Ending Democracy: Lessons and Warnings from South Korea

Many years ago a political essay opened with a pithy remark about history repeating itself. True to that maxim, the events of the last six months in South Korea have been nothing short of farcical. President Yoon Seok-Yeol’s failed auto-coup was an attempt to invoke the glory days of military strongmen like Park Chung-Hee or Chun Du-Hwan. Unlike his forebears, Yoon’s military dictatorship folded with a whimper after six hours. Many Koreans slept through the whole thing. In the West, the event came to most as a minor distraction lasting roughly an afternoon.

The National Assembly’s quashing of the 3^rd of December 2024 Martial Law Declaration after six hours came with palpable relief. Major bloodshed and roundups had been avoided, unlike during prior instances of Martial Law which saw the worst violence in post-war Korean history. There was, however, another kind of relief among some observers. Martial Law had been shot down quickly and efficiently by the elected National Assembly, precisely according to procedure and exactly as this democratic safeguard was designed to do. The lesson was that, with a bit of courage from elected officials, the existing democratic system is perfectly capable of striking down insurgent fascism.

This could not be further from the truth. Across capitalist societies, including the UK, US, and South Korea, democratic backsliding is the order of the day. By focusing only on the events of the 3^rd of December themselves, we risk a fatal complacency. South Korea’s experience, while not a one-to-one comparison with the UK, offers us warnings of what conditions might precede serious anti-democratic repression. More urgently, it also offers us some lessons in how to fight back.

3rd of December 2024

Yoon Seok-Yeol’s short presidency was disastrous from the get-go. Elected in 2022 on less than a percentage point margin, his presidential campaign had been marred by gaffes and hard-right statements including a pledge to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. Much like Donald Trump, one of his idols, his presidency was defined by scandal. His first act moved the presidential office from the traditional Blue House to a compound in Yongsan, central Seoul, in a costly and unpopular manoeuvre.

The catastrophic mismanagement of the 2022 Itaewon Halloween crowd disaster, a stone’s throw from his new compound, won him few favours with the public. 159 people were killed in a preventable crowd crush leading to a frenzy of buck-passing between local officials, police chiefs, and the national government. Many compared it to Park Geun-Hye’s shoddy response to the 2014 Sewol Ferry sinking which laid the foundations for her 2017 impeachment. Yoon’s government then fumbled a proposed change to medical school admission quotas into a multi-year dispute. By randomly oscillating between conciliation, threats, and public name-calling, the result was strikes and mass resignations of doctors, creating the worst crisis in Korean healthcare in recent history. Police raids on trumped-up charges were ordered on the offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-Hee, had her own fair share of bribery scandals over which Yoon defended her to the hilt.

This chaos rested largely with the man at the top. Yoon’s perception of presidential power as all-encompassing was apparent as early as his election campaign, when he wrote the Chinese character Wang (King) on his hand as a shamanic talisman. Even in Korea’s unusually top-heavy presidential system, the checks and balances on his post proved too much for him. Yeom Dongkyu summarised it best: “Yoon’s inability to reconcile this self-perceived identity as a monarch with the fact that the presidency is a social compact resulted in an utterly chaotic state of affairs.” By late 2024 his approval polling had fallen to the teens. Protests against Yoon had escalated in that summer, and petitions of thousands of university professors and Catholic priests called for him to resign.

With Yoon’s caustic personality, it would be easy to mistake the late-night start of Martial Law on 3^rd December as a kneejerk reaction to the walls closing in. The disproportionality of the declaration caught even keen observers by surprise. In fact, this coup attempt had been planned for several months. In a 10.27pm live address, Yoon promised to “eradicate” opposition lawmakers whom he accused of being “pro-North [Korean] anti-state forces” and of “conspiring to incite rebellion”. Defence Minister Kim Yong-Hyun immediately appointed Army Chief of Staff Park An-Su as Martial Law Commander per the 1981 Martial Law Act.

