South Korea: Protests block attempted coup
Carl Simmons (CWI Japan)
At 11pm on 3 December, President Yoon Suk Yeol of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) made a public broadcast in which he accused his political opponents of “anti-state activities,” “collaboration with North Korean communists” and of trying to overthrow the country’s “liberal democracy” by creating a “legislative dictatorship”. The Army Chief of Staff, Park An-su, announced that “all political activities… rallies and protests are banned.” The decree put all media under the control of military authorities and ordered trainee doctors, who had resigned en masse, to return to work within 48 hours and banned strikes.
Detention orders were issued for a number of Yoon’s opponents including the leader of the opposition Democratic Party (DKP), but also the leader of his own conservative People Power Party (PPP) and, according to some reports, the leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU).
The KCTU played a central role in opposing this attempted coup. In an emergency meeting, the KCTU leadership called on its members to begin an indefinite general strike until Yoon was removed from office. The threat that the power of the organised working class would be mobilised to overturn the coup and defend democratic rights was central to the coup’s rapid collapse.
While this cut across the call for an indefinite general strike, key groups of workers, such as metal and railway workers, had already taken strike action in a bold signal of workers’ resolve. The militant Korean labour movement has a chance to put its stamp on future events, intervening in the deepening political crisis of the ruling class and Korean capitalism.
Coup collapses
The National Assembly was not in session at the time of Yoon’s broadcast and police officers blocked entrances to the building in an attempt to stop MPs from voting on the declaration. However, in social media posts read by millions, opposition leaders called for people to assemble outside the National Assembly building to oppose the bill.
Most broadcasters also ignored the decree and continued to cover the popular mobilisation that developed. As Assembly members arrived, protesters confronted police and members of the army’s special services and helped them climb over fences into the building.
Eventually, enough Assembly members were able to make it to the National Assembly to hold a vote, including those from Yoon’s party, voting unanimously to lift the martial law. Six hours after the declaration, Yoon had conceded defeat and lifted martial law himself.
Most of the coverage in the Western press has treated this attempted coup and its aftermath as merely an aberration in South Korea’s development as a bastion of liberal democracy in Asia. It was the result of a politically incompetent and unpopular president frustrated by his inability to pass his budget and important policies through an opposition-dominated National Assembly and who moved against it to prevent it from launching an investigation into his wife for corruption.
According to this narrative, the defeat of the coup shows the resilience of South Korean ‘democracy’. One Singaporean television news channel even declared: “Capitalism is the unsung hero of South Korean democracy”. This account bears little relation to reality. Other accounts mention the political polarisation between the ruling and opposition parties, both of which are firmly committed to capitalism, drawing superficial comparisons with US politics but ignoring important differences. What lies behind Yoon’s coup attempt and what is likely to happen from now?
Vibrant Asian democracy?
While South Korea is today an advanced capitalist country, it is hardly a typical one. Formerly a Japanese colony, after Japan’s defeat in World War Two, Korea was plunged into war between 1950 and 1953. The Korean War was the first major conflict of the Cold War between the imperialist powers and the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Out of the Korean War, a regime modelled on Stalin’s Russia emerged in the North and an impoverished and autocratic capitalist state emerged in the South. Democracy had to be fought for by mass popular movements that faced brutal repression from right-wing US-backed regimes. As industry developed from the 1970s onwards, the labour movement and independent trade unions played a major role in the struggle for democratic rights.
While Yoon’s coup may have been the first open coup attempt for nearly forty years, today’s South Korean state still carries the imprint of its autocratic past.
The National Security Act introduced in 1948, just prior to the Korean War, is still on the books and it allows for up to seven years imprisonment for anyone “who praises, incites or propagates the activities of an anti-government organisation”. In 2013, the Constitutional Court dissolved the United Progressive Party, a broad vaguely leftist party that had won 13 out of 300 seats in the National Assembly, on the grounds of allegedly ‘pro-North Korean views’. Leaders of the militant KCTU have repeatedly been arrested on various spurious charges under both ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ governments.
Political polarisation
Observers have pointed to the political polarisation between Yoon’s misnamed People Power Party (PPP) and the opposition Democratic Party (DKP). While the DKP has its origins in the democracy movement that overturned military rule in the 1980s, it is a pro-capitalist, broad-tent party that includes people who would be labelled ‘centre-left’ to ‘centre-right’ in most countries. Because of repression, which has made organising left-wing parties difficult, and a voting system rigged against them, much of the Korean left, including trade union leaders, have tended to support this party as the ‘lesser evil’. Invariably though, DKP governments have not kept their promises and betrayed the labour movement.
Yoon was originally appointed as the public prosecutor for Seoul Central district by former DKP president Moon Jae-in, and had played a role in prosecuting former presidents such as Park Geun-hye and a number of former officials and business executives. The relationship turned sour when he attempted to prosecute a number of DKP representatives.
Yoon subsequently joined the conservative PPP and narrowly won the party’s primaries to become its presidential candidate on a programme of unregulated free-market capitalism.
Foreign policy
The immediate trigger for Yoon’s coup was probably the investigation into his wife for corruption. However, there is evidence that the coup was planned up to six months before. Beyond the ‘personal factors’ that divide the capitalist political parties, there are more substantial differences within the South Korean elites. The attempted coup exposed very real policy divisions within the ruling class.
The rise of China as a major power and the war in the Ukraine have led to changes in foreign policy. Korea lies on one of the fault lines of what the IMF has called the world’s “shifting geopolitical tectonic plates”. Despite the fact that South Korea is firmly integrated into the system of US alliances, with over 27,000 US troops stationed on its territory, its elites have adopted a basically pragmatic foreign policy. This includes pursuing the eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula which necessitates engagement with both China and Russia. The South Korean economy benefited enormously from trade with China between 2003 and 2023, becoming its largest trading partner. It is only in the last two years, with the rise in trade frictions between the US and China, that the relationship has soured and South Korea has adopted a policy of ‘de-risking’ and looking to alternative export markets and investment opportunities in south east Asia.
Ironically for the man who just launched a military coup attempting to suspend democratic rights and detain political rivals, Yoon adopted a policy called ‘values diplomacy’. It emphasised building stronger relationships with countries which ‘shared common values’ with the South Korea. Yoon used the word “freedom” some 35 times in his inaugural address. Despite much talk about a ‘rules-governed international order’, what it means in reality is a much harder line in relationships with North Korea and China, and a closer relationship with the US and, most problematically for Yoon, with Japan.
The South Korean ruling class has historically cloaked itself with an anti-Japanese nationalism in an attempt to cut across class divisions. As the former colonial power, there are many historical and other disputes between South Korea and Japan.
While socialists are internationalists and stand for the closest possible unity of Korean and Japanese workers, we are not indifferent to the grievances of those who suffered under colonial rule. The Japanese military regime that committed crimes in Korea and other Japanese colonies was also the enemy of the Japanese labour movement. Yoon’s policies have coincided with the US Biden administration’s promotion of alliances aimed at countering China and so were greeted enthusiastically. This led to the trilateral joint statement of the three countries in November 2024, sharply critical of North Korea, China and Russia.
For Yoon, the desire for a closer alliance with Japan has meant re-writing Korean history. He promoted controversial figures from the Korean ‘New Right’ who argue that the Japanese occupation was a positive factor in the modernisation of Korea. Controversially, in 2024 he appointed New Right figures as the director and chair of the Independence Hall of Korea, sparking protests from the Korean Liberation Association (an organisation that commemorates Korean independence) and others. His ‘solution’ to the forced labour issue, where Japanese companies had been ordered by Korean courts to compensate the victims, involved Korean companies paying the compensation instead and provoked outrage and criticism from wide layers of the population.
An indication of the importance of the question of relations with Japan was that the impeachment resolution drawn up by the DKP and put to the assembly on 7 December contained the following paragraph: “In addition, under the guise of so-called ‘value diplomacy’, Yoon has neglected geopolitical balance, antagonising North Korea, China, and Russia, adhering to a bizarre Japan-centred foreign policy, and appointing pro-Japan individuals to key government positions, thereby causing isolation in north east Asia and triggering a crisis of war, abandoning his duty to protect national security and the people.”
