Martial Law in Twenty-First Century South Korea? (Part II)
by Drs. Scott Gregory & Sandra Park • Feb 17, 2025 • 3 min read
I think many people who were shocked by Yoon’s decree responded with "not again, and not today."
Background
In December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea declared martial law to bypass political gridlock with the National Assembly. The surprising move, which shocked both the public and the international community, sparked widespread protests and calls for impeachment. This incident has reignited debates about South Korea’s history with authoritarianism and its democratic progress since the 1980s. In this post, we explore the context of Yoon’s decision and its impact on South Korean society today.
SG (Scott Gregory): What is South Korea’s history of martial law and civil protest? How have people’s memories of that history shaped their reactions to recent events?
SP (Sandra Park): Great question. To put it simply, South Koreans have a traumatic history with martial law. For so many people, Dec 3rd triggered painful memories of suspended civil liberties and various forms of state violence against citizens. Sudden arrests, imprisonment under distorted charges, and even torture were rampant. In fact, South Korea was the Korea that made global headlines for gross human violations throughout the late Cold War era. For many people, the recent events would have triggered the memory of the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980, when the Chun Doo-hwan government used military force to brutally suppress citizen-led protests against Chun for using emergency martial law to legitimate the continuation of military dictatorship. That spring of 1980, South Korea had been under military dictatorship for almost twenty years since Park Chung-hee first seized power through a military coup in 1961.
How did they do this, and for so long?
Let’s go back to how Yoon justified his martial law decree on Dec. 3rd. He did this by claiming that the decree was necessary to “defend the free Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces and to eradicate the shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces.” To this end, he promised to “surely eradicate the criminals of the anti-state forces who have been committing atrocities so far.”
I know to a lot of our students this language may sound bizarre and even comical. Didn’t the Cold War end over 30 years ago?
Well, we have to remember that South Korea was founded with anticommunism as its raison d’être and the Cold War hasn’t quite ended on the Korean peninsula. Throughout South Korea’s history, the logic of defending the nation from external communist threat and internal enemies justified the use of state violence to suppress dissenting ideas and movements since the founding of South Korea in 1948.
To put this into sharper focus, Syngman Rhee, South Korea’s first president, declared emergency martial law in October 1948 just two months after the Republic of Korea was created. Most people think of the Korean War as the civil war that entrenched the division of Korea, but South Korea was already waging an internal civil war from its founding. First on Cheju Island, and then on the South Korean mainland in Yeosu and Suncheon. And these events unfolded at the height of American power and influence over the political formation of South Korea, which raises difficult questions about the role and responsibility of the United States.
So, yes, Yoon’s invocation of communist threat in his speech does sound strange to our ears in 2024…2025 but it sets off a painful, long memory of South Korea’s violent origins and postwar authoritarianism.
For this reason, I think many people who were shocked by Yoon’s decree responded with “not again, and not today.” But there are still many uncertainties around how things will unfold from here.
SG: For students who want to better understand South Korea’s recent history, are there any courses they can take at U of A?
SP: Absolutely! Students taking our courses in Korean studies explore the complexities and contradictions of Korea’s modernity and how this history shapes South Korean society and culture to this day.
In the fall, Dr. Sunyoung will be offering:
- KOR 251—Introduction to Korea through Film
- KOR 352—Class, Gender, and Family in Korea
And I will be offering:
- KOR/HIST 275—History of Korea through 1945 (EP-Humanist)
- KOR 319—Shamans, Martyrs, and Heretics: Religion and the Korean Peninsula