Creation: Editorial Department of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
Korean local time December 12th, 10:00 AM, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol delivered the so-called “National Talk.” Yoon Suk-yeol’s speech was full of lengthy accusations that the Korean opposition party was “unconstitutional,” implementing “parliamentary dictatorship,” “violent acts,” being “criminals,” “anti-national forces,” leading to Korea’s “national paralysis,” “constitutional chaos,” and so on, essentially portraying all opposition parties, especially the Democratic Party led by the largest opposition, as being in collusion with “North Korea,” involved in “domestic chaos,” undermining the economy, and endangering the nation—attacking the president, suppressing the people, seizing national conditions on the left, obstructing the prosecutors on the right, and fundamentally acting as the source of martial law that must be enacted. After a series of blame-shifting statements, Yoon Suk-yeol even claimed that the fascist counterrevolutionary coup launched under the banner of “martial law” was actually carried out within the “framework of the Constitution” to “stop the anti-national violence of the large opposition party… prevent the collapse of the constitutional order of liberal democracy, and normalize the state’s functions,” using “emergency measures” in the “form of martial law.” In other words, he argued that he was neither “unconstitutional” nor acting illegally but was entirely “legitimate.” As for why the coup only lasted six hours before failing miserably, Yoon Suk-yeol explained that it was because he “did not intend to destroy the constitutional order and the constitution of the Republic of Korea but aimed to inform the people of the impending national crisis, to safeguard and restore the constitutional order and the constitution,” thus never blocking members of the National Assembly and citizens from entering the parliament, and the forces sent to the parliament were merely “symbolic.” He further claimed that he had no desire to “paralyze the functions of the National Assembly,” so he did not “cut off electricity or water” to the parliament, nor “limit broadcasting or transmission,” and even chose not to declare martial law on weekends, which would have been easier to enforce, but on a weekday. In short, according to Yoon Suk-yeol, he did “nothing” in the entire process of calling the parliament, voting to lift martial law, ordering the soldiers involved to withdraw, and publicly announcing the martial law situation. Ultimately, after his speech, people could only see that he wanted to prove that although he wished to arrest all opposition parties he called “pro-North Korean communist forces,” he was ultimately “law-abiding,” loving the people as his own children, and after a moment of “inaction,” he announced the lifting of martial law and continued to serve as South Korea’s president as if nothing had happened.
Of course, Yoon Suk-yeol’s speech is entirely untrustworthy because he is constantly distorting facts, accusing the opposition of crimes, whitewashing his own counterrevolutionary coup, and using many idealist conspiracy theories comparable to Trump’s accusations of Democratic Party election fraud in 2020 to confuse right and wrong, pretentious posturing, and scare tactics, such as claiming that the special expenses and operational funds of the prosecution and police have been cut to zero won, that the opposition has aligned with North Korea, that the opposition-controlled election management committee has been hacked by North Korean hackers, and that security is almost nonexistent. As long as one looks at the facts, it will become clear how absurd these accusations are.
However, Yoon Suk-yeol’s entire speech filled with lies has undoubtedly become a double-sided mirror that exposes both the bourgeois fascist regime of China-style revisionism and the American imperialist bourgeois democratic regime. Yoon Suk-yeol’s speech can only demonstrate that the double act of “democracy” and “dictatorship” in capitalism is becoming increasingly unsustainable; capitalism always involves the dictatorship and democracy of the bourgeoisie running in parallel, which is an increasingly obvious fact. Regarding Korea, it has pierced through all the lies about Korea being “democratized,” sharply exposing the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democratic factions that still enthusiastically praise bourgeois formal democracy and election politics, and smashing all the lies about “general democracy” and “general dictatorship.”
More than 2,300 years ago, when Meng Ke’s “benevolent government” doctrine was hitting walls across various countries, he claimed that his flamboyant and reactionary ideas were “not willing, but unable.” The South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol, who established the country on Confucianism, evidently learned from Confucius’s rhetoric, claiming that the reason he did not carry out a successful coup like those of Park Chung-hee or Chun Doo-hwan after declaring martial law was simply because he “was unwilling,” not because he “could not.”
