WTF Just Hap­pened In South Korea?

There was an attempt at a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in South Korea in which the pres­i­dent of South Korea issued a com­mand for mar­tial law. It was reversed hours lat­er, but what exact­ly was going on there? 

South Kore­an Pres­i­dent Yoon Suk Yeol is a mem­ber of a par­ty that con­trols the pres­i­den­cy but is in the minor­i­ty in the actu­al par­lia­ment of the coun­try. He claimed the major­i­ty in the par­lia­ment (a par­ty called the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in South Korea) is basi­cal­ly a tool of the North Kore­ans, cit­ing them to be cryp­to-com­mu­nists pre­vent­ing the func­tion­ing of the gov­ern­ment. 

Essen­tial­ly, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of South Korea, which rep­re­sents a large major­i­ty in the Nation­al Assem­bly, has been threat­en­ing and attempt­ing to impeach the state pros­e­cu­tors who are look­ing into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship. The pros­e­cu­tors were sup­posed to be look­ing into the fam­i­ly of the pres­i­dent of South Korea, and they had appar­ent­ly decid­ed to exon­er­ate the president’s wife. Mean­while, the same pros­e­cu­tors were addi­tion­al­ly look­ing into the lead­er­ship of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty regard­ing cor­rup­tion charges. In turn, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty attempt­ed to impeach these pros­e­cu­tors. 

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So, the South Kore­an pres­i­dent looked at the oppo­si­tion par­ty (which con­trols the Nation­al Assem­bly) and con­tend­ed they were attempt­ing to clean out the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al part of the gov­ern­ment in order to pro­tect them­selves or weaponize it against him. There­fore, he would declare mar­tial law. 

The South Kore­an par­lia­ment vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to defy the country’s pres­i­dent and lift his mar­tial law dec­la­ra­tion.  

But there’s some­thing deep­er hap­pen­ing here. 

This sort of con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis is now tak­ing place in a vari­ety of coun­tries. It’s hap­pen­ing in Israel, where there are fights between the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al wing of the gov­ern­ment and the gov­ern­ment of Ben­jamin Netanyahu. It’s hap­pen­ing in Hun­gary, where they’ve been fight­ing over state pros­e­cu­tors. It’s hap­pen­ing in Brazil, where Lula da Sil­va, the author­i­tar­i­an Left-wing leader of the coun­try, is now attempt­ing to mil­i­ta­rize the jus­tice sys­tem against Jair Bol­sonaro, his pre­de­ces­sor. And, of course, there are shades of this in the Unit­ed States. 

Why, exact­ly, is all this hap­pen­ing right now? 

To under­stand that, we must under­stand the role of the pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al sys­tem in demo­c­ra­t­ic republics, because that has changed over time. And this has impli­ca­tions, by the way, for every­thing, up to and includ­ing the Hunter Biden par­don and the Biden DOJ weaponiz­ing itself against Don­ald Trump.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic republics typ­i­cal­ly rely on checks and bal­ances to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from engag­ing in author­i­tar­i­an­ism; that is the basis of the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion. The House and the Sen­ate check one anoth­er. Both are checked by the pres­i­den­cy, and all three of those bod­ies are checked by the judi­cia­ry and vice ver­sa. 

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, one of the checks and bal­ances to avoid tyran­ny was impeach­ment. If you didn’t like mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment or you sus­pect­ed that mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment were cor­rupt, a bipar­ti­san major­i­ty would work to oust those cor­rupt offi­cials. 

This is obvi­ous­ly prob­lem­at­ic when it comes to get­ting rid of cor­rupt offi­cials because if the cor­rupt offi­cial hap­pens to be a mem­ber of your par­ty, then you are very unlike­ly to vote for their impeach­ment. 

In Demo­c­ra­t­ic republics, the ques­tion of how to police cor­rup­tion is a very real ques­tion if there is a cor­rupt pub­lic offi­cial. The Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion says that per­son is impeached in the House, and then there is a full tri­al in the Sen­ate. 

When the Con­sti­tu­tion was designed, Alexan­der Hamil­ton and the rest of the Found­ing Fathers believed the Sen­ate would be the most objec­tive body. Unit­ed States sen­a­tors were not appoint­ed by par­ty or by pub­lic approval. They were appoint­ed by the state leg­is­la­tures, and they served six-year terms. The goal was for them to be more inde­pen­dent of the pub­lic pas­sions than the House.

