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Kor(ule)ea
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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God, I wish we had a concept like that
The only reason their law was upheld is because Parliament voted against their president’s call for martial law.
The same system exists in the US. Unfortunately, we voted as a nation to fill Congress with Trump loyalists.
There’s no point in having laws if no one will hold leaders accountable to them.
It's a bit more complicated than that. The people's power party has supported Yoon much like the Republicans have supported trump, this was just the straw that broke the camels back.
If the parliament didn't immediately deal with the situation, there would have been a massive riot. Koreans have a pretty long history of rioting against the government, and even the extremist among the right wing politicians didn't want to catch that smoke.
The biggest difference between the US and Korea is that the US police state is filled with conservatives who yearn to do violence against their fellow citizens. While the Korean police state is mostly made of everyday normal people who are just doing their mandatory service.
There was a moment last night where the military could have stepped in and enforced the president's will, but chose not to. I think if it had been America, the woman who grabbed a soldier's rifle pointed at her head and scolded the dude, would have been killed or at very least beaten severely.
Umm, why are we whitewashing the military's role in this? Let's not forget that the military tried to stop the vote of the National Assembly to end martial law. They had to defend the Assembly using fire extinguishers and couch barricades to stop the military breaking in. And that the military continued enforcing the martial law provisions everywhere other than the Assembly even after the National Assembly had voted unanimously to end it, not standing down until 3 hours later when President Yoon declared it over.
Constitutionally I have no idea what's up. Whether the initial declaration was lawful, whether the Assembly's motion to end it had legal effect, whether the President's word was needed to end it. But at the very least from an outsider perspective, it certainly looks like the military was attempting to enforce the President's will and was taking advantage of the opportunity to be as authoritarian as it could.
Not really trying to "whitewash" the military. I was just pointing out the difference between the average cop in America and the average service member in Korea.
The military is definitely part of the police state and will obviously do their jobs, especially the command structure. However, there is a big difference between the socially acceptable use of state violence between the two countries.
Much like America the president is the commander and chief of the military, and thus the military must follow lawful orders.
I think that's a bit of an over exaggeration considering there wasn't a mass casualty event or even real violence. Which is definitely an improvement considering South Korea was a highly violent military dictatorship within my own lifetime.
Okay but you also need to acknowledge they rolled out with all of their gear. If they truly supported this then some staffer with a fire extinguisher would not have stopped them. This has all the energy of malicious compliance.
Strongly disagree. I see no evidence to believe that's what it is.
Just because the military was engaged, doesn't mean that they were told it's no holds barred. Even riot police suppressing violent protests don't typically just turn a machine gun on the protestors. They would have had rules of engagement that prevented them from escalating too far. And possibly, yes, a personal reticence on the part of the soldiers directly involved in it and their immediate superiors to escalate in a way that would cause irreparable harm, but even that is categorically different from "malicious compliance" where the goal is to only do the bare minimum that would not get them in trouble for disobeying orders. Instead it's more like do the most they think they can without causing a huge scandal about their own actions.
You have a contradiction. You admit they may have had an extremely restrictive ROE, but ignore what that means about military buy in for their orders. That's something the officers would impose to maliciously comply with the president's orders. "The President has ordered you to occupy Parliament and secure the building from ministers and staff. Your commander requires that you do this without hurting anyone, the most you may do is to give verbal commands."
No matter which way you cut it, if they had believed in it those staffers would be dead or in detainment and the legislators wouldn't have made it within a mile of the place.
Not necessarily. I think it's quite unreasonable to interpret it any other way than that the President presumably wouldn't want Koreans mass shooting Koreans, especially elected politicians. The level of force they used is pretty much what I would expect of normal compliance with the orders and their presumed spirit, given what seems to be a lack of detail.
That's ridiculous. I'm sorry but you've obviously never been around military culture.
Interesting. I need to learn more about South Korea’s governmental structure. Thank you for the insight. Your description of the difference in military response is on the money as well.