The war in Ukraine has produced further problems for Yoon’s foreign policy. The war has taken on elements of a proxy war between North and South. The North has attempted to break its isolation by building stronger links with both Russia and China and has sent troops to fight on the Russian side. South Korea, which has one of the most developed armaments industry in the world, has provided some assistance to Ukraine supplying them with body armour and medical supplies but has so far resisted requests from the Ukrainian Zelensky regime for the supply of artillery and air defence systems. Yoon has refused to rule out the supply of these weapons, making it dependent on what North Korea and the Russian do from now. A recent opinion poll showed 82% of the public were opposed to supplying Ukraine with arms. This is not due to any sympathy for the Putin-regime, but a fear it would retaliate by supplying the North with weapons and technologies, including those related to its nuclear programme.
Where to now?
The drama unfolding in South Korea has definitely not reached a conclusion. While Yoon has rescinded the declaration of martial law, he is still in power. Despite massive popular pressure, an opinion poll showed 72% supported impeachment. On 7 December the ruling PPP boycotted Saturday’s impeachment vote, leaving the assembly inquorate. Anger was expressed by protesters outside the National Assembly, which organisers claimed was over a million strong.
Kim Min-seok, a DPK MP, who was ridiculed when he pointed out in August that Yoon was preparing a coup, stated in an interview with the liberal Hankyoreh newspaper: “The president’s declaration [of martial law] was valid for all of two or three hours. But this is likely only the first wave. The embers are still glowing.” While a second coup attempt is not the most likely development, it cannot be ruled out. The opposition is correct in arguing that Yoon must go immediately.
The PPP fears the impeachment of Yoon because the presidential elections that would then need to be held within sixty days would likely mean a disastrous result for it. The party is likely trying to delay any election until after the DKP leader’s appeal against a corruption conviction, and who is also the DKP’s likely presidential candidate. The PPP party leader Han Dong-hoon has talked about an ‘orderly resignation’. But as someone who was targeted for detention in the coup, he is playing a dangerous game. He has claimed that Yoon has had his powers over the army removed and that he and the Prime Minister are in control. But few trust the promises that Yoon has made to Han, that he will resign at a time of the party’s choosing.
The opposition has correctly pointed out that there is no legal basis for what is basically an extra-legal seizure of power by the ruling party and have promised to submit further impeachment resolutions. It has also stated opposition to other possible ways of removing Yoon, for example by a bill to shorten his term in office.
The capitalist class, both in South Korea and internationally, fear that Yoon and the ruling party’s attempt to cling to power will lead to a deepening of the movement and its radicalisation. A report published by Eurasia Group on 8 December warned that, in addition to swelling demonstrations, “strikes and more violent forms of dissent” are likely. The popular movement is unlikely to subside and disappointment can rapidly turn to anger.
In its latest statement, the KCTU calls for the dissolution of the ruling PPP. But who is going to enforce this, the constitutional court? How is this going to be accomplished? The KCTU has called on its members to participate in the candlelight demonstrations for the ouster of Yoon. The working class needs to rely on its own forces. The labour movement can’t put its trust in the opposition leaders either. Unions should take the initiative in building popular committees based on workplaces, but drawing in residents and citizens groups, to give direction to the movement, to ensure Yoon’s removal and begin building an alternative to the pro-capitalist political parties whose defence of the profit system makes them incapable of consistently defending democratic rights, whatever positions they may have taken on Yoon’s attempted coup.
By taking the initiative and the lead in the struggle to defend democratic rights, the KCTU could lay the basis for the creation of a genuine mass party of the Korean working class. That would need the broadening out of the struggle, and the raising of additional demands, which could include the abolition of the National Security Act and all undemocratic aspects of the present South Korean constitution.
Far from capitalism being “the unsung hero of South Korean democracy,” democratic rights can only be secured in Korea by the organised working class placing itself at the head of the mass movement and making a decisive break with capitalism and the power of the capitalist conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy.