The judi­cia­ry could not do it because the judi­cia­ry could be hijacked. But the Sen­ate was sort of half polit­i­cal: answer­able but also indi­rect­ly answer­able to the pub­lic — and thus more insu­lat­ed from pub­lic pres­sure.

Hamil­ton point­ed out that set­ting up a sep­a­rate impeach­ment court (which we might now call the DOJ) wouldn’t actu­al­ly solve the prob­lem because that, too, could be politi­cized.

The prob­lem is that over time, in a wide vari­ety of coun­tries, as demo­c­ra­t­ic republics and their checks and bal­ances have tran­si­tioned into admin­is­tra­tive bureau­cra­cies in which enor­mous pow­er is cen­tral­ized in the exec­u­tive branch, checks and bal­ances have atro­phied until Don­ald Trump was impeached twice. The impeach­ment pow­er was almost nev­er used by the Con­gress of the Unit­ed States, for exam­ple.

We made a deci­sion at the out­set of the 20th cen­tu­ry that was echoed in oth­er bur­geon­ing democ­ra­cies that law enforce­ment check­ing cor­rup­tion was not to be done by the elect­ed bod­ies of gov­ern­ment. Instead, it was out­sourced to so-called inde­pen­dent branch­es of gov­ern­ment.

In the Unit­ed States, that is the Depart­ment of Jus­tice; in South Korea, it is the state prosecutor’s office; in Brazil, the pros­e­cu­tors, the police, the judi­cia­ry; in Israel, the attor­ney gen­er­al, and so forth.

There is a prob­lem that hap­pens here, and this is a prob­lem with the admin­is­tra­tive state. The prob­lem is that state pros­e­cu­tors can also be cor­rupt­ed by pol­i­tics, as we have seen in the Unit­ed States. And then the solu­tion isn’t to change the peo­ple in gov­ern­ment any­more, because these are inde­pen­dent branch­es, and they’re unelect­ed. It’s not a mat­ter of replac­ing some peo­ple with oth­er peo­ple.

If you fire some peo­ple, that’s con­sid­ered inter­fer­ence with the mag­i­cal “objec­tive branch.” If you leave peo­ple in place and they tar­get your polit­i­cal oppo­nents, it’s weaponiza­tion.

That’s what leads to con­sti­tu­tion­al crises. Once the job of polic­ing cor­rup­tion from the elect­ed branch­es of gov­ern­ment — like the Sen­ate of the Unit­ed States or the Nation­al Assem­bly in South Korea — is out­sourced to state pros­e­cu­tors, soon­er or lat­er, state pros­e­cu­tors will attempt to go after the wrong peo­ple, the leg­is­la­ture after state pros­e­cu­tors, or the pres­i­dent after state pros­e­cu­tors, in order to pre­vent weaponiza­tion.

This is the prob­lem with send­ing up fake “objec­tive legal enforce­ment” bod­ies. It cre­ates con­sti­tu­tion­al crises because the only solu­tion to a politi­cized law enforce­ment branch is to either over­throw the gov­ern­ment for inter­fer­ing with the sys­tem, which is what the pres­i­dent of South Korea attempt­ed to do, or to call for the over­throw of the gov­ern­ment for weaponiz­ing the sys­tem.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al crises are the result of sup­pos­ed­ly untouch­able, non­par­ti­san insti­tu­tions that can either be weaponized or inter­fered with.

This is hap­pen­ing across the West. It’s a major, major prob­lem. It’s the prob­lem with admin­is­tra­tive gov­ern­ments. It’s a major prob­lem in regards to the idea that it is the job of impar­tial legal bod­ies to police cor­rup­tion.

So democ­ra­cies are throw­ing them­selves into cri­sis, specif­i­cal­ly over this.

Let’s say that you are in the Unit­ed States and you are real­ly, real­ly angry that Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent in 2016. What do you do? You could try to impeach him, but it will prob­a­bly fail if you don’t have the votes because it’ll break down along strict­ly par­ti­san lines. 