Park issued a single, stunning, declaration from the Martial Law Command at 11.30pm. All political activity, including that of the National Assembly who were not consulted beforehand and have the sole veto on a Martial Law declaration, was banned. Strikes, demonstrations of any kind, and “manipulation of public opinion” were prohibited, and all media outlets were to be under military supervision. Special forces soldiers were deployed to the National Assembly building, the National Election Commission, and outside the homes of progressive journalists. The troops at the National Assembly had orders to blockade the building to prevent a vote to end the Martial Law succeeding. While most of their weapons were unloaded, the soldiers had brought stocks of live ammunition and tasers.

Fortunately, ordinary citizens and officials in key institutions chose to simply ignore the orders of the Martial Law Command. Thousands of people gathered at the gates of the National Assembly to hinder the military operation, while lawmakers rushed to make a quorum even as soldiers swarmed the building. The troops were fought off within parts of the building by staff, in some cases with fire extinguishers. The soldiers themselves declined to act further once the Assembly had voted down the declaration. Media outlets did not neatly submit to military censors but instead tried to report facts as they saw them. Senior police and National Intelligence Service officers dragged their heels on arrest orders until Martial Law was lifted. Key members of Yoon’s own People Power Party (PPP) including Prime Minister Han Dong-Hoon were caught unawares and were even added to arrest lists.

Yoon’s attempt to reinstitute a dictatorship failed miserably. He was met with almost immediate protests across the country and throughout the global Korean diaspora. Internationally the incident was a blip of curiosity, perhaps enough to make a three-day news cycle; it was at least a rare glimpse at undemocratic politics south of the DMZ. As if to underscore the farce of the whole affair, Western outlets published contextualising pieces on the more successful dictatorships of Park Chun-Hee and Chun Du-Hwan. The 1980 Gwangju Uprising and its brutal suppression received some coverage as the last time Martial Law was declared.

Yet it was Yoon’s incompetence, not his intent, that prevented a second 12.12 Coup or a Gwangju-esque massacre. We now know chilling details of his plans for a repression-centric, murderous regime beyond a blanket ban on political activity. Investigators recovered a list of over 500 names earmarked for kidnapping, drawn up by former military intelligence chief and coup architect Roh Sang-Won. Opposition politicians including previous President Moon Jae-In, Yoon’s perceived enemies in his own party, and trade union leaders were at the top, but the full list revealed a plan to gut civil society of any dissenting voices. Comedians & TV personalities, Buddhist & Christian religious figures, judges, and even the coach of the national football team were to be rounded up. Key political opponents swept up under Roh’s plan were to be murdered in secret. The Ministry of Defence purchased an additional 3,000 body bags for delivery in the weeks prior to the coup. For the rest of the public: a ban on leaving the country, expanded prisons to accommodate widespread lifetime or death sentences, and unlimited terms for Yoon himself via rigged elections.

Relief at Yoon’s foolishness should not breed complacency. An advanced, relatively liberal capitalist state nearly violently lurched into an overt military dictatorship overnight. We in similar states would do well to pay close attention as our own governments follow a trend of democratic backsliding. South Korea’s recent woes, far from validating a liberal constitutional order, offer us both stark warnings and valuable lessons for our own future.  

Trust in the people, not just the parties

The failure of Yoon’s coup was thanks to the thousands of ordinary Koreans who were prepared to engage in civil disobedience at the drop of a hat. By hindering the soldiers from using the main National Assembly gate, the crowd bought time for legislators to gather and make the quorum to strike down Martial Law. Of course, this required more than a touch of courage from the Assembly members themselves, some of whom were filmed climbing over the compound walls or directly confronting the troops.

