At 10.23pm on 3 December in Seoul, I was already in bed, alternating between reading a book and watching YouTube cooking reels. That was when Yoon Suk Yeol, the president, declared emergency martial law in South Korea for the first time since 1979.
In an unannounced televised address, Yoon said the imposition of martial law was “aimed at eradicating pro-North Korean forces and protecting the constitutional order of freedom”.
Immediately, my text messages and online chat forums flared up. What the hell is going on? Is this a joke? Can I keep drinking at the bar tonight? Can my children go to school tomorrow? What exactly is the emergency? Utter confusion ensued for the next six hours, until a dramatic sequence of events led to the end of martial law at 4.30am.
This was my first experience of martial law – if this short-lived circus can even be called that – something that, until now, I had only read about in history books. But even in that short time, I was terrified. The experience woke me up, once again, to the severe, unavoidable reality of Korean division. And I remembered how it can be exploited by our leaders to justify repression and control.
Thankfully, this time, Yoon’s antics were curbed. But the martial law fiasco is a testament to both the instability and resilience of South Korean democracy. It is a chilling reminder that the collective trauma of the 20th century dictatorship is not simply history.
It’s still unclear why Yoon took such an extreme measure. Martial law is defined as the temporary rule by military authorities in a time of emergency, when civil authorities are deemed unable to function. In the past, dictators have declared martial law at times of widespread national unrest and turmoil, including the Korean war. This time, it was a business-as-usual Tuesday; earlier that evening I had been for a swim at a government-run public pool.
Yoon’s measure came at a time of personal and political turmoil for him. Corruption scandals have rocked him and his family; the opposition Democratic Party has just insisted on big cuts to the budget bill despite the ruling party’s protests; Yoon’s approval ratings are hovering in the 20s – all unpleasant, sure, but stories that don’t seem all that surprising in a relatively functional democracy.
In his speech declaring martial law, Yoon expressed clear vitriol for his political opposition, for its “anti-state activities plotting rebellion”. Most South Koreans are familiar with this insidious sort of rhetoric. I grew up with this language, and still live with it, through my very conservative family in Busan. It’s a regular reminder that there is a clear political and generational divide related to the Korean division.
Since the creation of South Korea in 1948 and the official separation of the Koreas in 1953, my elders have endured painful poverty and constant threats of North Korean attacks. They painted anti-Communist posters and experienced 16 states of martial law, some stretching for years. This history coloured their worldview, creating a black-and-white binary of Us versus Them, a fight-or-flight mode of protecting one’s boundaries even by persecuting others.
Like many left-leaning young(ish) Koreans, I learned to ignore and even laugh at the horrifying violence embedded in the words of my father, grandfather and rightwing hardliners. I just couldn’t empathise with seeing the world through their anti-Communist lens. I was a teenager when South Korea embarked on the Sunshine Policy in the early 2000s – a more liberal approach to embracing political detente and engagement with North Korea.
“Those Communist demons should be beaten to death,” I recall hearing my hardline conservative relatives say, referring not just to North Korean leaders but more broadly to those who didn’t agree with their political views and the views of the leading conservative party. I see echoes of a similar hate and insecurity in Yoon’s speech.
Martial law is designed to suspend normal civil rights, by extending the power of the military. South Korean history is riddled with tragedies whereby martial law justified the brutal censorship of political opposition and civil liberties. Throughout the 20th century, many Koreans were imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the state, very often under the guise of protecting the country against Communist enemies.
So when Yoon declared martial law, many said, “Does he think we’re in the Park Chung-hee era?” referring to the dictator who ruled throughout the 60s and 70s. In a chilling historical echo, Yoon announced that media outlets would be controlled by the new martial law committee; strikes and rallies would be prohibited; and anyone violating the decree could be arrested without a warrant.
My friends and I joked, in response, about being censored in our private KakaoTalk chats and making sure Christmas parties don’t go past curfew. We joked about how our parents, seasoned veterans of martial law, were already heading to bed, while the kids stayed up in frantic fear.
But behind the jokes, Yoon triggered a deep-seated historical trauma shared by millions of South Koreans, both old and young. Those who lived through decades of dictatorship remembered their terror. Those like me who have never experienced it remembered the terror in the stories we have been told. We doomscrolled, looking at images of helicopters hovering above the National Assembly and fully armed soldiers breaking windows to get in.
This time, fortunately, what most people experienced was momentary confusion and anxiety. People are baffled as to why this even happened: Yoon never had a legal chance of sustaining this fiasco. He has been a lame duck president since the last general election, when the opposition won a landslide in parliament. His own People Power Party did not even know about Yoon’s martial law plans, and the party leader publicly condemned his decision. In a rare show of unity, all the MPs present at the National Assembly voted in the early hours of 4 December to reverse Yoon’s martial law. Yoon ceded.
It is unclear what will come next for Yoon. His close aides have announced their resignation. Many say this scandal is political suicide, illegal and unconstitutional. It is highly likely that the opposition will start an impeachment process against Yoon, possibly to repeat the fate of former president Park Geunhye, the daughter of the late dictator Park Chung-hee. She was ousted from office in 2017 after a corruption scandal.
South Korean democracy is still relatively young, having formally begun in 1987 with the end of the dictatorship. Yoon’s antics show that it does not take much to destabilise the system; past trauma can easily become the present. But there is also resilience. I saw so many South Koreans rallying swiftly and fiercely against Yoon. We now know that our freedoms could be lost in a moment.
