World’s Worst Autogolpe?

The Patterson School had the exceptional good fortune yesterday evening to enjoy the company of Dr. Robert Kelly of Pusan National University, who was in town to speak on issues of South Korean national security. This morning I invited Bob on a junket to the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, and along the way we stopped at Biscuit Belly for breakfast. As I sat down in preparation for ingesting my “Fire in Your Belly” biscuit, a notification came across my phone that President Yoon had declared martial law in South Korea. Bob’s notifications were off but he immediately contacted his people in South Korea, most of whom were asleep by the time of the decree. Over the next couple of hours information trickled out as Bob received huge numbers of media requests… all said, it was an awfully interesting morning. Also, I strongly recommend the Buffalo Trace Distillery tour.

With respect to my own thoughts… I can’t really add all that much to what Paul wrote a few hours ago. While it’s true that there are some connections between Yoon’s coalition and the transnational Right, I’m not sure that it’s all that useful to use the term “fascism” to describe what’s going on here; feels more like a pathetic effort at Sparkling Authoritarianism. Yoon has effectively no remaining base of support in the South Korean electorate, and I’m pretty sure that the army only went along as far as they did because they were as shocked and confused by the developments as anyone else. The forthright and assertive response of the legislature and the Street demonstrated very quickly that Yoon’s effort was going nowhere. Having visited Seoul just a couple of years ago, I am surprised as anyone else at the thought that Yoon believed he might get away with this; the RoK is an extremely robust democracy with strong traditions or protest and participation, along with living memory of military rule and martial law. There’s no appetite for going back. It does not seem likely that the Yoon presidency has much of a future.