Choi Jungmin from the Centre for Waging Nonviolence posits this as the first key lesson of the night of the coup. Over 16,000 people gathered in front of the National Assembly building, many unsure of the full picture but nonetheless fully prepared to fight – and if necessary, die – to oppose military rule. Some mobilised via pre-existing networks, such as progressive parties and trade unions, but just as many were ordinary citizens who dropped everything to take action. This rapid response and willingness to engage in mass disobedience even against armed soldiers was critical to the failure of the initial coup.

While we would hope that both legislators and the public would respond with similar speed and seriousness to a coup attempt in our country, the actions of the Korean public require some context. First, the realities of Martial Law are a living, painful memory. The last declaration of Martial Law was in May 1980 as new President Chun Du-Hwan sought to shore up his power after his 12^th December coup. The city of Gwangju rose up in revolt and was brutally crushed by the Special Warfare Command. Hundreds if not thousands of people were killed by the paratroopers. For many older Koreans this period is an aching wound; for their children, Korea’s subsequent democratisation is a non-negotiable prize bought with blood.

The other contextual clue behind the response of the citizens is the Korean public’s own attitude to democracy, political opposition, and protest. Politically engaged South Koreans, broadly speaking, have at least as much faith in protest and mass public action in bringing about large-scale political change as they do in political parties. One reason for this is obvious: in South Korea, mass protest movements have been proven effective in forcing a change in government. As recently as 2017, Park Geun-Hye was impeached through the efforts of such a movement. Second, ‘normal’ transitions of power between incumbents and opposition, i.e. via a fair election after a full five-year term, have only occurred thrice since 1987. (Of course, they did not occur at all prior to democratisation in that year). South Korea’s dubious record of mid-term impeachments and post-term imprisonments has likely not helped with public confidence in electoral leadership.

South Korea’s Presidential system is unusually top-heavy, even compared to similar systems such as the USA. Political parties at the National Assembly level and public engagement with said parties are particularly weak. Parties themselves are fluid in terms of splitting, merging, and rebranding, with most parties in their current form being less than ten years old. Larger parties exploit the combined constituency and proportional representation seat system by forming ad-hoc front parties to game elections to the latter, which has thankfully not yet been imitated in the Scottish Additional Member System. Party membership and engagement is low overall compared to other capitalist democracies, and the more successful parties congeal around their presidential candidates.

While Martial Law itself would not have been struck down without opposition legislators, the Korean public picked up the slack after the first night. The world-famous South Korean mass protest machine kicked into gear, with near-daily protests taking place for months until Yoon’s impeachment was finally upheld. Choi Jungmin takes this as the next lesson: popular mobilisation must be sustained and directed towards removing the coup plotters as soon as possible, as every day they remain in power is a risk of further democratic backsliding. These protests directed at lawmakers (especially ruling party Assembly Members) and the Constitutional Court raised the pressure on institutions to remove Yoon quickly.

The scale and sustainability of these protests was made possible by the sheer diversity of ways in which one could act. Barriers to participating in the streets were reduced by free food and blankets paid for through thousands of donations. Transport workers and steel industry unions went on strike as farmers attempted to blockade streets with tractors. Larger protests, relying on numbers to take up as much physical space as possible, were family-friendly affairs. Familiar tactics like candlelit vigils, ubiquitous in South Korea and central to the 2017 anti-Park protests, took their place alongside K-pop singalongs and mass light-stick displays. This is Choi Jungmin’s third lesson: a diverse, often festive array of tactics keeps the movement adaptive and disruptive while lowering the costs of participation for as many people as possible.

The repressive toolkit

The goals of Yoon’s administration were two-fold and simple: to enrich themselves and their cronies; and to politically annihilate their opponents. The latter goal is intimately connected to democratic backsliding. Yoon broadcast this rationale crudely and explicitly in his initial Martial Law declaration, but other right-wing authoritarian leaders may be more subtle. The right’s efforts to neutralise their opponents rarely come in one fell swoop.

