President Yoon Suk-yeol’s failed attempt to declare martial law and the subsequent impeachment battle underscored the fragility of South Korea’s young democracy. Despite the country’s economic and cultural achievements, deepening polarization and structural vulnerabilities could pave the way for an authoritarian resurgence.
BOSTON – Over the past decade, South Korea has ascended to the pinnacle of global cool as K-pop sensations like BTS and Blackpink, the Oscar-winning film Parasite, and the Netflix mega-hit Squid Game captivated audiences worldwide. Korean culinary trends – from fusion kimchi dishes to gochujang (a red chili paste) – have found their way to menus far beyond the country’s borders, and Korean classical musicians like pianist Seong-Jin Cho regularly grace prestigious concert halls. The ubiquity of Samsung phones, LG appliances, and Hyundai cars underscores South Korea’s newfound cultural and economic reach.
The rise of South Korean soft power, often referred to as the “Korean Wave” (hallyu), made former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s abrupt declaration of martial law on December 3 all the more shocking and bizarre. The timing added to the surreal nature of the moment: just days after Yoon’s authoritarian push collapsed, novelist Han Kang took the stage in Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature – the first Korean author to do so.
The contrast was striking. While Han’s achievement marked a cultural high point, Yoon’s effort to impose martial law was the country’s seventeenth authoritarian bid since 1948 – a jarring reminder of a past many South Koreans thought was long behind them.
Yoon has now been impeached and removed from the presidency following a unanimous ruling by South Korea’s Constitutional Court. This raises an unsettling question: How can a country be so innovative when its political system remains marred by authoritarian undercurrents, with a president who is willing to trample the Constitution and – after being forced to retract his martial law declaration – incite violent mobs to protect him from arrest?
The opposition-led National Assembly, which impeached Yoon on December 14 – notably, only on the second attempt and after members of Yoon’s own party turned against him – is far from blameless. It, too, has undermined democratic norms by using impeachment as a partisan weapon, introducing no fewer than 30 impeachment bills since June 2024. In addition to Yoon, the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has impeached one of the two acting presidents who briefly succeeded him, and is trying to impeach the other, though the Constitutional Court later reinstated Prime Minister Han Duck-soo.
Not so Yoon, who had argued that the DPK’s relentless obstruction made it impossible for him to govern and that he had no choice but to declare martial law. But while the questionable nature of the DPK’s impeachment efforts does lend some credence to Yoon’s complaints, nothing justified his radical assault on South Korea’s democratic system. Now that the Court has upheld his impeachment, he will face a criminal trial – an extraordinary reckoning for a leader who, in his final days in office, nearly pushed South Korea’s fragile democracy to its breaking point.
The Promise of Democracy
Since the end of military rule in 1987, South Korea has been widely praised for its transformation from a war-ravaged, impoverished country into one of the world’s wealthiest economies. Yet, given the thousands of years of authoritarian rule on the Korean Peninsula up to that point, the establishment of South Korean democracy is something of a miracle.
During military rule, especially under Park Chung-hee’s 17-year dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, presidents wielded immense power. To prevent future leaders from consolidating power as Park and his successors had, a 1988 constitutional amendment limited the presidency to a single five-year term.
By the late 1990s, the South Korean military became largely professionalized. It operated under civilian control and focused on external threats, like North Korea, rather than using violence against citizens and blocking parliamentarians from entering the National Assembly building – both tactics which Yoon employed in his effort to impose martial law.
Han’s own story illustrates these profound shifts. Born in 1970, she grew up in provincial Gwangju under Park’s authoritarian regime, which punished dissent with imprisonment, torture, and even death. Schools enforced military-style discipline, and children were expected to submit unquestioningly to their teachers’ authority and adhere to strict codes of dress and conduct. Boys had buzz cuts, girls had regulation-length hair, and there was no mixing of the sexes. Individuality was discouraged, and questioning schools’ anti-Communist and anti-North Korea teachings was unthinkable.
