Emanuel Pastreich
Middle-aged parents who remember the protests of students against the military regime of President Chun Duhwan in South Korea from their childhood, took their sons and daughters out to watch the protests against President Yoon Suk-yeol last week. They were assuming that Yoon is just going to roll over soon and enter prison like so many Korean presidents before him.
Maybe. But might they have their historical moment wrong, or are they unaware of what tricks tricky Yoon may still have up his sleeve? Could those gazing on at the protests with amusement be akin to the picnickers who showed up for First Bull Run in 1861, and found themselves running for their lives when things did not go according to plan?
Let us be honest, Yoon has always been a fighter–and a mean fighter at that—that is how he fought his way up to be president from prosecutor for the first time in S. Korean history. This is a man who led the impeachment against conservative president Park Geunhye, and then flipped around to lead the legal attacks on Moon Jae-in and the Democrats.
Moreover, this former head prosecutor who directed the impeachment of Park knows the impeachment process inside out. He knows how to take down a president, and, equally importantly, how to survive an impeachment. At this point, having been marked for destruction by the liberals, and abandoned by most conservatives. It looks like Yoon’s goose is cooked. But is it really?
Let us not forget that former President Roh Moo-hyun was similarly attacked from the left and the right and was able to turn it around to his advantage.
Although Yoon lacks the legitimacy that Roh had when he was impeached back then in May, 2004, Yoon has something that Roh did not. He has the support of a small group of loyalists in politics, in government, and in the military, supporters who are not shy at all about their methods or their statements.
But there is more. Yoon has earned a lot of brownie points with the US military by backing basically every single proposal for weapons systems or military exercises to the hilt. Moreover, he has embraced the trilateral alliance of South Korea, Japan, and the United States to a degree that no Korean politician had dared. He impressed more than a few American generals with his can-do attitude.
And then there is Donald Trump waiting in the wings.
Trump is the central figure in a push to make it look like the United States is great again, leading pushes for massive overseas interference in Syria, Romania, Ukraine, and Georgia—and elsewhere. What might Donald Trump have said to Yoon? Might he have told Yoon that if he can just survive until January 20, the Donald has a plan? Certainly Yoon, with his backing in military intelligence, has the potential to keep the Supreme Court tied up and scared until he can figure out a comeback.
Let us not forget that Trump went through two political trial impeachments that made it seem as if he was doomed, but that only increased his popularity when he survived them. He would most certainly be sympathetic to Yoon at this point. In fact, you could even say Yoon is a sort of K-Trump.
Of course, the cowardly leadership in the PPP knew that they would have to drop Yoon eventually. For strategic reasons, they did not want to appear weak in the first vote. In party politics it seems smartest to dump Yoon. But Yoon is playing a different kind of game and if he had the gall to declare martial law and to call all his opponents spies for North Korea, he might just have some other crazy plan in store for Korea that the progressives never thought he might try.
Trump, just a month from assuming office, may well see the brash upstart Yoon as his own apprentice, waiting to get a bit of support from the man.
South Korea, during that time will be running on remote control, whether depending on mid-level bureaucrats, or increasingly on the outsourcing of government functions to corporations. That said, this is a major institutional crisis in that the chain of command has been completely disrupted. The disruption in government in South Korea is taking place at the same time of similar events in Georgia, in Romania, in Syria, manmade crises in which government itself, and constitutional rule, is being undermined.
It is hard to know what will happen. Normally impeachment would go smoothly and he would be on his way to jail, like other Korean presidents. But there are enormous subterranean fights going on within the US military right now as the Trump followers try to extend control around the world.
The Trump and anti-Trump, Yoon and anti-Yoon, battles could line up in strange and unpredictable ways. People underestimated Donald Trump when he took on the entire system, after all, in the US. That means that there is the possibility that the entire political order in South Korea, and by extension in other nations in the region like Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere, may be impacted by the fallout from this strong man approach to politics.