The legal toolkit of mass repression already exists within liberal constitutional systems, overlooked by the system’s true believers but happily wielded by the far right. The tools themselves and their uses vary between states, but the existence of the repressive toolkit itself is universal. The crackdown apparatus afforded to the South Korean and UK states is defined in many respects by each country’s history and specific failures to fully democratise.

Martial Law itself is the ultimate political sledgehammer in the South Korean state’s arsenal. A favourite tool of the country’s dictators, it was implemented 16 times prior to the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. Although intended to mobilise the country in the event of another general war with the North, its actual use was to provide security for constitutional power-grabs, orchestrate mass detentions, and put down local protests. Each implementation was with at least tacit operational approval from the US, which still maintains a large military presence in South Korea. The 1981 Martial Law Act governs its use, but balances such as the National Assembly veto limit its deployment itself rather than checking the repressive measures available to the Martial Law Command if implemented legally. This Act is a disproportionate tool still available to any President willing to abolish civilian rule.

For longer-term repression, South Korea retains the Cold War era National Security Law. This prohibits any Communist or “enemy-aiding” organisation, any unauthorised contact with North Koreans, or visits to the North. This is often stretched to the limits of plausibility, whether against centrist or liberal opposition figures during the dictatorship period or against social democrats and pro-reunification groups after 1987. Park Geun-Hye used this law in 2014 to ban the Unified Progressive Party (UPP), a broad left-of-centre party, concocting a case that a secret faction within the party was preparing a pro-North insurrection. The Constitutional Court of Korea upheld this and not only jailed the ‘conspirators’ but banned the entire party, revoking their five National Assembly seats.

The constitution of the Sixth Republic enshrines Presidential power to a degree far surpassing other democracies. The capacity of the Executive branch to veto the Legislature, to invoke emergency powers, to legislate independently, and to appoint the judiciary creates a so-called “Imperial Presidency”. This unbalanced system of checks and balances allows the President to act in the moment with minimal institutional scrutiny, even when breaking the law as in Park Geun-Hye’s case. Attempts to reform this system, such as under the liberal Kim Dae-Jung and Moon Jae-In administrations, have largely foundered. Moves to decentralise power such as Roh Moo-Hyun’s power-sharing with his Prime Minister often rely on the goodwill of the President themselves. South Korea’s constitution itself, when paired with long-standing laws from the dictatorship era, provide the state with a well-honed repressive arsenal. In the unsteady hands of Yoon Seok-Yeol, this became a deadly threat to basic civil liberties.

Threats to democracy built into the constitutional order should sound familiar to us as republicans in these islands. Much of the UK state’s ruling consensus relies on the goodwill of the courts, the King, Privy Council, civil service, and a host of other unelected figures. Military rule, too, is not so far removed from recent memory in Ulster. The UK’s capacity for state repression has been built over decades by successive governments, morphing to meet new crises and reflecting an increasingly reactionary attitude to threats from below. Both Tory and Labour administrations have put the finishing touches on a potent array of powers ready to be handed off to Reform UK for uncompromising use.

Some of the greatest British innovations in repression in the last decade have come in the form of anti-protest laws. Drafted in response to the nascent climate and Black Lives Matter movements, the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 delivered new tools to shut down protests into the hands of police in England & Wales. These powers have been used with gusto particularly against the Palestinian solidarity movement. The capacity to carry out a serious crackdown on dissent already exists in England, and the precedent of these Acts paves the way for further restriction in the future. All this requires is a government willing to steer the law in a draconian direction.

The devolved administrations of Scotland and Wales are structural obstacles to any comprehensive far-right power grab in England. The independence movements of these countries, alongside the Republican movement in Ireland, are a priority target for any UK government. The existence of legal carve-outs and exceptions in these countries is a threat to a unitary UK regime, especially with progressive and/or pro-independence parties at the wheel. Intervention in these devolved administrations, such as via Article 35 of the Scotland Act, has gained recent precedent. Thus far used by the Tories and Labour on an ad-hoc basis, lawfare is a powerful tool in the wrong hands to destroy devolution entirely. It is thus incumbent on us in the national independence movements and on English progressives to recognise our shared interest in an anti-fascist coalition.

