South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law, suspended the South Korean legislature and banned elected representatives from accessing the National Assembly building using massive police presence.

And then six hours later he rescinded the order.

President Yoon had declared in a public address to the Korean people that the move was to protect a “liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements.”  He said:

“I will restore the country to normalcy by getting rid of anti-state forces as soon as possible.”

But all the members of South Korea’s National Assembly, which Yoon had shut down, voted to reverse Yoon’s edict Tuesday and he then heeded the call. 

The action and rhetoric had evoked the days of the country’s military dictatorships; the language and justification was exactly the same. 

There had been repeated signals that Yoon could declare martial law because the public momentum to impeach him in South Korea was gaining ground.

Yoon is despised by South Koreans for his abuse of power, his wife’s corruption and his vitiation of South Korea’s sovereignty and economic wellbeing to serve U.S. geopolitical interests.

Particularly triggering and enraging for South Koreans has been his enmeshing of South Korea’s military with that of its former colonizer, Japan, through a formal military alliance designed to wage war against China.  This has also entailed engaging in radical historical revisionism and erasure to facilitate this extraordinary coalition. 

Last week 100,000 citizens protested in the streets demanding his immediate resignation — something that received absolutely zero coverage in Western media.  There was still little mention of this in current mainstream Western coverage as a factor  for the short-lived declaration of martial law.

Yoon does not want to lose power, but more importantly the U.S. cannot allow Yoon to lose power: He is essential to shore up alliances, agreements, and an Asian force posture to wage war against China.

If Yoon goes, the forcefield breaks. This is because South Korea is the key proxy, the proxy with the largest military force in the area (500,000 active troops plus 3.1 million reservists). This massive military manpower falls immediately under U.S. operational control, the moment the U.S. decides it wants to wage war.  

Yoon, who was elected with the narrowest electoral victory in Korean history (0.7 percent), is a U.S. client, supported precisely for making promises of implementing a South Korean “Indo-Pacific strategy,” a clone of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, a belligerent, escalatory, military-hybrid strategy to encircle and take down China. 

When Yoon was elected, champagne corks flew in Washington. If Yoon had chosen to perpetuate rule through martial law, the U.S. would have likely closed their eyes to it, as they did for decades under Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan.   The stakes are very high.  

However, unlike his Conservative Party predecessors Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo, Yoon is not a former general. In fact, he is a draft dodger, something that usually destroys political careers. 

The fact that he was able to rise to the highest office signals that extraordinarily powerful forces (like the U.S. national security state) were instrumental in his ascension to power. 

Certainly, they gave him prime time coverage, including access to the most influential media platform in the world: a cover article in Foreign Affairs magazine where he professed his allegiance to U.S. doctrine.

Dangerous and dark times still lie ahead, especially if Koreans rise up (as they always have) and President Yoon responds with massive military and police repression. 

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