Body and Seoul

by liberal japonicus

It occurred to me that all this talk about US centric politics may not serve the blog very well, so this is a quick post about something we might want to talk about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law

I post the wikipedia page, because wikipedia editors do a pretty good job of collecting lots of info and links and in an event like this, there is a lot more scrutiny, so editing vandalism gets caught. It's also interesting to look at the talk page to see what is going into the discussion. I unfortunately have a full day today, but I wanted to put this up because it was mentioned in a comment.

[added]
A little more grist for the mill. This LGM post doesn't have a lot, but Robert Kelly was visiting Robert Farley, who wrote this. As was pointed out, Robert Kelly was the person in this memorable BBC interview. I don't know if Professor Kelly traveled with his family, but if he did, it reveals a possible motive, get the coup done while those two kids are out of the country.

But seriously, I felt that South Korea was a country that suffered from a form of national PTSD. As this Graniaud article points out, South Korea wasn't free of martial law until 1988(!). Talking to the handful of old-timer English teachers that I got to know who had arrived pre-1988, we might get into a discussion of what it was like when they arrived and it was pretty sobering to think that they had spent the same amount of time as I had in Japan, but the country had gone from martial law to democracy. This also underlines some of the issues with women that I mentioned in previous post.

A bit of a long anecdote. In Japan, you say thank you a lot more than you say in maybe any other country. Non-native speakers like me tend to over-compensate, saying thank you even more. I was told in Vietnam as well that I didn't need to say thank you all the time. A Korean professor I had lunch with also noticed that I often said thank you and he said that instead of saying thank you, I should say 귀하의 협조에 감사드립니다 (gwihaui hyeobjoe kamsadeulibnida), which means 'your cooperation is greatly appreciated', saying that this was what police or other people in authority would say as a kind of sotto voce command. Well, I learned it and pulled it out at places where I got to know the people who worked there. It never failed to get a laugh, the juxtaposition of a foreigner whose Korean was faltering spitting out a phrase that you'd get at a police checkpoint. But it is noteworthy that the joke doesn't translate to other places. That's because it is connected to a familiarity, if only in stories and dramas for younger people, to a time when figures of authority were commanding with a phrase like that.

Most of the commentary makes no connection with other pushes from the Right, but when you think of Orban in Hungary, Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, growing strength of right wing parties in France and Germany, along with countries like Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, you wonder Yoon was totally uninfluenced, or if he was a bit ahead of his time.

This second Guardian article has this

Raphael Rashid, reporting for the Guardian from Seoul, writes that on the morning after the coup, the feeling in South Korea has been one of bafflement and sadness. “For the older generation who fought on the streets against military dictatorships, martial law equals dictatorship, not 21st century Korea. The younger generation is embarrassed that he has ruined their country’s reputation. People are baffled.

I think this is viewpoint is a bit off. The year I was there, 2018-19, I would often pass groups protesting about the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, the female rightest politician who got impeached because of events outside the realm of ordinary politics. She was in office during the Sewol tragedy, and her response was less than sterling. She might have recovered, but she invested a lot of power in an aide who was concurrently involved in a cult led by her father. So she was impeached, but it wasn't in some reaction to the right, it was in response to the personal flaws and I think she still maintains a support base. In fact, the wikipedia page on Park's impeachement has this

In July 2018, it emerged that the Defense Security Command made plans for declaring martial law and authority to use military force to crackdown on protesters, if the Constitutional Court did not uphold Park's removal from office. The DSC had planned to mobilize 200 tanks, 550 armoured vehicles, 4,800 armed personnel, and 1,400 members of special forces in Seoul in order to enforce martial law. Other components of the plan included monitoring and censoring media content and arresting politicians taking part in protests.

So the idea that everyone was shocked by this doesn't seem to capture the fact that this has been looked on as something that might be need to be done, and, like a gun that doesn't really distinguish who it is pointed at, you've got a plan that is in place, so it's easy to see why Yoon, who seems to be in a bubble (especially as his own party denounced him) might think it was an option.

Comments

[wj]

At the same time, the government in the Republic of Georgia is trying a coup to remain in power. (With support from Russia.)

The notable difference (from my admittedly superficial perspective) is that the issue in Georgia is whether to stay on course to join the EU, or snuggle up to Russia. Whereas in Korea the biggest difference appears to be over who can best appeal to anti-feminist young men. Who put me in mind of our incels, actually.

Someone with a clearer view of South Korean politics feel free to correct me on this.

[CharlesWT]

Twitter thread on events after the martial law declaration.

"I'm a South Korean journalist based in New York City. This is a thread about what's happening in South Korea right now after the president declared emergency martial law."
Yejin Gim 김예진

[liberal japonicus]

I skipped over this LGM post cause I thought it was about US incels, but it is making a point about Korea, similar to wj

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/12/south-korean-president-declares-martial-law-accuses-political-opposition-of-trying-to-overthrow-democracy

I'm not so sure about the reported take, though the person seems to be in country. I talked about the appeal to anti feminist men in the 4B post, but the summary sounds like it is incel all the way down, and there hasn't been a wave of incel support for Yoon or the coup.

This CBC video is a good explainer, I think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kj8UcCFcX0

[liberal japonicus]

This just up from the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/05/south-korea-updates-martial-law-yoon-suk-yeol-impeachment-kim-yong-hyun

South Korea’s ruling party says it will rally behind the beleaguered president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to block a move by the opposition to impeach him over his botched and controversial attempt to impose martial law.

The floor leader of the People Power party vowed on Thursday that its lawmakers would “unite” to defeat the opposition-led motion to impeach the deeply unpopular leader.

However, the Straits Times reports that even though Choo Kyung-ho is opposing the impeachment, he has asked Yoon to leave the party.

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/s-koreas-ruling-people-power-party-chief-asks-president-to-leave-party

I've been reading a bit about Choo Kyung-ho and was surprised to see that he did an MA at U of Oregon and it seems that his time overlapped with mine.
https://koreapro.org/2024/05/choo-kyung-ho-from-finance-minister-to-ruling-party-floor-leader/

Small world.