By Ezequiel Peressini, leader of Izquierda Socialista, IWU-FI section in Argentina
Last Tuesday, December 3rd, the far-right government of Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on the grounds that it was protecting the country from ‘communist forces and North Korean allies’ and that ‘the National Assembly has become a monster’. In reality, the government sought to control the social democratic and liberal opposition and the entire parliament, which blocked laws and government appointments, challenged appointments of officials and demanded that the president’s wife be investigated for alleged corruption.
All this unfolded amidst trade union and popular demands, including a doctors’ strike that has been going on for more than a year now, protesting against unjust health care reform. Also notable in July 2024 was the big strike by Samsung workers and their demands for higher wages and the right to unionise. With martial law, the government sought to ban all political activities, civil gatherings and ‘fake news’ in what it called an attempt to save the country from ‘pro-North Korean’ and ‘anti-state forces’.
But his attempted coup ended in defeat for the government and was a shot in the foot. Just six hours after martial law was declared, the National Assembly, meeting in a parliament surrounded by the military, voted to lift the measure. Now, in the midst of strikes and demonstrations, the wounded government of Yoon Suk Yeol is hanging by a thread and is losing the support of his own party, his former allies and even US imperialism is ignoring the coup measure promoted by the president.
Yoon Suk Yeol: Catapulted and sunk by the political crisis
Yoon Suk Yeol of the People’s Power Party (PPP) has been in power since the last presidential election in 2022, which he won by a narrow margin of 247,000 votes (0.73%) in an election where 34 million voters participated, making it the closest election in history. In the last legislative elections held in April 2024, after parliamentary negotiations and the PPP’s reversal, the centre-left and liberal bosses’ opposition managed to control the majority of the National Assembly, taking political polarisation to the extreme.
Yoon Suk Yeol is a systematic vindicator of military dictatorships as an engine for economic development, a messianic eccentric, anti-feminist, conservative, questioning women’s rights and the right to abortion, and, just like other ultra-right-wingers such as Javier Milei in Argentina, a champion of the fight against so-called ‘communism’. In his election campaign he promised to abolish South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality.
Yoon Suk Yeol emerged in the heat of political crisis and instability. Since 1999 he was part of the National Prosecutor’s Office and in 2019 he was appointed by the then ruling Democratic Party (social democrat) as Prosecutor General. From his position he pushed for investigations against the former president, Park Geun-hye, who was impeached on corruption charges in 2016 after strong demonstrations. The former president was imprisoned and then pardoned by the government of Moon Jae-in, of the current opposition Democratic Party of South Korea, who lost the elections in 2022 against the current conservative government, having failed to improve the living conditions of millions of workers.
Martial Law: the beginning of the end for Yoon Suk Yeol?
Martial Law was announced on TV on Tuesday night, December 3rd, and declared the opposition as ‘shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces who are plundering the freedom and happiness of our citizens’.
The government’s Martial Law was taken as a declaration of war by all political and trade union organisations. The majority of the working class and popular sectors rejected the measure. The armed forces, poorly mobilised and very divided, were unable to prevent the functioning of parliament or the incipient rallies against the government.
The government’s coup experiment failed because it lacked a social base within its party, the political opposition and the military. The parliamentarians managed to enter the National Assembly by jumping over walls and fences and assisted by the protesters that defied the armed forces at the gates of parliament. 190 deputies managed to enter and approved the immediate nullification of the Martial Law as unconstitutional, since South Korea is not at war, nor in war-like situations.
The desperation of the president, who in an abrupt repressive and authoritarian turn sought to compensate for his political weakness by mobilising the armed forces, failed. His attempt backfired and within six hours of announcing the declaration of Martial Law, he was forced to lift it.
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s political failure has opened the door to a deepening political crisis and his government hangs in the balance as a veritable mass exodus takes place, with dozens of officials leaving his government and party. According to the local daily Korea Herald, all of Yoon’s aides, including chief of staff Chung, national policy director Sung Tae-yoon and national security adviser Shin Won-sik, as well as 11 senior secretaries, have offered to resign from their posts.
However, the ruling party would refuse to approve Yoon’s dismissal and insists that the president must leave his party. In a separate statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken distanced himself from the coup president, disavowing the government’s action and stressing that: ‘We reaffirm our support for the Korean people and the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea based on shared principles of democracy and the rule of law.”.
The ridiculousness of the action was evident in the resignation of the former defence minister, who apologised for the action and claimed responsibility for the situation and for ‘having given bad advice’ to the president.
The political crisis and the president’s weakness have led the National Assembly to submit six bills to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol. These bills will be discussed in the coming days, amid strikes and demonstrations, and will be resolved by the constitutional court once the appointment of its missing members is resolved and the prime minister is expected to assume power.
Despite the opposition majority in parliament, there are fervent negotiations to win 200 votes out of 300 MPs. In this scenario, the Democratic Party and its allies are preparing to be the replacement and capitalise on the government crisis.
The Working class enters stage to bring down the government
In the midst of this brutal crisis, the working class enters the scene. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, South Korea’s largest trade union organisation, declared an indefinite general strike on Wednesday 4th, demanding the immediate resignation of the president and called for a ‘mass protest’ at Gwanghwamun Square in the centre of the capital Seoul. In a statement, the confederation of more than one million workers said: ‘The president has revealed his undemocratic dictatorship by resorting to this unconstitutional and extreme measure. This marks the end of his regime. We, together with the people of this nation, will not stand idly by’.
The political crisis in South Korea shows that far-right governments do not solve the major social problems suffered by workers and the popular sectors, but rather make them worse. Low wages, precariousness and the severe housing crisis, that particularly affects young people, were drastically reflected in the award-winning blockbuster film ‘Parasite’ or the popular series ‘Squid Game’, fiction being an inevitable reflection of the harsh Korean reality. According to Sarah A. Son, professor of Korean studies at the University of Sheffield, when this series was released in 2021, household debt in South Korea, with 51.7 million inhabitants, exceeded 100% of its GDP, the highest in Asia. The country’s top 20% of earners have a net worth 166 times that of the lowest-earning 20%, a disparity that has increased by 50% since 2017.
In this scenario, the working class, the popular sectors and the youth are organising to find a way out of the economic and social crisis imposed by capitalism and the0 government. The fight for decent wages and pensions, decent housing and safe and stable working conditions, together with the defence of democratic rights, are the driving force of the ongoing struggles. Defeating the government and winning the downfall of Yoon Suk Yeol is the fundamental task of the working class as a whole. In this, they deserve all international solidarity with their struggle, in a new lesson of how to confront the new far-right governments that tighten the working people and attack democratic freedoms.
