South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, declared martial law on 3 December 2024. His ‘self-coup’ was promptly overturned by the National Assembly. South Korea is once again experiencing peak political turmoil and may well impeach a second conservative president in less than eight years. The crisis deriving from Yoon’s decree has spiralled to another level to a constitutional crisis generating considerable political uncertainty amidst a leadership vacuum caused by the president’s impeachment.
This raises fundamental questions: why was martial law decreed in one of the most successful Asian democracies? Was this simply a political miscalculation on the president’s part? Or are there deeper societal problems behind the growing polarization in the country’s political, security, social, economic and cultural agenda?
To achieve a nuanced understanding, Dr. Shin seeks to unpack this political turmoil in the broader context of polarized politics and rising right-wing populism. South Korea has become increasingly politically divided and has now developed into a state where the danger is that each side demonizes the other. The politics of anger, resentment and hate speech towards the other is no longer confined to a noisy social media sub-culture but has become increasingly mainstream. This condition is increasingly vulnerable to populist politicians and elites. Dr. Shin analyses how radical polarization and populist elites have emerged as a distinctive feature in South Korea, and how this underpinned Yoon’s political rise and demise.