If Korea’s Attempted Coup Surprises You, Then You Don’t Know Korea
By Ed Dutton
In the middle of the night on December 2nd, the South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, shocked the world by declaring martial law. This meant the suspension of democratic activity in what is widely understood to be a stable democracy. Yoon justified this by claiming that his political opponents were pro-North Korea and were intent on subverting the South Korean state.
Parliament had the ability to vote down this decision, so Yoon sent in the army to surround parliament in order to stop legislators from entering. MPs that opposed him turned up anyway, scuffled with the army, gained entry, and unanimously voted down Yoon's declaration. The army even withdrew at the request of the parliamentary speaker; effectively mutinying against their president, to whom they are solely answerable. Within 6 hours, Yoon had overturned his own declaration of martial law; his authority sapped. What on earth is going on? How could this possibly happen in stable and sensible South Korea? Asking these questions simply displays a lack of knowledge about South Korea.
We shouldn’t forget that the South Koreans are, genetically, very similar to the North Koreans, and the latter are not exactly known for their love of democracy. Democracy, according to Finnish researcher Tatu Vanhanen, requires an optimum level of social trust: too high and you don’t question your leaders, resulting in the rise of autocrats; too low and you fear the opposition will persecute you, so democracy falls apart.
South Korean proto-democracy ended with a military coup in 1961 by General Park, who then went about modernizing what was a backwards country. From about 1972, Park’s regime clamped down further, becoming explicitly dictatorial. Park was assassinated in 1979, and replaced by General Chun who was overthrown by a democratic uprising in 1987 known as the “June Democratic Struggle.” All of these changes involved massacres. Thereafter, South Korea went through a long period of what has been termed “democratic paternalism” or, perhaps, “semi-democracy,” in which rights such as protest were heavily restricted. Only, therefore, in 2002 was South Korea a “democracy” in the sense that the term would be understood in Western countries. In other words, South Korea has only been a democracy for about 20 years. Why should we be in any way shocked that the president might have autocratic tendencies?
We tend to think of Northeast Asian countries as high-trust societies. Evolved to an extremely harsh yet stable ecology, they are pronounced examples of slow Life History Strategies; of K-orientation. In order to survive in such an ecology, you strongly invest in nurture, meaning that you create strong bonds and become highly pro-social. All the problems that need solving in desperately cold winters select for intelligence and you can only survive as part of a group, so you become high in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness and strongly positively ethnocentric. As you’re under intense group-selection, you also become strongly negatively ethnocentric. In an unstable, or fast, ecology, you can be wiped out at any minute so you live for now, are not pro-social (because you need to act lethally and suddenly and favors may never be repaid), and you are low in trust because other people will be aggressive and selfish, just like you.
This being so, shouldn’t South Koreans all just get along and be really honest? Why would the president attempt a coup? Why do they have a history of political corruption and jailing their presidential predecessors? Park Geun-hye (2013–2017): Impeached in 2017, sentenced to 22 years for bribery, but pardoned in 2021; Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013), convicted of taking bribes from Samsung and sentenced to 17 years but pardoned; Roh Tae-woo (1988–1993), sentenced to 17 years for corruption in 1996, but pardoned; Chun Doo-hwan (1980–1988), sentenced to death in 1996 but pardoned...
The thing is, it’s also been found that as a society becomes more K-oriented, the positive manifold between the different K traits becomes weaker, due to the need to survive in very specific niches. Thus, for example, Northeast Asians are very strong on nurture but they don’t like adopting unrelated children, even though this is nurture for the sake of it. Thus, there will be certain “fast” tendencies among South Koreans. In addition, they’ve moved from being war-torn and impoverished to industrialized in a few generations. This rapid, unpredictable change would induce “fast” tendencies, including corruption and regionalism. Once we understand this, then what just happened in South Korea becomes even less surprising.
Why did the president declare martial law? President Yoon is from the conservative People Power Party. His opponents, the Democratic Party, have a majority in the National Assembly. They are doing everything they can to make Yoon’s life difficult. They have passed about 22 impeachments against ministers, lawyers, and prosecutors associated with Yoon. Prosecutors are also going after the leader of the Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, who appears to be a serious crook. About 5 people related to his court case have either committed suicide or had heart attacks.
Yoon’s wife is very rich, and a crook herself. She has accepted expensive handbags as bribes and has not apologized. The Democratic Party has tried about 3 times to pass a Special Prosecution motion to deal with his wife, but Yoon has vetoed it each time. It is this frustration with the opposition that led Yoon, in a country to which democracy is very new, to declare martial law and cast aspersions about being pro-North Korea. He thought he could get away with it; he misjudged.
According to an academic friend of mine in South Korea, there is a strong regional divide within the country. Kyungsang Province is in the east and it provided the military governments and tends to vote for the People Power Party. Cholla is in the west and it has provided the Democratic oppositions; it votes for the Democratic Party. This also reflects an urban-rural divide. Kyungsang is industrial; Cholla is rural. The two regions are viscerally hostile to each other. For example, General Park believed that people from Cholla were cunning and didn’t hire them. Kyungsang tends to be pro-Japan and anti-China and anti-North Korea; Cholla tends to be pro-China and anti-Japan and pro-North Korea.
According to my contact, South Koreans typically favor candidates for jobs who go to the same school or university as the one that they themselves have gone to; so they are nepotistic and low in trust. For example, the former president, Lee Myung-bak, who was a conservative who came to power after Roe Moo-hyun committed suicide in 2009 because he was afraid that his corruption would be uncovered, only chose people who had attended Korea University.
From a Life History strategy perspective, South Korea’s high corruption and regional animus reflect an evolutionary lag. The rapid pace of modernization has not fully realigned societal behaviors from the in-group-focused strategies characteristic of unstable environments to the cooperative, long-term strategies expected in stable, highly developed societies. Once you understand this, together with its limited history of democracy, there is little shocking about President Yoon’s attempted coup.
What is shocking is that South Korea’s freedom from North Korean incursion is propped up by the U.S. Army. The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Philip Goldberg, has previously been kicked out of Bolivia and the Philippines for attempts to overthrow the respective sitting governments. He is supposed to leave South Korea in January. It is likely that Goldberg, and Washington DC, were informed about Yoon’s martial law plans but did not attempt to prevent them.
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Does the issue around South Korea's high trust imply that there is an appropriate level of social distrust?
YouTube channel The Duran is speculating that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was related to an attempt by the Biden administration to funnel South Korean weapons to Ukraine