What do you do instead? You rely on the DOJ; you rely on the FBI. You weaponize those insti­tu­tions against Trump. And that prompts Trump, if he becomes pres­i­dent, to clean out those insti­tu­tions, in which case he will be accused of weaponiz­ing those insti­tu­tions. And so the con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis just con­tin­ues to roll on, all because this sort of bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus around impeach­ing pres­i­dents who are guilty of crimes has gone away in the Unit­ed States. 

You could say it died dur­ing the Clin­ton era. And the Unit­ed States is now feel­ing the after­ef­fects. 

The same is true in Israel. In Israel, the attor­ney general’s office has put Ben­jamin Netanyahu under three sep­a­rate pros­e­cu­tions; all of them appear to be some­what spe­cious. The goal is obvi­ous­ly polit­i­cal. Netanyahu has been in pow­er for some 14 of the last 15 years in Israel. He’s a mas­ter­ful Machi­avel­lian politi­cian, just in pure, raw tal­ent terms. And so the attor­ney general’s office has been weaponized against him, as claims Netanyahu, which I think is large­ly cor­rect in a wide vari­ety of cas­es. 

But every time he tries to mess with the pros­e­cu­tion, he’s accused of tam­per­ing with democ­ra­cy.

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Once these insti­tu­tions are set up as the final arbiter of guilt and inno­cence, then any­one who tam­pers with them on either side is then con­sid­ered a threat to democ­ra­cy, even if the per­son who is actu­al­ly mil­i­ta­riz­ing law enforce­ment is the per­son who is in pow­er.

In Brazil, the law enforce­ment mech­a­nisms have been weaponized by Lula da Sil­va against Jair Bol­sonaro. That means as Lula is clean­ing out the judi­cia­ry insti­tu­tions, he’s being laud­ed as some­one uphold­ing the norms of democ­ra­cy while he, at the same time, engages in wide­spread cen­sor­ship. Instead of cor­rup­tion being seen as a polit­i­cal issue to be answered by the polit­i­cal branch­es and even­tu­al­ly the peo­ple, because it’s been out­sourced to law enforce­ment, the law enforce­ment branch can be rou­tine­ly cor­rupt­ed.

Not all that long ago Lula him­self had been banned from run­ning because of his own cor­rup­tion con­vic­tions. Then, in 2021, a Left-wing Supreme Court judge annulled his cor­rup­tion con­vic­tions and allowed him to run again. After he ran and won, the Brazil­ian police for­mal­ly accused for­mer Pres­i­dent Bol­sonaro and his aides of an alleged 2022 coup attempt. That hap­pened just last week.

Bol­sonaro has said he would fight the case. Mean­while, Lula is open­ly con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er in the exec­u­tive branch in wild­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic ways. But he has been praised by many mem­bers of the media as an anti-author­i­tar­i­an politi­cian. Yet the real­i­ty is that Lula has been a close ally of Venezuela’s Nico­las Maduro, who’s been a close ally of the Cuban regime. In fact, it’s rare to find some sort of author­i­tar­i­an regime that Lula doesn’t like. From Chi­na to Nicaragua, from Iran to Rus­sia, he has cozied up to author­i­tar­i­ans every­where. But because he’s a Left-wing author­i­tar­i­an, the per­cep­tion is that he’s not real­ly an author­i­tar­i­an, even if he engages in wide­spread cen­sor­ship.

This is what hap­pens when demo­c­ra­t­ic republics del­e­gate the pow­er to check polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion to a sup­pos­ed­ly objec­tive, non­par­ti­san branch of gov­ern­ment. It’s not real. It doesn’t work. Admin­is­tra­tive states do not work for pre­cise­ly this rea­son because they’re nev­er dis­pas­sion­ate, ever.

It’s true in a wide vari­ety of coun­tries, from South Korea to Israel to Hun­gary to Brazil.

It’s always a prob­lem.

Again, all of this break­down is hap­pen­ing because so many peo­ple across so many West­ern­ized coun­tries have decid­ed they no longer trust the mech­a­nisms of checks and bal­ances of the demo­c­ra­t­ic repub­lic and, instead, are going to del­e­gate all pow­er to these impar­tial insti­tu­tions.

Then, those insti­tu­tions break down.

And then, the entire coun­try starts to break down.