South Korea’s Unsuccessful Self-Coup Could Complicate America’s “Pivot (Back) To Asia”
Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter
Yoon is hawkish on North Korea, is considering arming Ukraine against Russia, and went along with the US’ plans to organize a trilateral alliance between them and Japan, but all this might change if he’s replaced by the opposition after early elections, thus complicating the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”.
The world is trying to make sense of South Korea’s six-hour -long period of martial law that was imposed on Tuesday night until early Wednesday morning local time. It was the first time that the country experienced such since 1980. President Yoon Suk Yeol claimed that the opposition was conniving to overthrow him as part of an anti-state plot that he connected to North Korea. They control parliament, had tried to impeach him multiple times already, and were obstructing his legislative efforts.
This same opposition then raced to the National Assembly and voted to lift martial law. The military then stopped trying to storm the premises once that motion passed, and Yoon relented after he and his Cabinet complied with their demand. While it was still in effect, some on social media lent credence to his claims of an anti-state plot, while others speculated that the US had something to do with this even though a National Security Council spokesperson told Axios that they didn’t receive any advance notice.
There are now calls for his resignation and to even charge him with treason. His political career is likely over. Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-hee, might also go down with him due to her numerous scandals that he refused to investigate. Readers can learn more about them here and here. In hindsight, it compellingly appears as though Yoon wanted to stage a self-coup on predictable national security pretexts connected to North Korea out of desperation to keep himself in power and his wife out of trouble. The implications of this hypothesis are many but what follows are the most immediate: