Right-Wing Radicals Are Drowning Out South Korea’s Institutional Conservatives, Creating a Political Crisis

The left in the country has its excesses but that does not justify the conservative president’s declaration of martial law

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (Creative Commons).

On Dec. 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a short-lived declaration of martial law, the first since the nation’s military dictatorship in 1979-1980. Yoon explicitly justified his power grab on the basis that his political opponents had maliciously obstructed his agenda and vaguely alluded to national security threats from his country’s northern neighbor. Delivering his remarks via televised address, Yoon accused his opponents of “budgetary tyranny,” turning the National Assembly into a “legislative dictatorship” and a “den of criminals,” and even teaming up with “North Korean communist forces.” All in all, South Korea was under martial law for about six hours, from the president’s announcement at 10:27 p.m. to his Cabinet’s lifting of it at 4:30 a.m.

The procedural-institutionalist wing of Yoon’s conservative People Power Party (PPP), which included most members of his Cabinet, PPP leader Han Dong-hoon, and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, promptly—and correctly—framed the declaration as a clear violation of democratic norms, if not laws. (The entire Cabinet offered to resign after the martial law episode, and Han resigned his post as PPP leader just days ago.) The leading conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo stated, “President Yoon must be held accountable for his actions.” A week and a half later, on Dec. 14, the 300-member National Assembly voted 204-85 to impeach Yoon, securing the required two-thirds vote after 12 out of 108 PPP legislators sided with the majority.

Still, most conservative lawmakers opted not to impeach President Yoon, echoing Yoon’s assertion that he invoked martial law mostly as a symbolic, performative protest against “leftist” abuse of power in the opposition-dominated parliament. This conservative refusal to impeach the president for insurrection, and the rationale for not doing so, echoed that of GOP officeholders in the U.S., who, along with Trump and Fox News, framed the Jan. 6 incident as performative protest, not an actual insurrection.

Autogolpe Apologists

As scholars of religious and political conservatism in South Korea, we communicated with PPP figures in the aftermath of the martial law episode to better understand how it was being interpreted on the right. We spoke to more than 20 PPP-affiliated activists and intellectuals.

One vocal group of Yoon defenders, whom we term “militant democracy radicals,” said that declaring martial law was necessary to protect democracy and had only one criticism for the president: that he gave up after only six hours. They thought he was right to declare martial law and wrong to lift it so soon. As one activist told us: “Sometimes, democracy needs to take extreme measures to preserve itself. The leftist forces are not just political rivals; they seek to destroy the glorious heritage of our country.” His words echoed the “militant democracy” thesis of Karl Loewenstein (1937), who argued that democracies must sometimes violate their own procedural norms and laws to defend against existential threats.

EK (we’ll use pseudonymous initials throughout), the founder of the “new-right” Young Conservatives Org, explained to us, “Subversive forces had deeply infiltrated critical institutions like the judiciary and media. Martial law wasn’t rash; it was a calculated response to neutralize these threats before they destabilized the Republic further.” The underlying idea is that only by suspending the South Korean democratic order could President Yoon truly save it, and that martial law is necessary to overcome the existential threat posed by Korea’s Democratic Party. These militant conservatives argued that conventional democratic tools, such as parliamentary oversight or electoral reforms, are insufficient to deal with ideological adversaries they believe are seeking to dismantle the system from within.

The second group of Yoon defenders, whom we call “performative radicals,” downplayed the severity of the president’s declaration of martial law by claiming it was a dramatization intended for political effect. By and large, performative radicals claim solely to “disrupt” institutions dominated by corrupt opponents, not to engage in actual violence. Yoon himself explained his actions this way: “My purpose was to inform the public about the colossal group of opposition parties’ heinous anti-state behavior and to warn them to cease such behavior. ... The reason I sent a small contingent of troops to the National Assembly was to symbolically reveal the destructive behavior of that huge group of opposition parties.” Under this view, Yoon’s declaration was a form of political theater—an intentionally provocative disruption meant to signal strength, energize the conservative base, and shift the public narrative.

Just like Yoon’s defenders justifying his decision to declare martial law, parts of the American right have also argued that the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 did so because the left’s corruption is so extreme that it was necessary to take equally, or even more, extreme actions to save the country. But also, perhaps in contradictory fashion, many participants in the Jan. 6 event also downplayed the severity of their actions and claimed it was a disruptive but fundamentally peaceful protest—a claim pushed by Fox News and Trump himself, just like what President Yoon and his supporters say to downplay his power grab.

But the boundaries between militant (the first group of Yoon defenders) and performative radicals (the second group) are more fluid than might at first appear. Some, perhaps most, who insisted that Yoon’s declaration was purely performative would likely not oppose a genuine self-coup.

Still, even if the president’s underlying motivation was indeed performative (which will be contested in court), it clearly violated long-standing norms and has further polarized the nation. To understand the martial law episode, it’s worth exploring South Korea’s polarization problem at greater length.

South Korea’s Extreme—and Asymmetric—Polarization

In a 2022 Pew Research survey, South Korea ranked worst in political polarization among 19 different countries. Forty-nine percent of respondents claimed it exhibited “very strong conflicts between people who support different political parties.” Party polarization in South Korea is a fairly recent phenomenon. Before 2003, parties were largely non-ideological vehicles for the political ambitions of individual leaders, notably the “three Kims” (Kim Dae-jung, Kim Young-sam, Kim Jong-pil), a mix of progressive and centrist opposition leaders during the early 1970s to 1990s. The three Kims, two of whom were elected president, represented the first era of post-authoritarian democracy (1987-2002) in South Korea, marked by fluid, regional, underdeveloped parties. But in the second era, since progressive Roh Moo-hyun’s presidency (2003-08), the parties have become highly polarized ideologically.

