The quickly aborted martial law declaration in South Korea, declared by a mendacious president who did not know his own people, shows how a free nation guards its liberties.
South Korea’s already highly unpopular and scandal-plagued president, afraid for his political future, declared martial law, hyperbolically claiming his political opposition aligned with North Korea, without evidence. He also surrounded the parliamentary building with troops, which South Korean law forbids. The parliament, some of whose members surmounted the military cordon by climbing through windows, quickly and unanimously rejected martial law, which they can legally override by majority vote. The president surrendered to both law and political reality by rescinding martial law. Thousands of highly organized demonstrators had already assembled, challenging the troops, many of whom responded passively, likely unwilling to impose what they knew to be wrong and illegal. Demonstrators also helped parliamentarians get to their seats and retake the republic from the feckless president.
Now that president faces impeachment and, hopefully, removal from office. There is no greater betrayal of a democratic and lawful republic than for its chief magistrate to attempt a coup d’etat. South Korea’s president, a prosecutor by profession, had never held public office before and clearly is not just lawless but politically clueless. He had no support in parliament, little public backing, and the military, if pressed, likely would have sided ultimately with law and public opinion.
South Korea has plenty of history with repression. Japan brutally colonized it. After World War II it resisted North Korean aggression while also suffering under its own dictatorships. With U.S. encouragement, South Korea finally became democratic in the 1980s, subsequently enjoying both prosperity and stability. Its presidents have continuously faltered, but South Korea’s constitution and democratic process have robustly endured across forty years. Any South Koreans who might be curious about or tempted by alternatives to democracy need only look across the Demilitarized Zone, where tyranny is unalloyed.
The attempted coup in South Korea is shocking in a seemingly stable republic. But it is parcel to a global postliberal tide against constitutional democracy, where laws and not persons rule. We can hope that this shock, with the robust near unanimity of the South Korean nation, will both strengthen free institutions in South Korea and discourage aspiring despots elsewhere. It’s certainly a reminder that free institutions, if healthy, are far more agile than aspiring autocrats.
Only about one third of South Koreans are Christian, but churches there famously have backed democracy and human rights. A spokesman for the Catholic bishops said the president must “sincerely apologize to the people.” The bishops declared: “Our democracy was built at great sacrifice. The Catholic Church in Korea actively supports and stands in solidarity with the Korean people to protect our democracy.” The Methodist Church’s president also called the presidential martial law declaration “an affront to democracy.” He added: “The martial law is a betrayal of the trust people have given to the government. And it is unconstitutional, befitting a dictatorship.”
Churches and Christians, if faithful to their social calling, will always resist dictatorship and lawlessness as presumption against human dignity and decency. Christians know by faith and experience that no ruler or regime can be entrusted with complete power, unrestrained by law and countervailing institutions. Dictatorship and strongman rule is functionally pagan, deeply at odds with the Christian understanding of justice and good order. Most people of any faith or no faith are reluctant to surrender their sovereignty in favor of despotism. But too often, and in most places around the world, and across history, people have acquiesced to tyranny from fear or passivity. Some falsely believe it will offer security or at least spare them responsibility. Many, like some Hebrews of old, prefer a “king” as in the heathen nations as opposed to God’s original plans for self-rule under His Providence.
South Korea did not surrender to this temptation. It showed the world how a freedom and law loving nation, through its various institutions and public voices, responds when an aspiring despot tries to seize what is not his. South Korea’s democracy is not old. But it was gained through perseverance, is sustained by vigilance, and will endure so long as South Koreans cherish liberty.
There will be a strategic cost for the South Korean president’s lawless folly. He was ostensibly pro-American and a strong backer of alliance with Japan against North Korea and China. The opposition, some of which is more ambivalent, will now have the upper hand. Here too is a political lesson. “Friends” who lack judgment, character and virtue are sometimes worse than enemies.