A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
It has been a remarkable 24 hours in South Korea, where opposition politicians have submitted a motion to impeach the president.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
This is after the president's failed attempt to put the country under martial law. It's the first such attempt since South Korea went from military rule to democracy in 1987. And it caught its citizens and main ally - the U.S. - by surprise.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us from Seoul. I mean, Anthony, this happened really fast, within the course of a day or so. So how did it all start?
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: It began when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law late Tuesday evening, and he explained to the public that opposition politicians who control parliament are paralyzing the government. They're subverting democracy, and they're aligned with North Korea. But lawmakers in parliament unanimously voted to demand Yoon to cancel martial law, which he then did, as he's required to do by the constitution. Yoon's top aides have offered to resign en masse. So has his defense secretary. And opposition lawmakers plan to put the impeachment motion to a vote in parliament as early as Friday or Saturday, so very fast-moving.
MARTÍNEZ: So what was President Yoon trying to accomplish with all this?
KUHN: Well, Yoon was elected president by a razor-thin margin in 2022. And since then, he's struggled to get his policies and his budgets through parliament. Opposition politicians have impeached his appointees. They've hounded his wife over several scandals. But does that justify martial law? Well, I talked about this with Benjamin Engel, who's a political scientist and a visiting professor at Dankook University just outside Seoul. And here's how he says he talked about it with his colleagues.
BENJAMIN ENGEL: I have also been calling it a coup or a self-coup, and I don't think there's really any other way to see it. With the declaration of martial law, we got that decree that basically outlawed democracy.
KUHN: So a self-coup basically means that Yoon was democratically elected president, but in order to hang on to and increase his power, he tried to roll back civil liberties.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So why didn't this work out like he wanted it to?
KUHN: Well, the declaration of martial law said that parliament was suspended, protests were banned, media was subject to censorship and anyone who resisted could be arrested. But neither police nor military effectively enforced it, so the attempt to impose martial law was basically defeated within a matter of hours. And, you know, people here have just expressed such disbelief that such a thing could happen in South Korea in 2024 because martial law was declared several times before 1987, when South Korea was under military rule. Today South Koreans are far more skeptical of any attempt to deprive them of their rights in the name of a communist threat, and they're not afraid to protest in the streets. And demonstrations are planned or ongoing in Seoul and other cities.
MARTÍNEZ: I saw that the U.S. Embassy in Seoul warned U.S. citizens to be careful and avoid big crowds. So what else are they saying about this?
KUHN: Well, the U.S. Embassy said on X that Yoon's announcement to end martial law is a crucial step. And that implies that imposing it in the first place was not a good idea, but they didn't say that. And given the importance of South Korea as an ally, such comments will probably stay behind closed doors. South Korea hosts 28,000 U.S. troops. They're building factories in the U.S. to make high-tech goods. And they're supposed to be part of a U.S.-led coalition of like-minded democracies. So the logic here may be that publicly criticizing South Korea might give like-minded dictatorships something to celebrate.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul. Anthony, thanks.
KUHN: You're welcome, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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