With the poor journalistic coverage in Brazil (and the West) of the intricacies of Asian life, the sudden headlines gave the impression that everything was very unexpected, unprecedented, surprising, as if born by spontaneous generation – in other words, an exception in a world that would inexorably march towards authoritarian regimes. However, the failed coup, the popular mobilisation and the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol, of the People Power Party (PPP, conservative, far-right) are a direct result of a long and deep governmental crisis. The political polarisation between the PPP and the Democratic Party (social-liberal) has been making the two-party regime dysfunctional in one of the most developed and culturally influential countries in the region, with a great tradition of democratic resistance and social struggles.

It was the third impeachment in South Korea’s democratic history and, according to the Asian and American press, the greatest turbulence experienced by the country since democratisation was won the hard way, thanks to a multitudinous worker and popular uprising in the mid-80s, thus 40 years ago. The currently “impeached” Yoon (the surname comes before the given name) was elected president in 2022, with a difference of 0.7 percentage points against the Democratic Party candidate, Lee Jae-myung. Yoon used to compare himself to Trump, attack feminism as one of the “evils of the nation”, praise murderous dictators of the past and persecute the press (even corporate media). In foreign affairs, he brought Korea even closer to the United States and distanced it from neighbouring China, intensifying the eternal rivalry with North Korea.

Worn down by his authoritarianism, anti-popular neoliberal policies, particularly by a significant crisis in the health sector, in addition to a scandal involving a soldier killed in action during a flood rescue operation, Yoon lost the parliamentary elections in April this year. Upon finding himself without a majority in Congress, he decided to decree Martial Law, with which he intended to govern without parliament and with the Armed Forces. He gave the flimsy excuse of the need to protect the “constitutional order” from destabilisation threats orchestrated by “anti-state” forces, allegedly serving North Korea’s interests. (It is traditional in the Peninsula for the right to accuse opponents of being communists in the pay of North Korea.)

The announcement of Martial Law on 3 December was received with tension in the country of 52 million inhabitants, which has lived under a democratic regime since 1987. The measure, which suspended basic rights of assembly, demonstration, association and expression, was last declared during the crisis installed in 1979, during the military regime (1961-1987), after the assassination of dictator Park Chung Hee. The following year, 1980, the military under the command of dictator Chun Doo-hwan reacted to an uprising of workers and students in Gwangju, killing 200 young people. Therefore, in 2024, many feared mass arrests and repression of political acts.

This year, however, the story was different: in just over 12 hours, a broad popular reaction took over squares across the country, the streets around the parliament building in Seoul, while deputies approved – at 1 AM the following day – a request to suspend the measure. All this in temperatures close to 0 degrees. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of the main actors in democratic and union struggles in past decades, declared an indefinite general strike. Union activists joined feminist, student and progressive associations to hold demonstrations in various cities. It is estimated that, despite the cold and the prohibitions of Martial Law, the acts managed to gather 300,000 to 400,000 people. In the capital, thousands gathered in Gwanghwamun Square, defying the troops, to denounce the coup d’état.

The overthrow of Martial Law by Congress forced Yoon and his cabinet to back down from Martial Law. The Minister of Defence, also extremely unpopular, resigned, along with other members of the government leadership (the chief of staff, the national security adviser and the director of national policy). The group of military officers that formed an extraordinary command to apply the law dissolved. The demonstrations accumulated in the following days, putting the president against the ropes, whose impeachment was put to vote for two consecutive Saturdays. On Saturday the 14^th, the second occasion, the governing party decided not to withdraw from the plenary as it had done on the 7^th. The vote in favour of eight PPP members allowed the approval of Yoon’s impeachment – which was suspended pending the final verdict of a Constitutional Council made up of 6 members.

Victory of mobilisation

It was the victory of protests that did not lose steam for ten straight days. Some estimate more than a million protesters around parliament on the 14^th. The predominantly youthful nature of the acts – among students and young workers – was reflected in the LED batons and mobile phones that illuminated the streets on the freezing nights of vigil, replacing the candles of 2016 (during the struggle for the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, accused of corruption) and in the unanimous chorus of the song “Into the new world” by the female K-Pop group Girls’ Generation – which had already been the anthem of student protests in recent years.

Martial Law was obviously the most immediate reason for the demonstrations, but the roots of the political crisis come from longer ago. The far-right conservative government intensified contradictions of all kinds in South Korean capitalism. Throughout his two years in office, Yoon Suk-yeol carried out a cycle of ultra-neoliberal labour and union reforms, removing the already restricted rights of a salaried class that generally has reduced holidays, works up to 14 hours daily and has trial periods without rights that can last years. The government extended the working day, in some cases, to exhausting 69 hours weekly (!). He frontally attacked feminism, women’s organisation, by extinguishing the Ministry of Gender Equality. He did not give a satisfactory response (in thorough investigation and preventive measures) to civil society’s outcry against the tragedy that occurred on 29 October 2022 in the bohemian neighbourhood of Itaewon, Seoul, when 159 people died asphyxiated or trampled – due to overcrowding – and 195 were injured. Only the Itaewon police chief ended up in prison.