In 1980, Han’s family moved to Seoul, just months before the Gwangju Uprising, when citizens and students – many of whom were teens and young adults – rose up against Chun Doo-hwan, who had seized power after Park’s assassination the previous year. Although Han was only nine years old when her family moved from Gwangju to Seoul, her 2014 novel Human Acts poignantly captures the brutality with which Chun’s troops suppressed the uprising.
Human Acts could not have been published anywhere near the time of the Gwangju killings because, under authoritarian rule, the government tightly controlled the media, scrutinizing books, films, TV shows, song lyrics, and visual arts in order to suppress anti-government messages. In 1976, the military regime established the Public Performance Ethics Committee as its primary censorship body.
By the mid-1980s, however, the Committee had been dismantled, paving the way for greater artistic and intellectual freedom. The end of the military dictatorship in 1987 marked a turning point, as democracy and civil liberties unleashed the country’s creative potential and allowed previously taboo subjects like the Gwangju Uprising to be discussed openly.
In her 2021 novel We Do Not Part, recently translated into English, Han addresses another traumatic chapter of South Korea’s hidden history: the massacre of Jeju islanders between 1947 and 1954. In 2019, a New York Times article described the island as a “human slaughterhouse” where an estimated 30,000 people – roughly one-tenth of the island’s population – were “killed by police, soldiers, and anti-Communist vigilantes hunting for leftist insurgents and their relatives.”
For some 40 years, the public could freely learn about the arbitrariness and brutality of the military regime, especially in its final decade, from the press, histories, novels, and documentaries often packed with eyewitnesses. During this period, Koreans became deeply committed to the rule of law and an independent, robust judiciary, which is a key reason why they turned out, in the hundreds of thousands, to protest against Yoon’s martial law declaration.
But despite the great strides South Korea has made toward good governance, corruption remains a persistent issue: over the past 16 years, three consecutive presidents – Roh Moo-hyun, Lee Myung-bak, and Park Geun-hye (Park’s daughter) – became embroiled in significant corruption scandals. Park Geun-hye was convicted of abuse of power and bribery and sentenced to 24 years in prison, of which she served nearly five years before she was pardoned and released in 2021. Lee, who was sentenced to 17 years for bribery, embezzlement, and tax evasion, was also pardoned in 2022. The Constitutional Court nullified Roh’s impeachment, though the investigation of him for bribery continued after he left office, and he took his own life in 2009.
Storm Clouds
Unfortunately, the transition to democracy did little to ease political polarization. The animosity between the left and the right is deeply ingrained in South Korean politics, owing to the lasting impact of the Cold War and the ongoing conflict with North Korea. The Gwangju Uprising, for example, remains a divisive chapter in South Korea’s history, as does the Jeju massacre. Although the government has officially acknowledged its role in the killing of innocent civilians in Jeju and issued a formal apology in 2003, many on the far right still believe the victims were communists and supporters of North Korea.
The rise of social media has, as elsewhere, generated sparks that can ignite this tinderbox. Long before December 3, conspiracy theories about stolen elections, Chinese interference in the country’s politics, and North Korea’s alleged influence over liberals proliferated on digital platforms, fueling far-right calls for martial law. These tensions fueled the smaller counter-protests against Yoon’s removal, and continue to cast a shadow over the country’s democratic system.
It is worth noting that before winning the Nobel Prize, Han had been placed on a “cultural blacklist” during Park Geun-hye’s presidency (2013-17), along with Parasite director Bong Joon-ho. Human Acts was excluded from a government program that would have facilitated its translation into major global languages, owing to official concerns over its “ideological bias.” To this day, while most Koreans take pride in Han’s success, she continues to be targeted for her perceived political views. Rather than engaging with her literary output, many of her critics view her portrayal of South Korea’s repressive past and state-sanctioned violence as a threat to the proud, optimistic nationalism they favor.
