BACK in the early 1980s, when Akbar S. Ahmed was contemplating whether Pakistan could be Japan, he might have missed an opportunity to focus on a more viable (although less desirable) East Asian role model for capitalist development.
Despite relentless military-dominated authoritarian rule peppered with bouts of martial law and brutal suppression of popular unrest, the economy grew in leaps and bounds through the 1960s and beyond, overtaking North Korea in the 1970s.
Even though the first president following the introduction of a recognisable form of bourgeois democracy in 1987 was a former general and a protégé of the preceding dictator, ever since (unlike Pakistan) there has rarely been any serious threat of a return to military rule despite instances of political dysfunction and public dissatisfaction. Until this month.
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s late-night announcement on Dec 3 was therefore greeted with shock within and outside South Korea. Yoon deployed military troops and police contingents to keep legislators out of parliament, but they managed to gather in sufficient numbers to formally rescind the measure.
Martial law lasted barely for six hours, which is probably a world record. To their credit, neither the soldiers nor the police seemed particularly keen to use violence against either the parliamentarians or the thousands of citizens who had gathered outside on a freezing night to resist their unpopular president’s decree.
South Koreans under 40 have no direct experience of military rule, but they’ve heard horror stories from their parents about the ruthless repression and draconian curbs on freedom of thought and action. And even those among the older generations who look back on past instances of military rule as a necessary safeguard against largely exaggerated Cold War threats have no desire to revisit that era.
They are sceptical about Yoon’s reliance on similar excuses in 2024 to justify his deed, viewed as a desperate bid for self-preservation. He was elected president in 2022 by the narrowest margin in his nation’s history, and his popularity has dwindled from the low 20s to 11pc as of last week. The move to impeach him succeeded on the second try last Saturday, as 12 of the 108 MPs from his (ironically named) People Power Party (PPP) provided the required two-thirds majority in parliament.
The constitutional court has six months to deliver a final verdict on Yoon’s suspended presidency. Four of its six judges were appointed by Yoon, and even a single dissenting vote could preserve him in power until 2027. But there are three vacancies on the bench, and if the opposition-heavy assembly fills them quickly, that would likely tilt the scales, triggering a mid-2025 presidential election.
South Korea appears to have survived a close call.
It’s hard to imagine a verdict before the Trump takeover, though, and its possible effects are unpredictable. Yoon’s right-wing populist and authoritarian tendencies should endear him to Donald Trump, but the once and future US leader also has a soft spot for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and wants Seoul to pay more for the 28,500 American troops still posted on the peninsula 70-plus years after the end of the Korean War.
The Biden administration has overlooked Yoon’s anti-democratic tendencies to entrench an anti-China coalition with South Korea and Japan as its primary Pacific components. Political instability in either partner nation should perturb the imperial centre, but Washington was predictably limp in its response to the coup attempt in Seoul. Meanwhile Japan, which hosts more than 50,000 US troops on Okinawa almost 80 years after American atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is also at risk of political turbulence after Fumio Kishida bowed out this year.
South Korea won’t be well-served if, by any mischance, Yoon escapes his current suspension to serve out the rest of his term. What can be guaranteed, though, is that he will face an even more hostile parliament and a steady stream of anti-government popular mobilisations that, combined with the security establishment’s unwillingness to facilitate his ambitions, should thwart further regressive designs.
Neither the nation’s ‘chaebolic’ corporate capitalism model nor its US alignment is likely to substantially shift in the event of power shifting to the opposition Democratic Party. But all who defended its flawed democracy against something much worse deserve credit for sustaining South political progress since the 1980s, and one can only hope that the American Pie-singing Yoon will be remembered chiefly for the night the music refused to die, followed by a bye-bye.
As for whether Pakistan — minus Samsung, Hyundai or LG Corporation — could possibly be South Korea, you might think that; I couldn’t possibly comment. Ask Akbar Ahmed if you must, but make allowance for a credibility gap.
Published in Dawn, December 18th, 2024