Is Yoon Suk-yeol truly unwilling to launch a counterrevolutionary coup? This cannot depend solely on his verbal claims or subjective evaluations by anyone but must be judged by the actual effects produced. Chairman Mao pointed out, “…we are dialectical materialist proponents of the unity of motive and effect,” and that whether a person’s motive “is correct or kind-hearted is not judged by their declarations but by their actions… and the effects they produce among the masses.” Just by looking at what Yoon Suk-yeol has actually done, one can see whether he truly does not want to or truly cannot implement martial law.
Is Yoon Suk-yeol unwilling to launch a counterrevolutionary coup? Just compare his words and actions before and after December 3rd. At 22:23 on December 3rd, Yoon Suk-yeol delivered an “emergency speech” and announced martial law, followed shortly by the promulgation of the martial law decree. The martial law decree by Yoon Suk-yeol can be summarized into three main points: first, issuing bans against all political parties, including the ruling People Power Party, prohibiting any political activities such as convening the National Assembly, local councils, or any other party activities; second, targeting the Korean people, banning all strikes, associations, or gatherings, especially ordering all medical personnel on strike to return to work within 48 hours; third, ordering all news and publications to be subject to censorship, and banning any “fake news,” “manipulation of public opinion,” or “false propaganda” as defined by Yoon Suk-yeol. Correspondingly, a specific arrest list was secretly drafted by Yoon Suk-yeol’s South Korean Counter-espionage Command, prepared to arrest, among others, the following legislators: “Speaker of the National Assembly Yoo Won-shik, People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon, Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, Democratic Party floor leader Park Zang-dae, Democratic Party chief supreme member Kim Min-sik, Justice Committee chair Jeong Cheong-rae, Reform New Party representative Cho Guk, YouTuber Kim Yu-jun, former Supreme Court Chief Kim Myung-soo, former Supreme Court Justice Kwon Soon-il, etc.” According to multiple sources and public statements, Yoon Suk-yeol’s specific arrest plan was to first deploy the South Korean Special Operations Group 707 to block the National Assembly, prevent legislators from entering or leaving, use HID (Special Intelligence Unit) to arrest “fugitives” among the legislators, and finally have the Counter-espionage Command transfer the arrested legislators to the Joint Investigation Department inside the Counter-espionage Command. Yoon Suk-yeol planned and executed exactly this.
The first step, the 707 Special Operations Group, began appearing around the National Assembly shortly after Yoon Suk-yeol announced martial law. Although the HID did not immediately take action, it had already prepared for arrests three days before the martial law declaration. The Counter-espionage Command had also received orders to deploy over 40 investigators to take over the arrested legislators from HID and escort them to designated locations.
The plan failed to proceed as scheduled only because: 1. The Korean people quickly took to the streets and surged toward the National Assembly, breaking through the blockade of the 707 Special Operations Group, allowing legislators to enter the parliament; 2. The officers and soldiers of the 707 Group did not fully carry out Yoon Suk-yeol’s orders to blockade the parliament, not firing on the people attempting to break through, not even warning shots, and hardly using violence—merely forming a loose human wall—and after the parliament announced the lifting of martial law, they disbanded themselves within six minutes, failing to fully exert their role as a state violence apparatus and passively resisting Yoon Suk-yeol’s orders; 3. The HID, responsible for executing the second step, did not take action because the martial law lasted only six hours, and the Counter-espionage Department’s investigators, in order to kill time, delayed executing orders by feasting and drinking. Although Yoon Suk-yeol claims all this was due to his kindness and not truly aiming at the parliament, his subordinates disobeyed orders, and the Korean people prevented the martial law. Which of these was truly decided by him? In Yoon Suk-yeol’s expectation, his plan was to arrest legislators, paralyze the parliament, prohibit the people’s right to protest, and prevent the military from executing martial law. None of this actually happened because he changed his plan midway or because forces beyond his control—such as the people and the army—opposed him. It is obvious that he did not intend to carry out a real coup but only to deceive the people.