In the first months of this year, a strike by medical residents (12,000 in the country), supported by senior professionals in the sector, exposed to the world the serious crisis in the South Korean health sector: there are not enough doctors for the extensive hospital network (about 300 hospitals) to handle the care of a rapidly ageing population (the population stopped growing in 2022). The government responded with repression against the strikers, threatened to cut medical licenses and insisted on the decision not to increase the number of places in medical schools. Cases of death due to lack of urgent and emergency care multiplied, which transformed the issue into the centre of a national debate about the future.

Adding to this formula of disasters, the government found itself questioned by the lack of transparency in investigations into the death of a soldier in a flood victim rescue operation (which occurred in 2023) and has the first lady accused of corruption for having accepted an extremely expensive designer handbag as a gift.

From destruction to the club of the rich

Strategically located on the Korean Peninsula, a few kilometres from China, below sister and rival North Korea, the country is a central piece for the United States in the dispute for the Northeast of the Asian continent. After the fratricidal Korean War (1950-1953), between a pro-Western (read imperialist) alliance in favour of the South and the North part of the country, led by communists, militarily supported by the Chinese Army and politically by the Soviet Union, 3 million deaths and a destroyed territory remained. (Historical curiosity: there was never an armistice, the two countries remain technically at war, which is why every Korean young man performs two years of military service; not even the BTS boys escape...)

Today, South Korea is part of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), a club of rich countries, with the 14^th largest economy in the world. Its Gross Domestic Product valued at 1.713 trillion dollars (2023 data; compared to just over 2 trillion for Brazil), places it behind Australia by a small difference, but ahead of countries like Spain and Indonesia.

The contrast between the situations from the middle of the last century to the current one is usually explained, by corporate media and neoliberal economists, through a “capitalist miracle”: the execution of an industrialisation model focused on exports with prices at international standards and large investment in education. Heterodox political economists (among whom Marxists are situated) have another view: South Korea took a leap thanks to a developmentalist state policy oriented to create a process of capital accumulation and then growth based on significant state and private investments.

In the 1950s, with US approval, the state carried out agrarian reform, provided credit support, through public banks, to the low-technology consumer goods industry, creating “national” capitalist groups through the privatisation of large companies inherited from Japanese colonisation (between 1910 and 1945, all of Korea was a colony of fascist Japan). These groups are called chaebols. You might think you don’t know any, but LG, Samsung, Hyundai and SK are chaebols, transnational family companies. At the same time, at the time, the country began a literacy and general education effort, which would gain even more weight in the following decades.

The incentive for exports continued in the 1960s, when commercial banks were totally nationalised and a development bank was born. In that decade, Korea made strong investments in transport, communications and other services facilitating exports. In the 1970s, the state gave rise to heavy industries: steel, metal-mechanics, shipbuilding, electronics and chemical products.

At that point, the strengthened domestic market already guaranteed significant demand at home – the so-called domestic demand. The liberal fallacy according to which education explains everything is exposed: there would be nowhere to employ such well-trained labour were it not for heavy investments in industrialisation and infrastructure. Together with Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong (then British territory in China), Korea formed the four first-generation “Asian tigers”, which played a fundamental role in creating an integrated regional market in East Asia, even before China took its capitalist leap from the 1990s, to catapult Asia to the condition of new capitalist pole.

Regional shock at minimum

In the last 30 years, with the digital revolution, Korean capitalism has transitioned to a status where telecommunications and information technology gained decisive weight, not to mention the cultural and entertainment industry, which invades the world with good cinema, pop music groups, cuisine, television series and recently a Nobel Prize in literature. It was this “model” of successful capitalism that surreptitiously entered into crisis in recent years and found itself threatened by Yoon’s excesses, with still unpredictable developments.

With the president impeached, the “prime minister” should govern (who, by the Korean regime is not appointed by Congress, but a kind of vice president with more attributions) until the Constitutional Court evaluates the impeachment and it is possible to call elections – for which this body has 60 to 90 days. However, the president of Yoon’s party, Han Dong-Hoon, has already officially declared that he determines government policies in the absence of the elected president – which the opposition in Congress and in the streets already denounces as a new and poorly disguised coup attempt.

The institutional impasse aggravates uncertainties about a very important country, both economically and geopolitically for the functioning of the imperialist interstate system. South Korea joins Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh on the list of Asian countries that experienced important turbulence in the ending year. As the New York Times points out, “the country now faces a slowing economy, a housing debt crisis, inaccessible real estate prices and a series of other intractable problems”. Perhaps these “intractable problems” of capitalism are the reason for the sudden movement and politicisation of the youngest – who were previously apathetic towards a corrupt and inefficient political system, to become the protagonists of this historic December in the Peninsula.

It is still too early to draw deeper and definitive lessons about the South Korean process. In any case, at least one conclusion jumps out: battles against the far right and their coups are only won if there is mobilisation.

---

Ana Carvalhaes

Israel Dutra

Click here to subscribe to ESSF newsletters in English and or French.