South Koreans Must Not Let Their President's Failed Self-Coup Go to Waste
A rare opportunity to entrench democracy is at hand.
The political spasm that gripped South Korea last night has been widely seen as a portent of doom, but it need not be. Taking a page from Peru’s political playbook, Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s unpopular, thin-skinned, ineffective president attempted an autogolpe, or self-coup—a power-play against the institutions of the country he was elected to lead.
Following a series of deadlocked budget negotiations with the opposition-run legislature, Yoon stunned the nation with a late-night speech declaring martial law on the flimsy pretext that the state was under threat. The move would formally put the country under military rule, suspending guarantees of free speech and assembly. Yoon sent soldiers into parliament to try to intimidate opposition lawmakers.
The power grab fell apart after a night full of drama when parliament voted to reverse the martial law decree, forcing Yoon to backtrack a scant six hours after his initial move. The near-instant collapse of this power-grab made for dramatic news footage that seemed to show a democracy spiraling into crisis. And yet, if deftly handled, the whole episode could well leave South Korea’s democracy stronger.
The conventional wisdom is that an autogolpe, even if foiled, is a sure sign that your democracy is badly malfunctioning. In South Korea, though, the problem seems to be not so much institutional dysfunction as a president who is very bad at politics. From the moment he was elected, Yoon has dismayed Koreans with his haughtiness, his disinterest in parliamentary give-and-take, and his disdain in general for democratic norms. Trying to lead a country whose parliament he does not control, he seems to have thought negotiating the compromises it takes to make divided government work was beneath him, and that he would be better off dictating down the barrel of a gun.
The attempt backfired pretty much immediately, and parliament is now moving to impeach Yoon on the back of a groundswell of disgust with his autocratic power grab.
Are we so sure this is bad news? A successful coup can set democratic institutions back by decades, but failed ones can sometimes reinvigorate the democracies they’ve targeted.
On February 23, 1981, a high-stakes session of the Spanish parliament called to swear in a new prime minister was interrupted by gunfire as a group of soldiers tried to put an end to Spain’s fledgling experiment with democracy and return it to military dictatorship. The coup collapsed almost immediately, and Spaniards poured into the streets by the millions to express their support for their new democracy.
Far more than the slow, plodding political reforms that had brought them to that point, Spaniards remember the coup and its collapse as the true start of their democracy: the moment when the whole nation looked into the abyss and put out a collective cry of “hell no, never again!” The bullet holes the rebels shot into the ceiling of the lower house’s debating chamber were left unrepaired, a silent reminder of the fragility of the democratic system, and of the mass mobilization it took to defend it.
Liberal democracy, it has been said a million times before, is such a dull, procedural affair that it often struggles to rally deep emotional attachment even from its supporters. Crises like the one South Korea has just gone through—moments when the survival of liberal democracy seems in doubt—can sometimes square the circle, renewing people’s commitment to democratic ideals and binding them emotionally to a system that so often errs on the side of limp proceduralism.
Which is why as I saw Koreans pouring into the streets of Seoul last night to reject the president’s power grab, I felt more hopeful than afraid. Their country is going through the kind of crisis that, if courageously handled, can leave a democracy stronger. For their sake and ours, let’s hope they succeed.
Quico Toro is a contributing editor at Persuasion and writes the Substack One Percent Brighter.
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This is the best analysis I have heard or read since this whole strange episode occurred. Another great piece from a great thinker!
Very important with civic action and engagement. Even a oneday dictatorship is still a dictatorship