The South Korean government has erupted into one of the most bizarre situations that we’ve seen recently. To understand how weird the situation in South Korea is right now, you should know that there is absolutely no emergency of any kind in the country. North Korea has not invaded or started shelling Seoul with artillery shells. Giant alligators have not crawled out of the sewers and started devouring children. They don’t even have any Haitian migrants eating their pets. Yet South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law this week and put troops on the streets. What the hell is going on over there?
President Yeol declared martial law during a shocking late-night announcement on Sunday. He declared his political opponents in the South Korean parliament to be “pro-North Korea, anti-state forces” operating within his country. He declared that his country was falling into national ruin because the opposition party refused to pass his legislative proposals.
Yeol claimed that he was protecting South Korea from the communist forces of North Korea, who were supposedly “plundering the happiness of our people.”
Again—North Korea has not invaded South Korea. President Yeol’s political opponents are simply members of the opposition party. While we’re not experts on South Korean politics, this seems to be a tactic similar to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris calling President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters “Nazis.”
Under the martial law declaration, the military shut down all TV stations and media outlets in South Korea. The declaration also suspended the country’s warrant system, so the military was allowed to arrest anyone violating the rules without question. Troops also surrounded the Parliament building, as President Yeol had declared further meetings of Parliament forbidden.
Protests immediately erupted on the streets and civilians began clashing with the military. Members of the South Korean Parliament managed to get into the building and held an emergency vote. It was nearly unanimous. They overruled President Yeol’s martial law declaration just three hours after he had declared it. This was the shortest martial law implementation in history.
Not that the wackiness was over!
The military has declared loyalty to President Yeol and is still imposing martial law as of this writing. This is despite the clear majority vote to overrule martial law. So much for “defending democracy.” There seems to be a lot of that going on these days.
What’s really happening in South Korea and what is this really about?
President Yeol seems to be trying to stop the Parliament from opening a corruption investigation into his wife, First Lady Kim Keon-hee. Kim has been accused of participating in a $61 million stock manipulation scheme in 2020 involving Deutsche Motors. She also went viral in a 2023 video that was posted to YouTube. An undercover YouTuber working for the ‘Voice of Seoul’ channel recorded a hidden-cam video of the First Lady accepting a $2,200 Dior bag from a pastor. South Korean law prohibits public officials or their spouses from accepting any gifts worth more than $750.
Parliament wanted to open a formal investigation into the First Lady’s alleged corrupt activities, but now meetings of Parliament have been banned and the military has shut down the media in South Korea. In addition to being the shortest martial law declaration in history (technically), it’s also based on the dumbest imaginable reason. The opposition party, which has basically been banned in the so-called “democracy” in South Korea, is calling on President Yeol to resign in shame. We’ll see what happens.
