Dem
47
GOP
53
Most readers have probably heard this news by now, but we wanted to highlight it nonetheless. Earlier this week, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in his country, and then used soldiers to surround the building where the legislature meets, while ordering high-ranking generals to arrest key leaders of the opposition. Yoon claimed this was necessary because "enemies" who were in cahoots with North Korea had taken control of Parliament.
To say that things did not work out as Yoon intended would be the understatement of the year. The people rose up, and the soldiery did not put down the rebellion. Members of Parliament rushed to their meeting place, and were not stopped from entering the building, despite the President trying to prepare for that eventuality. Within hours, 190 of 300 Parliamentarians had made it, and they voted unanimously to cancel the martial law order. This forced Yoon to back down and abandon the whole plan.
And it does not stop there. Initially, the members of Yoon's political party (the conservative People Power Party) were persuaded that the crisis was over, but both the opposition and the public demanded that more aggressive steps be taken. And so, on Saturday, there will be a vote to impeach Yoon and remove him from office. It is expected to succeed, by a wide bipartisan majority. Also, several of the generals who participated in the scheme have been arrested, or soon will be.
In short, the guardrails held. We have written many times that it is not easy to unilaterally convert a democracy into a dictatorship, because the people who provide the violent force (i.e., the army) are not likely to play along, the people who run the other branches of government (i.e., the legislators) are not likely to accept the loss of their power, and the people who would be subject to the dictatorship (i.e., the general public) will rise up. That is exactly what happened here, and with lightning speed, despite the fact that Yoon is a competent fellow, and rules over a geographically compact nation. We would suggest his failure is very happy news for anyone who fears a similar attempt from... some other leader, perhaps one who is less competent, and who would be dealing with a vastly more far-flung populace. (Z)