Yoon Suk Yeol, the President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), declared martial law late at night on December 3rd. After he claimed that the opposing party was communist sympathizers working with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea).

According to Oxford Languages, martial law is defined as “military government, involving the suspension of ordinary law.” So essentially, the president had just initiated a coup to throw out any political opposition.

By that, I mean, that not only did he order the military to shut down any protests or gatherings, but they also blocked South Korean lawmakers from getting into the National Assembly Building (their version of Congress/parliament) in order to prevent them from overturning his martial law mandate.

The problem was that the crowds were so massive, and the military/police had not mobilized/in large numbers yet, it allowed South Korea’s lawmakers to get inside the building and overturn the martial law decree by Wednesday morning.

President Yoon Suk Yeol would pull back the decree a while after the National Assembly made their decision, both taking place Wednesday, December 4th in the morning. The President’s own party along with the opposition would unanimously do this.

Now, the entire government, nation, and international community are completely upset at the President. Aides have resigned, even his party chief apologized for the action and the entire government is essentially calling for the impeachment of the President.

The reaction of the President has actually been interesting. On Thursday, December 5th, he said he would “fight to the end” and called the opposition “anti-state forces” essentially regarding them like how he did when he imposed martial law, as North Korean sympathizers.

So basically the current situation is him fighting until he’s probably impeached, but the question remains, why would he do something like this, are communists actually infiltrating the government and not allowing it to establish the rule of law as he claims?

According to Reuters, he said, “I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order.”

However, the actual reason has been pointed out as his presidency being rough with corruption, scandals, fighting with parliament which is controlled by the nation’s opposition, and so on, has caused his reputation to plummet, now it’s practically non-existent after the martial law decree.

Faizaan Noor said, “In any case, South Korea has to keep a stable democracy, otherwise it would fall to the North Koreans, and nobody wants a stronger North Korea.”

Kaden Davis said, “The leader of North Korea is probably wondering what’s happening.”