{"id":50533,"date":"2024-12-14T08:55:26","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T16:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=50533"},"modified":"2024-12-14T08:55:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T16:55:26","slug":"the-failure-of-yoons-desperate-power-grab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/14\/the-failure-of-yoons-desperate-power-grab\/","title":{"rendered":"The Failure of Yoon&#8217;s Desperate Power&nbsp;Grab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>More than a week after Yoon\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/daniellarison.substack.com\/p\/yoons-desperate-power-grab\" rel=\"\">attempted coup<\/a>, the South Korean president is digging in his heels and refusing to quit. Yoon is now under investigation for insurrection, and he is under a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/south-korea-special-forces-officer-000105809.html\" rel=\"\">travel ban<\/a> so that he cannot leave the country. The disgraced president <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/south-korea-martial-law-yoon-76af91dfc6a252a536ee1d80c0bdfccd\" rel=\"\">delivered<\/a> another speech in which he repeated many of the same deranged claims he made when he declared martial law. He has vowed to \u201cfight to the end.\u201d Yoon\u2019s party shielded him from impeachment last week, but that support has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2024\/12\/11\/asia\/south-korea-ruling-party-impeachment-hnk-intl\/index.html\" rel=\"\">crumbled<\/a> as more details about the coup have come to light and Yoon refuses to resign:<\/p>\n<p><em>South Korea\u2019s ruling party has thrown its support behind attempts to impeach embattled President Yoon Suk Yeol over his ill-fated decision to declare martial law that sparked a political crisis and widespread public anger in the country.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It seems likely that the second impeachment attempt will be successful. Yoon cannot continue as president after what he did, and he should be out of office soon. Fortunately, his attempt to smash the opposition with martial law failed and destroyed what remained of his presidency in the process. It\u2019s clear that electing Yoon was a terrible mistake, but with any luck South Korea will not have to live with that mistake for much longer.<\/p>\n<p>The fallout from the attempted coup has been swift. Following his arrest, the former defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, <a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2024\/12\/10\/asia\/south-korea-defense-minister-suicide-attempt-intl-hnk\/index.html\" rel=\"\">attempted suicide<\/a> in jail, but he was stopped from ending his life. There are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/world-news\/2024\/12\/11\/south-korea-defence-minister-kim-yong-hyun-suicide-police\/?ICID=continue_without_subscribing_reg_first\" rel=\"\">reports<\/a> that the former defense minister was attempting to provoke a crisis with North Korea earlier this year to create a pretext for a martial law declaration:<\/p>\n<p><em>South Korea\u2019s former defence minister Kim Yong-hyun ordered a drone deployment to North Korea to lay the ground for martial law declaration, it has been alleged.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Park Beom-kye, a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party, said on Monday that Mr Kim ordered the deployment of drones to the North Korean capital Pyongyang in October, hoping to instigate a retaliatory attack from the North and use it to justify last week\u2019s martial law declaration.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/daniellarison.substack.com\/p\/the-failure-of-yoons-desperate-power\"><b>Read the rest of the article at Eunomia<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i>Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at <a href=\"https:\/\/daniellarison.substack.com\">Eunomia<\/a>. He is former senior editor at<\/i> The American Conservative<i>. He has been published in the<\/i> New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene<i>, and<\/i> Culture11, <i>and was a columnist for<\/i> The Week<i>. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DanielLarison\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than a week after Yoon\u2019s attempted coup, the South Korean president is digging in his heels and refusing to quit. Yoon is now under investigation for insurrection, and he is under a travel ban so that he cannot leave the country. The disgraced president delivered another speech in which he repeated many of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[747],"class_list":["post-50533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"It\u2019s clear that electing Yoon was a terrible mistake, but with any luck South Korea will not have to live with that mistake for much longer."},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50533"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50538,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50533\/revisions\/50538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50533"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=50533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}