Yoon Suk-yeol later claimed he had no such coup plan, which is an evasion of his previous aggressive rhetoric and a deception of the Korean people who experienced his counterrevolutionary coup firsthand. If he really did not choose to declare martial law on weekends, did not cut water and power to the parliament, did not use violence against the people, then what is the point of a bare commander-in-chief making such statements? It is merely a pragmatic act of changing his story midway to make his motives seem more aligned with reality if he failed to achieve his goal.
Since it is not “not willing” but “unable,” why can’t Yoon Suk-yeol carry out his evil conspiracy to launch a counterrevolutionary coup and restore fascist rule in Korea? Some say it is because Yoon Suk-yeol’s brain is malfunctioning and his personal scheming is inadequate. This is a idealist historical view because it only estimates Yoon Suk-yeol’s counterrevolutionary capacity but does not consider the material conditions he faces or the motives that logically drive his decisions. Moreover, if Yoon Suk-yeol’s abilities were truly defective, why did he gain support from some high-ranking military officers and civil officials at the start of martial law? Are they also incapable counterrevolutionaries? Why did Yoon Suk-yeol and this incompetent team defeat his main opponent Lee Jae-myung and the Democratic Party, and how did he manage to gain support within the People Power Party and become the candidate representing the entire party? These questions cannot be explained by such one-sided reasoning.
Some argue that Yoon Suk-yeol’s coup failed because South Korea’s “democratic system” played a role, with legislators ignoring the blockade and voting to lift martial law. This view is also misleading. Whether the martial law was initiated or ended by Yoon Suk-yeol, it fully exposed the severe political crisis faced by South Korea’s bourgeois democracy.
First, martial law was declared unilaterally by Yoon Suk-yeol, without prior consultation with the Korean people, and even without informing the legislators or his own ruling party in advance. He simply planned and announced it suddenly, which is legal under Korean law. In this way, Yoon Suk-yeol, as Göring mocked bourgeois democracy, used the “resources to destroy it” provided by bourgeois democracy to “harvest rich capital” and “enjoy endless pleasure.” This means that if his martial law ultimately succeeds, he can complete a counterrevolutionary coup under the guise of “democracy,” declare fascism legal in the name of “democracy,” and ultimately eliminate “democracy” itself. After all, no capitalist democracy has ever declared martial law illegal or unconstitutional through legislation or constitutional amendments. The historical irony is that both Hitler and South Korea’s Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan came to power legally and became fascist coup winners within the framework of bourgeois democracy.
Second, even the bourgeois democrats who promote South Korea’s bourgeois democracy have not realized an obvious fact: when the Korean military actively uses its strength during the May 16 and December 12 coups to blockade the parliament, it becomes impossible for the parliament to convene, and even legislators may be arrested in large numbers. How can the parliament convene and vote to lift martial law? Who has the power to declare martial law? As the saying goes, “When scholars meet soldiers, reason cannot prevail.” If the military truly forces the parliament to be unable to convene, who will rely on moral appeals or legal provisions to make the reactionary army defect and lift martial law? How can such a system, which relies on chance and internal enemy discord, be called a cure for fascism?