Don’t get your hopes up

Yoon Seok-Yeol’s failed gambit was made possible through his own inflated ego and through critical vulnerabilities in South Korea’s democracy. A top-heavy system plus the existence and prior use of brutally repressive tools enabled an unstable leader to nearly abolish democracy overnight. Like South Korea, the UK has repressive tools to hand, albeit with different forms and histories of use. Where the comparison between the two states becomes more concerning, however, is in how a figure like Yoon attained power in the first place.

Park Geun-Hye was swept out of office in disgrace in 2017 and replaced by Moon Jae-In, a liberal figurehead with a background as a progressive lawyer. Hope for sweeping constitutional change and meaningful reforms accompanied his election. Some sincere attempts at progressive moves were made, most famously Moon’s détente with Kim Jong-Un, but many were disappointed as other efforts such as judicial reform and equalities laws were stymied or parked. The consequence was sufficient apathy among the voters who had swept Moon to power in 2017 to give Yoon his 2022 percentage-point victory.

The parallels with Britain are apparent. A former movement lawyer turned centrist reformer, swept to power by conservative collapse, who in turn blows their majority with broken promises and disappointment. Unlike Moon Jae-In, Starmer abandoned his pledged reforms before taking office and no longer even pretends to channel his progressive past. He is set to fail harder and faster than Moon Jae-In, with rock-bottom approval ratings and the worst local election defeat for a new government in British history. He may not see out the year, although no doubt his replacement will share his utter lack of imagination and charisma.

As in the waning years of the Moon administration, a challenger waits in the wings of British politics. Shaped by conspiracy theories, projecting an uncompromising, tells-it-like-it-is image, and idolising Trumpian affects and talking points, Nigel Farage is closer to power than ever. His desire to politically destroy his perceived opponents is no secret, and he will likely show little compunction about using the UK’s repressive toolkit to do so.

Arrayed against him is an utterly demoralised public and a hamstrung, disparate progressive movement. The latter has few recent victories with which to form a strategic frame of reference. Moreover, progressive successes in England have almost always been in the realm of social and economic struggles, rather than in that of the constitution itself. While South Korea has a lived tradition of life-or-death struggle against military rule, British movements have yet to be tested against naked authoritarianism. Labour MPs themselves are unlikely to be climbing any walls to oppose a rightist power grab. Many of them adore Britain’s repressive toolkit, have utter disdain for progressive protesters, and in some cases actively support Reform UK policies.

As South Korea’s presidential elections approach on the 3^rd of June, a repeat of 2017 looks predestined. With conservative challengers in disarray, liberal candidate Lee Jae-Myung will likely be the country’s 14^th President. The real question is whether the liberal opposition have learned anything from the last two administrations. Threats of democratic backsliding can only be seen off by a root and branch dismantling of the South Korean state’s repressive toolkit, including an entirely new constitution, radically revised options for military emergencies, and the end of the National Security Act. Enacting the proposed Equalities Law and moving towards genuine economic democratisation will help secure the gains won on 3rd December 2024.

As for us in Britain, the lessons from South Korea are in how to fight against the unthinkable. A Yoon Seok-Yeol analogue could come in the form of Farage or in one of his Tory or Labour imitators. This challenge demands real courage, imagination, and broad, inclusive coalitions to sustain high-demand action. For reasons outlined above, an even greater burden lies on the public given the unreliability of the Labour Party in opposing state repression.

Success will require unity between those fighting for economic and social justice, such as the trade unions and LGBTQ+ movements, with those struggling for constitutional change, especially the national independence movements. Every component of this coalition must be prepared to treat a power grab with the seriousness it deserves. Korean history, and indeed world history, shows us that everything can be gained or lost in a single night.