Since the period of authoritarian regimes (1947-87), conservative elites have framed their opponents as pro-North Korea communists and sympathizers, and ruling conservatives have vigorously enforced the 1948 National Security Law’s Article 7 prohibition on pro-DPRK speech by “far-left” individuals and groups. President Yoon himself justified martial law by casting his opponents as “pro-North anti-state forces.” But since the 2000s, progressives have promulgated an equally Manichean narrative of conservatives as pro-Japan collaborators and sympathizers. The conservative narrative has led to an invocation of martial law, which is a more radical measure than the left’s weaponization of impeachment proceedings, since the impeachment process does not require a suspension of liberal procedural rules for its adjudication. Still, each side has cast their political opponents as subversives who are threats to South Korean society, and has run roughshod over liberal principles.

Although progressive icon Kim Dae-jung praised free speech, his successors have increasingly used their political and judicial influence to punish speech that defames former victims of colonial or authoritarian regimes, including a six-month prison sentence for a professor (Song Dae-yup) who suggested that most Korean comfort women had volunteered for the Japanese military, and two years for a commentator (Jee Man-won), who claimed that North Korea helped direct “rioters” during the 1980 pro-democracy movement in Gwangju. The South Korean Democratic Party has registered a troubling inclination to criminalize certain forms of political speech with serious prison time. Threatening imprisonment for taking certain positions on historically contentious issues raises real concerns about the South Korean left’s commitment to free speech and open debate. South Korea is becoming the only country to effectively ban both talking with, or about, communist spies.

Since former conservative President Park Geun-hye’s 2016 impeachment, the Democratic Party has also dominated the National Assembly. Opposing the Yoon Administration’s policies of reconciliation with Japan, among other sins, the DP parliamentary majority effectively paralyzed the administration with an unprecedented 22 motions to impeach government officials, including the nonpartisan chairperson of the Board of Audit and Inspection, before Dec. 3. The initial, Dec. 4 impeachment motion of President Yoon stated: “Yoon has neglected geopolitical balance, antagonizing North Korea, China, and Russia, adhering to a bizarre Japan-centered foreign policy, and appointing pro-Japan individuals to key government positions.”

In periods of asymmetric polarization, such as the one South Korea finds itself in today, the self-perceived stronger party dominates mainstream institutions and marginalizes opposing viewpoints; the party that perceives itself as weaker rejects and even violently attacks the same institutions. Meanwhile, institutional conservatives have paid the price by becoming marginalized from both their party and society at large. In the aftermath of martial law, both militant and performative conservatives praised President Yoon’s “bold” action and condemned institutional conservatives who disagreed, forcing Han Dong-hoon’s resignation as party chief on Dec. 16. In his resignation speech, Han warned, “If we sympathize with extremists like the conspiracy theorists and extreme YouTubers, or if we are consumed by their commercially produced fears, there is no future for conservatism.”

Rebuilding Korean Democratic Institutions and Norms

The group we call procedural-liberals or institutionalists support not just substantive liberal outcomes, such as social justice, but also formal legal rights (e.g., free speech, due process) and non-legal norms (e.g., journalistic impartiality) associated with fair procedures in a liberal democracy. Rooted in Edmund Burke, not Loewenstein, institutional conservatives prioritize stability, gradual reform, and adherence to constitutional processes over dramatic interventions. In the aftermath of martial law and impeachment, they called for legal and social changes to moderate excessive polarization and power abuses.

Our respondents recommended narrowing and clarifying the legal mechanism for martial law, and other limits to presidential power, which were supported by the conservative Chosun newspaper. Institutional conservatives also stressed reforming and limiting legislative power. Two Korea University students wrote in a widely publicized letter: “We need mechanisms to check arbitrary budgetary authority and stricter requirements to prevent impeachment abuse.” The impeachment of government officials, high and low—a once extraordinary measure—has become normalized in Korean politics, with destabilizing consequences, argued YK, a professor at a local university. After impeaching President Yoon on Dec. 14, DP lawmakers threatened to further impeach Acting President, and former Prime Minister, Han Duck-soo, if he vetoed their bills.

Institutional conservatives viewed the opposition party’s practice of circumventing the deliberative process and impeaching executive officials—especially after their sweeping victory in the April 10, 2024 parliamentary election—as a dangerous precedent undermining the stability and integrity of democratic institutions. They discussed both institutional reforms, such as a U.S.-style bicameral legislature, and restoring old norms, such as bipartisan consensus on budget bills.

Future of Korean Democracy

Like their counterparts in the U.S. after Jan. 6 (e.g., Congresswoman Liz Cheney, The Wall Street Journal), institutional conservatives in Korea after Dec. 3 argued that their president “must be held accountable for his actions” (Chosun Ilbo) and that their party failed the nation by not forcefully condemning actions that violated liberal-democratic norms. But apart from this necessary moral stance, institutional conservatives would argue, citizens require earnest reflection and deliberation to prevent current and future abuses of power, from ruling parties of the right or left.

Perhaps more than any other OECD democracy, Korea exemplifies the challenges of polarization—especially of the asymmetric kind. Progressive dominance of mainstream information and politics does not justify the self-isolationism and disruptive radicalism of conservatives, culminating in the martial law declaration. But it does help us understand that conservative illiberalism does not appear in a vacuum, and that all infringements of liberal-procedural norms polarize and destabilize democracy, including in South Korea, a pivotal Asian state.

Breaking the trend of asymmetric polarization requires not more suppression or disruption, but reaffirming the liberal norms of open debate, toleration and moderation, and legal compliance. South Koreans are highly sensitive to international opinion, and Western media can encourage Koreans to move toward less polarization and more fidelity to liberal norms.

© The UnPopulist, 2024

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