Finally, today Yoon Suk-yeol remains the legally elected president of South Korea protected by the bourgeois constitution. Even those politicians like Lee Jae-myung, who spoke grandly on December 3rd about impeaching Yoon Suk-yeol, can only follow the long process of impeachment according to South Korea’s bourgeois laws—getting over two-thirds of the parliament to support impeachment, then submitting it to the Constitutional Court, and within 180 days, persuading at least six of the nine justices to approve. Only then can Yoon Suk-yeol be removed from office. All this depends on recognizing him as still being the president, so that the impeachment and subsequent procedures are valid. The most subtle point is that South Korea’s recent impeachment attempt after the coup was automatically dismissed because the ruling party boycotted the vote, resulting in insufficient attendance, and even if the impeachment had passed, the Constitutional Court, with only six justices, still cannot rule on the case. Therefore, Yoon Suk-yeol remains de facto president even if he is in a suspended state. He has at least three safeguards: the support of 108 National Assembly members from the People Power Party, the support of the Constitutional Court’s six justices, and the fact that the president can directly appoint three justices. Such a flawed bourgeois democratic system cannot even punish a failed Yoon Suk-yeol, so how can it prevent a successful fascist coup? As Robespierre, the most radical advocate of bourgeois democracy, said when discussing why Louis XVI should be executed without any parliamentary procedure: “Louis must die because the homeland must live.” If Louis XVI could still be a subject of legal proceedings, he could be pardoned… But if Louis could be pardoned, then all defenders of freedom would become malicious slanderers, rebels would be friends of truth, and persecuted innocents would be protectors. Today, if Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment case ends in acquittal, what about the likes of Lee Jae-myung? Would Yoon Suk-yeol then become a “friend of truth” and a “protector of persecuted innocents”? Would the Korean people who risked their lives to stop Yoon Suk-yeol’s counterrevolutionary coup be branded as “criminals” and “anti-national forces”? The absurdity of South Korea’s bourgeois democracy has reached this point: it grants its enemies the possibility of innocence and itself the possibility of being condemned guilty. What is a democracy that negates itself? Those so-called “democratic heroes” who once attacked the Jacobin dictatorship for violating bourgeois democracy can no longer speak. Therefore, if the fascists are not suppressed with the ruthless dictatorship that leaves no room for democracy, then such a democracy is merely hypocritical, formal, and in fact a bourgeois dictatorship that shelters all enemies of the people and all bourgeoisie who act arbitrarily, secretly forbidding the political rights of the people. If so, then all democracies are accompanied by dictatorship—only in the latter case, democracy is for the fascist bourgeoisie, and dictatorship is for the broader masses excluding the bourgeoisie; in the former, the roles are reversed.
Some say that this is because South Korea’s “democratic ideology” is deeply rooted in people’s minds, so under the influence of “democratic ideas,” the Korean people spontaneously protested against the martial law, forcing its lifting. This view is very one-sided. While it recognizes the protests of the Korean people, it fails to see the real reasons why they oppose Yoon Suk-yeol’s counterrevolutionary coup, nor does it see the actual role played by the so-called “democratic ideas” in Korea. As previously mentioned, bourgeois democracy in Korea is powerless against this counterrevolutionary coup because it cannot prevent a coup in advance, stop it during, or punish it afterward. Since this is the case, even bourgeois democracy itself becomes a joke, so what role can its ideas possibly have? If the Korean people did not actively go out illegally to oppose the martial law and clash with the legitimate army, but instead passively accepted the martial law in the name of legality, then how could the unarmed legislators oppose the heavily armed soldiers? If the Korean people did not all rush to support opposition legislators who, due to the martial law declaration before the vote, were not protected by law, and did not create conditions for voting to lift martial law, then such a vote could not even happen. It is not that bourgeois “democratic ideas” have deeply rooted in people’s minds and prevented the coup; it is that the anti-fascist ideas of the proletariat in Korea have deeply rooted in people’s minds and prevented the coup. The Korean people were deceived by bourgeois democratic ideas, failing to pursue the captured criminal Yoon Suk-yeol and his accomplices with the full strength of the revolutionary spirit, instead allowing the politicians in the National Assembly to bicker among themselves. As a result, Yoon Suk-yeol remains safe and sound, and it is even unlikely that he will be sentenced to death or life imprisonment as the Korean people might hope—just look at how many former Korean presidents, including Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, quickly returned to “normal” life after their downfall. Therefore, although bourgeois democracy and bourgeois dictatorship in Korea should be opposed, the majority of the Korean people have not yet fully realized this, and the minority bourgeoisie continues to manipulate the situation.The dictatorship, especially that of fascist elements, and the democratic decision recognized by the majority of the Korean people should be supported, which means using violent means to break the constraints of Korea’s bourgeois democracy and applying ruthless dictatorship to punish fascist criminals like Yoon Seok-youl.
Although Korea’s bourgeois democracy was powerless during Yoon Seok-youl’s coup, the failure of his fascist conspiracy was indeed the result of the struggle of the Korean working people.
Historical materialism holds that the fundamental social contradictions of a society are the basic driving force of its development, namely the contradiction between productive forces and relations of production, between the economic base and the superstructure, which in class society manifests as class struggle. The reason Yoon Seok-youl was able to fall from power is that his former allies deserted him, and his downfall, ultimately, was because he lacked the support of the Korean people and was opposed by them, so he was swept away by the people’s struggle.
