few steps to protect your packages.
For the last Christmas of President Biden’s presidency, first ladyJill Biden decorated the halls of the White House. The theme of this year’s decor is “A Season of Peace and Light.” More than 300 volunteers spent the past week decorating the White House’s public spaces and its 83 Christmas trees with nearly 10,000 feet of ribbon, over 28,000 ornaments, more than 2,200 paper doves and around 165,000 lights, according to the Associated Press.
The ahjussis: bringing Korea to the national assembly, but no one is willing to speak to the media or the media
This is an oversimplification of a body politic consisting of complex individuals. More importantly, a conservative value set does not necessarily translate to conservative politics. These older men were living through the student protests and the Gwangju uprising as young people during the dictatorship. It’s tempting to cast them in opposition to a younger generation that tends to vote liberal and is less prone to anti-communist redbaiting. But the ahjussis were once young too, and in their youth they ushered South Korea into a true liberal democracy.
I pace inside my Airbnb, running through a list of potential freelancers I can commission to write about what’s happening in Korea, but no one is available. I don’t have the skills to report on Korean politics or interview people on the street. On a weeknight, I am completely blasted, though possibly not as blasted as in a city like South Korea. At dinner we were seated by a group of men with maybe a dozen empty liter bottles of beer on their table; we watched them wave down the proprietor for even more alcohol. I was going to mix soju bombs with my friends. I sometimes describe Korea as the Ireland of East Asia; I’m not a huge drinker when I’m at home in the US, but the general ambience of Seoul shifts my habits.
The president formally lifts the martial law order while I’m taking off my makeup. My body is exhausted, my brain is racing, I can barely make sense of the news as I try to catch up. It’s too soon to reckon with what happened, or to figure out what happens next. I think of the kids asking to have their picture taken, because they want their family to know that they were at the National Assembly when Lee was livestreaming himself on the wall. Politics is being intermediated so smoothly through technology that it has become almost unnoticeable, embedded into the fabric of life for the young and the old alike.
Line 1 — practically an internet meme due to how frequently old men get into drunken fights on its trains — is truly in its element tonight. A very wasted guy hollers so loudly in the next car that another man stomps over and passive-aggressively slams the compartment door shut. A girl in a collegiate athletic jacket sleeps through it, head against her boyfriend’s shoulder. A younger man, seated, is exchanging heated words with a very small white-haired man who is ineffectually attempting to loom over him; I cannot tell who the aggressor is in this conflict, but the older man is stumbling and swaying and seems barely verbal.
When I transfer to Line 9 to get to the National Assembly building, the energy is subtly different. I have never seen a group of Koreans taking calls in public. As I get off at the National Assembly stop at 12:30AM, the entire train empties out with me.
The cab driver asks if I was at the protests when I finally catch the cab. When I answer in the affirmative, he thanks me. I am embarrassed; my Korean is not good enough to explain to him that I am a journalist, that I am an American, that I am supposed to be an impartial observer of history. He complains about being called a commie because he hated Yoon and said that she was going to ruin the country. He is listening to some kind of internet livestream commentator as he drives me home; I can see the video feed playing on his phone on top of his GPS map; he clucks and shakes his head and noisily reacts as he listens. I was asked rhetorically what the elites were doing to stop it. I don’t have an answer.
I am too drunk and cold to continue the protest at 4AM. A drunk man is being helped by a cop on my way out of the area, but he is not wearing a green vest. He doesn’t seem to be in any legal trouble, but he’s wasted to be able to stand.
A couple of kids asked another protester to take a photo of them. The man in the balloon suit is in a musical political farce on the street. It doesn’t feel like I’m sober anymore. I don’t believe the Korean lyrics of “Auld Lang Syne” is a political song as the loudspeaker play a version with them at 3AM. An ahjussi near me belts out the words with feeling. People have taken their phones out and turned on their torches so they can wave them around like lightsticks.
The crowd is chanting “Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol!” Blue and red lights flash everywhere. Major TV stations send vans and camera crews, while police buses line the streets. The crowd is split evenly between the young and the old, with the old being the most angriest. “How dare the military come here!” The ahjussi swears.
A few minutes later I hear the thunder of helicopters overhead. (The news later reports that military helicopters landed on the other side of the building, carrying soldiers to invade the National Assembly. About an hour before I arrived, the leader of the liberal opposition party livestreamed himself scaling a fence in order to get to the Assembly building to vote.)
There seems to be less riot police. I see a police bus door shut; I catch a glimpse of dozens of neon green vests piled inside its confines. A woman chuckles, “Yeah, go on home!” The crowd is getting bigger and bigger; the New York Times later reports there are thousands of people on the street. In the moment, I attempt to do a rough count before I realize I am still a little too buzzed to do it.
A man gets a microphone and starts giving updates, he asks the crowd to surround him and protect him from being taken by the police. The protesters have responded in an orderly fashion.
Source: 6 hours under martial law in Seoul
How drunk am I? When I was surprised to discover that President Yoon had not tried to take power during the 1978 Great Revolta (Microquasar)
It’s freezing out, and people are mostly bundled up in puffer coats. I wonder if anyone else can tell how drunk I am; I wonder, also, how drunk other people are. Politicians who run to the National Assembly to stop the fall of democracy are blinking slowly and slurring their words. They appear to have been enjoying their Tuesday night in very much the same fashion I had been.
The sudden vibe shift starts with a middle-aged aunty sitting on a platform bench waiting for the other train who shouts “Fighting!” at the crowd that packs the escalator and the stairs. Another woman in a motorized wheelchair yells political slogans as she zips ahead to the exit, fist in the air. When I emerge into the night, the first thing I notice is military uniforms. The two men in full body tactical camo look frightened after I realized that I took out my phone. The soldiers are surrounded by angry people.
The country went back to the 1980s when Yoon tried to take power with the help of soldiers, police, and helicopters. These are not the 1980s. He needs to seize the cell service first.