South Korea’s beleaguered President Yoon Suk-yeol has now formally been charged with insurrection and will stand trial. Yoon remains in office, though formal duties have been suspended. He was arrested on Dec. 19, though his salary continues and he received a planned raise.
He is the first president of South Korea to be formally charged with a crime while still in office.
This crisis was touched off on Dec. 3 when Yoon formally declared, and attempted to impose, martial law amid political turmoil related to accusations of corruption.
Soldiers did surround and enter the parliament, but did not actually take control of the legislature. Massive popular protest of Yoon’s move included members of his own political party.
This serious crisis overshadows, but does not overthrow, South Korea’s progress.
As recently as the early 1960s, the nation was one of the poorest in the world. A peasant society, the entire Korean Peninsula was devastated by the Korean War of 1950-53. Yet today, the Republic of Korea ranks among the top 20 economies in the world, holding leadership roles in the automobile, advanced electronics, shipbuilding and other industries.
Rapid industrialization and economic modernization are complemented by striking transition from dictatorship to democracy. President and Gen. Park Chung-hee stifled incipient democracy and imposed extremely harsh military authoritarianism for nearly two decades.
He was assassinated in 1979 by the head of the KCIA, the national intelligence agency. In Korean memory, he remains a respected symbol of strength and effectiveness for many, though with progress and the passage of time that fades.
Gen. Park was succeeded as chief executive by two more generals, Chun Doo Hwan and Roe Tae Woo, but growing pressure for true democratic representation proved insurmountable.
The capstone of the transition to democracy was the election of Kim Dae-Jung as president in 1998. He completed his five-year term without interruption, and in 2000 received the Nobel Peace Prize.
A public symbol of opposition to Park’s dictatorship, he was imprisoned for several years. On another occasion, KCIA agents kidnapped him and planned to kill him. Only the intervention of senior U.S. CIA official Don Gregg saved his life.
South Korea’s remarkable domestic accomplishments have unfolded while the country has become increasingly influential in global arenas. In 2012, the Obama administration shrewdly nominated President Jim Yong Kim of Dartmouth College, who was born in Seoul Korea, as president of the World Bank.
The original vision of the United Nations combined competing goals of favoring the most powerful nations and inclusive global representation. Kim and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon personify South Korea’s significant expanding role as a bridge between developed and developing nations.
Market economies and reasonably representative governments now characterize a steadily increasing share of the world’s developing nations. In short, South Korea is positioned to lead developing nations toward prosperity.
The United Nations today is strong. UN and U.S. decisions in 1950 to defend South Korea were vital to this success. During the long Vietnam War, South Korea maintained approximately 50,000 troops in South Vietnam. They were overwhelmingly combat forces. The principal incentive was loyalty to the United States forged during the Korean War.
President Yoon initially had the opportunity to develop South Korea’s regional leadership, bolstered by the firmly established friendship and alliance with the United States.
Unfortunately this has ended, but the rule of law still prevails.
Arthur I. Cyr is the author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan; Korean language edition by Oruem Publishing). He can be reached at acyr@carthage.edu.