Yoon Seok-youl was installed by U.S. imperialism and its comprador bourgeoisie in Korea amidst the sharp class struggle situation. The ruling People Power Party, to which Yoon Seok-youl belongs, is itself a so-called ultra-right bourgeois party based on fascist ideology. From the moment he took office, Yoon Seok-youl unashamedly began implementing the three basic programs of the Korean fascist party: anti-communism (anti-North Korea), maintaining patriarchy, and suppressing workers’ struggles. After coming to power, Yoon Seok-youl reversed the previous “democratic” government’s policy of peaceful coexistence with North Korea, heavily emphasized North Korea’s “threat,” and used this to promote anti-communist ideas, branding all who oppose his rule—bourgeois democrats and striking workers—as “pro-North communist forces.” Furthermore, during his presidential campaign, Yoon openly proposed to abolish the “Ministry of Gender Equality and Family,” which nominally protects women’s rights, and called for increased crackdowns on “false accusations” of male “sexual crimes,” while ignoring the rampant patriarchal oppression phenomena in Korea today—such as the N号房 (N Room) incident, the Suhyeon case, etc. Lastly, Yoon Seok-youl’s most notorious act was his openly hostile attitude towards protests by Korean medical staff against his strengthening of dictatorship, repeatedly attempting to use state machinery to suppress strikes, constantly demanding that medical personnel return to work immediately, even during martial law, ordering them to resume work within 48 hours, revealing his anti-people face. The consequences of Yoon Seok-youl’s misconduct can only be widespread opposition from the Korean people. Not only did medical staff resolutely refuse to obey his orders and fight to the end, but Yoon Seok-youl was also ridiculed in various forms by the Korean people, becoming infamous. The rapid decline in Yoon Seok-youl’s personal prestige intensified internal struggles within the ruling class, allowing the Korean bourgeois democratic camp led by Lee Jae-myung to weaken the bourgeois fascist forces represented by Yoon Seok-youl. Ultimately, Yoon Seok-youl’s People Power Party suffered a crushing defeat in the April 2024 Korean National Assembly elections, winning only 108 seats, while Lee Jae-myung’s Democratic Party and its satellite parties gained 175 seats, forming a “small but fierce” pattern.
Subsequently, under pressure from public opinion, Yoon Seok-youl was constrained by Lee Jae-myung in incidents like the “Kim Geon-hee Investigation” and government budget bills, and faced multiple impeachment attempts initiated by opposition parties manipulated by Lee Jae-myung, almost succeeding, leaving him with no way out. As Yoon Seok-youl found himself unable to do anything within parliamentary democracy, a coup became his only option to maintain his rule. Yoon Seok-youl believed he had devised a “flawless” coup plan, as if he could easily mobilize the military to destroy Korea’s entire bourgeois democracy system.
However, when Yoon Seok-youl launched the coup, he, like all counter-revolutionary forces, overestimated his strength and underestimated the power of the masses. His foundation for the coup was extremely narrow. His repeated political failures had long since alienated him even within his own ruling party, relying only on a small group of loyal confidants. Therefore, Yoon Seok-youl’s actual strength was weak; when planning the coup, even most members of the ruling class feared him, and he could only rely on deception and sudden commands to half-coerce the military and senior bourgeois officers. This fully exposed his nature as a paper tiger—if a coup plotter cannot even secure the violence machinery necessary for success, the coup is doomed to fail. When his coup faced fierce opposition from the masses and was defeated, even his last remaining confidants abandoned him, with resignations from the presidential office, special forces, staff, and officers, confessions, and betrayals, all selling out to bourgeois democrats in hopes of escaping punishment. The final outcome of Yoon Seok-youl’s attempt to restore fascist dictatorship in Korea could only be a shameful ending of widespread betrayal.
The heinous fascism is unpopular; the Korean people who overthrew three fascist regimes—Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan—are not to be humiliated. They will continue to fight, sending Yoon Seok-youl into the trash heap of history where he belongs.
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/12182336644
https://www.zhihu.com/pin/1850650646686072832
https://chinese.joins.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=117675