In October, author Kim Gyu-na triggered a viral backlash after accusing Han of “distorting the reality” of the Gwangju and Jeju atrocities. In response, the former president of South Korea’s Literature Translation Institute (LTI) – who helped launch Han’s international career – defended his protégé, arguing that Han is “not a radical left-wing writer who spreads left-wing ideology” and condemning Han’s right-wing detractors for trying “to drag her achievement into the ideological and political arena.”
The attacks on Han align with much of Yoon’s rhetoric, especially in the lead-up to his declaration of martial law. In December, for example, Yoon resorted to classic red-baiting rhetoric to justify his move, claiming it was necessary to “eradicate the shameless pro-North, anti-state factions” in the National Assembly. In his subsequent appearances before the Constitutional Court, Yoon repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he was trying to protect the country from existential threats.
Yoon has long relied on right-wing influencers to promote his agenda. In 2022, he even went so far as to invite 30 far-right YouTubers to his inauguration, appointing several of them to official positions. As one commentator in the conservative JoongAng Daily put it, Yoon’s “YouTube addiction” had “ruined his regime.”
“Imperial” President or King?
New communication technologies and longstanding ideological rivalries are not the only factors threatening to destabilize South Korea’s democracy. The country’s political structure has fostered an “imperial presidency” that places few institutional checks or balances on presidents’ control over the budget, administration, education, and legal systems.
Unlike in the United States and other democracies, South Korea’s legislature has no control over the country’s finances once national budgets are approved. There is scant legislative oversight of how money is spent.
A contributing factor here is that political parties primarily exist to elect candidates, rather than to represent their constituents’ interests. As a result, presidential elections have become winner-takes-all contests with little room for compromise and cooperation, which are neither institutionally nor culturally valued. In 2021, Yoon was reportedly seen with the character for “king” written on his palm during a televised campaign event – an ominous sign that hinted at his authoritarian ambitions.
The presidency’s powers, moreover, extend well beyond the political sphere. The government, for example, has played a key role in promoting the country’s creative industries. After the 1997-98 financial crisis, when South Korea was forced to seek a $55 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund, South Koreans – once buoyed by their country’s economic “miracle” – experienced a palpable sense of collective humiliation. In response, the Ministry of Culture established a dedicated department focused on pop music, dance, fashion, and entertainment, investing heavily in developing young talent, building large concert halls, and promoting cultural diplomacy. K-pop soon emerged as one of South Korea’s top exports, alongside cars and semiconductors, and a key component of the country’s soft power.
Even today, the government’s Content Industry Promotion Committee coordinates efforts across multiple ministries, local and provincial governments, civil society, and the private sector to promote K-pop music. It invests billions of dollars in new infrastructure and private content companies while also cutting regulations and taxes to “nurture the next BTS and the next ‘Squid Game.’”
South Korean writers have also benefited from state support through the LTI, a government-backed organization dedicated to developing and promoting Korean literature globally. The LTI translates Korean works into dozens of languages and helps publish them abroad, exemplifying the country’s “systematic approach” to pursuing the Nobel Prize. The LTI helped finance Deborah Smith’s translations of Han’s novels into English, elevating Han to international literary stardom.
Han and other prominent writers are now at the forefront of the struggle to protect South Korean democracy, having joined the 414 literary figures who signed a petition calling for Yoon’s “immediate impeachment.” Removing him from office, Han said before the Constitutional Court’s ruling, “is about safeguarding universal values.”
But the road ahead is fraught with risks. Now that the Constitutional Court has upheld Yoon’s impeachment and removal from the presidency, violence could yet still erupt, with some even warning of “civil war.” Much will depend on how Yoon’s party behaves in the forthcoming May election for a new president. But if Yoon had prevailed, martial law could have been legitimized, with severe repercussions for South Korea’s democracy. All the same, the Economist’s Global Democracy Index has downgraded South Korea from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” – a label that feels less like a warning than like a prophecy.