How Polarized Politics Led South Korea to a Plunge Into Martial Law Yoon Suk Yeol's decree, and his reversal under pressure from lawmakers, were the culmination of years of feuding between the country's two main political camps.
Yoon Suk Yeol won South Korea's highest office in 2022 by a threadbare margin, the closest since his country abandoned military rule in the 1980s and began holding free presidential elections.
Just over two years into Mr. Yoon's presidency, a brief declaration of martial law on Tuesday shook South Koreans hoping that the tumultuous era of military intervention was behind them. Thousands of protesters filled the streets of Seoul calling for his arrest. Their country one that has been regarded as a model of cultural soft power and Asian democratic stalwart-had turned sharply in another direction.
But the circumstances that led Mr. Yoon to make his shocking declaration on Tuesday — and then, six hours later, to rescind it after Parliament voted to block it — were set in motion long before his razor-thin election victory. They dramatically illustrated South Korea's bitterly polarized politics and the deep societal discontent beneath the surface of its rising global might.
READ MORE:Timeline: How Yoon's Presidency in South Korea Led to
It all came to a head when Mr. Yoon, once a hard-charging prosecutor who investigated former presidents, was the target of a political onslaught by a galvanized opposition.
Victorious But Not Mandated
Never too popular, conservative leader Mr. Yoon has won the election by just 0.8 percentage points. Analysts said the vote was more of a referendum on his liberal predecessor's failures than an endorsement of Mr. Yoon.
The bitterness of the campaign was reflected in a statement by Mr. Yoon's main opponent, Lee Jae-myung, who would lead the opposition to the Yoon government in Parliament.
"I sincerely ask the president-elect to lead the country over the divide and conflict and open an era of unity and harmony," he said.
Mr. Yoon, 63, is an unlikely figure to steer the nation toward reconciliation. He was the prosecutor general who helped secure the conviction and imprisonment of a former leader of his party, Park Geun-hye, after her impeachment as president. He had specialized in corruption cases and had prosecuted another former president and the head of Samsung.
As Mr. Yoon dug into Ms. Park, the administration he served continued a long-standing practice in South Korea where the newly elected leaders initiate investigations into the previously elected leaders, adding to the acrimonious tone of the country's politics.
Running for office, Mr. Yoon vehemently criticized his former boss, the progressive president Moon Jae-in, for meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jung-un, but failing to stop his nuclear ambitions. He called for ratcheting up military drills and for strict enforcement of sanctions on the North, envisioning a South Korea that wielded its influence as a major U.S. ally in Asia.
During his campaign, Mr. Yoon said, "Peace is meaningless unless it is backed by power." "We can avoid war only if we acquire an ability to make the kinds of pre-emptive strikes and show our willingness to use them," he also said.
The approach won him favor in Washington, where the Biden administration was glad to have South Korea align itself more closely with American positions as a bulwark against China. But it did little for him at home, where he was locked in perpetual war with the opposition even as his domestic challenges mounted.
A pot of discontent
As South Korea's global influence has reached dizzying heights in commerce, cinema, television, and music, vertiginous inequality has been boiling inside the country. Skyrocketing home prices have sent the nation living in shrinking space at ever-shrinking prices. Recent graduates cannot find proper employment and are accusing the older generation of shutting them out.
With little hope for economic security, many young people are delaying marriage and even childbearing, and the country is both aging and boasts the world's lowest birthrate. Voters increasingly have blamed political opponents, immigrants, and feminists.
Critics charge that Mr. Yoon, who ran on a promise to scrap South Korea's ministry of gender equality, played on some of those divisions and stoked biases, particularly among young men.
The opposition Democratic Party managed to retain its majority in the National Assembly and widened it in parliamentary elections held in April, making him the first South Korean leader in decades to never have a majority in Parliament. And then there were his own dismal approval ratings.
The poisonous relationship with opposition lawmakers and their furious efforts to thwart him at every turn paralyzed Mr Yoon's pro-business agenda for two years, stalling his efforts to cut corporate taxes, overhaul the national pension system, and address housing prices.
READ MORE: How Polarized Politics Led South Korea to a Plunge Into Martial Law
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