Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the
Speaker 2: worst coups in all of history. I'm your host, Bia Wong,
Speaker 2: and we are returning to one of the worst coups
Speaker 2: I have ever seen, because a whole bunch more stuff
Speaker 2: has happened in our most recent, unbelievably dogshit coup in
Speaker 2: South Korea, the six hour coup of which President Yun
Speaker 2: declared martial law and tried to shut down the National Assembly,
Speaker 2: and then the National Assembly got together and voted to
Speaker 2: end the martial law, and then it stopped. Extremely bizarre
Speaker 2: in baffling series of events. And you know, when we
Speaker 2: last left our intrepid heroes, the people of South Korea,
Speaker 2: they had just successfully overturned a coup. No one quite
Speaker 2: knew what was gonna happen. In the aftermath, we knew,
Speaker 2: and impeacha vote was coming, a vote to impeach President Yun.
Speaker 2: The reason we're coming back to this, though, is that
Speaker 2: the aftermath of all of this has been absolutely baffling,
Speaker 2: and I think this has all been lost in the
Speaker 2: news cycle because about a trillion things are happening right now,
Speaker 2: But the situation in South Korea has been unbelievably weird,
Speaker 2: and so we're now going to take a look at
Speaker 2: the actual impeachments of President Yun and the unbelievably bizarre
Speaker 2: path that led to it, because oh my god, the
Speaker 2: more I talk to people, the more I realize that
Speaker 2: people don't know how unbelievably unhinged everything has been since
Speaker 2: since the military coup, because everyone has moved on. So
Speaker 2: we're going back. So immediately after the coup, there was
Speaker 2: this whole wave of military guys going like, we didn't
Speaker 2: know we were taking part in the COUU, We're totally innocents, Like, oh,
Speaker 2: they just let us out of the trucks and suddenly
Speaker 2: we were at the National Assembly.
Speaker 3: We were like, oh, what are we doing?
Speaker 2: And there's also been this whole thing of all these
Speaker 2: special forces guys going like oh yeah, no, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: we totally could have taken the National Assembly in twenty
Speaker 2: minutes if we wanted to. We just uh, we just
Speaker 2: like didn't want to take a National Assembly, Like we
Speaker 2: didn't we didn't really want to do it, man, Like
Speaker 2: our heart wasn't in this coup, and like, really, I
Speaker 2: have seen the videos of that shit, man, Like I
Speaker 2: didn't see you like going in there and kicking ass
Speaker 2: and taking names. I saw you getting your ass kicked
Speaker 2: by a guy just like blowing your ass up with
Speaker 2: a fire extinguisher and like not being able to break
Speaker 2: a bunch of very well constructive barricade set up by
Speaker 2: like fucking Senate aids. So that's been extremely funny. So
Speaker 2: you like vanished for the entire time this coup was
Speaker 2: going on, and like nobody knew where he was and
Speaker 2: no one had seen him, and things were kind of
Speaker 2: fiasco e.
Speaker 3: He was just gone.
Speaker 2: So he finally like reappeared, right, And as he started reappears,
Speaker 2: he tries to like do this explanation of why he
Speaker 2: did the coup. It goes about as badly as you
Speaker 2: would expect from someone who just failed the worst coup
Speaker 2: that we've ever seen. Here's from MPR quote in his
Speaker 2: speech on Thursday June, a former chief prosecutor attempt justify
Speaker 2: his actions and downplay its significance. He argued that the
Speaker 2: opposition's quote legislative dictatorship unquote paralyzed state affairs and disturb
Speaker 2: social order. Now this this is going back to the
Speaker 2: thing you know he did at the time, Right, he
Speaker 2: has this thing where he keeps calling the Parliament which
Speaker 2: is controlled by the Democratic Party, which is like the
Speaker 2: liberal opposition party. He kept calling the parliaments like opposition
Speaker 2: anti state forces, and like, my brother in Christ, what
Speaker 2: the fuck is a legislative dictatorship? I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 2: you could be really strictly anarchist about it and be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: all legislatives are dictatorships. But my dude, you are not
Speaker 2: living under a dictatorship because the parliament that your country
Speaker 2: elected hates you and refuses to pass your dogship budget
Speaker 2: because no one likes you. That is simply not what
Speaker 2: the word dictatorship means. It reminds me of this thing
Speaker 2: where like, you know, if you go back and you
Speaker 2: read like people in the eighteen hundreds talking about or
Speaker 2: like like seventeen hundreds too, you'll read them talking about monarchies, right,
Speaker 2: and they'll be like, ah, if the king can like
Speaker 2: overrule the will of the nobles, we would be living
Speaker 2: in a peer dictatorship. It's like, what the fuck are
Speaker 2: you talking about? Like Suri, you live under a monarchy,
Speaker 2: like you are already in a dictatorship. You are also
Speaker 2: like part of the authoritary and apartans of the dictatorship,
Speaker 2: and this is just like the inverse of that, where
Speaker 2: it's like, ah, the legislature won't let me do whatever
Speaker 2: the fuck I want, so this is now a dictatorship
Speaker 2: and so like, you know, that's simply not what the
Speaker 2: word dictatorship means, and you can't get away with that
Speaker 2: shit as much in a country where people like in
Speaker 2: living memory, have lived through an actual military dictatorship and
Speaker 2: understand what that's like. The parliament refusing to pass your
Speaker 2: terrible budget, that's not an excuse to institute martial law
Speaker 2: and try to shut down the legislature. So this was
Speaker 2: not received well as you would expect from whatever unhinged
Speaker 2: speech that was. He did apologize for imposing Marshall Law,
Speaker 2: which is a very funny place to end up, is
Speaker 2: like you try to do a coup and then you
Speaker 2: have to go on TV and apologize for trying to
Speaker 2: do the coup and also try to argue you didn't
Speaker 2: just try to do a coup.
Speaker 3: So this is received very poorly, as we sort of predicted.
Speaker 2: Immediately, the opposition Democratic Party immediately tries to impeach Youn,
Speaker 2: and from the way the headlines kind of work in
Speaker 2: the West, and from the way this is being talked about,
Speaker 2: and even from the way this episode sort of opened,
Speaker 2: you'd think that this impeachment vote was how we got impeached.
Speaker 2: But no, no, the first impeachment vote is not how
Speaker 2: un gets impeached.
Speaker 3: Everything is way way weirder than that.
Speaker 2: Now, June's party, the People's Power Party, which is henceforth
Speaker 2: going to be called the PPP because I am not
Speaker 2: going to say the words People Power Party over and
Speaker 2: over again.
Speaker 3: Good lord. The PPP get a lot of.
Speaker 2: Credit from people outside of South Korea for, like, you know,
Speaker 2: some of their members legitimately did show up to parliament
Speaker 2: to vote against the martial law declaration, and at the
Speaker 2: time in the last episode, I said, that's bullshit. You
Speaker 2: don't get credit for voting against martial law. And also
Speaker 2: like most of them weren't there, and I kind of
Speaker 2: got shited for this. And I have been absolutely one
Speaker 2: hundred percent vindicated because the.
Speaker 3: Piece are vote, the first one rolls around.
Speaker 2: The first one happens very quickly after the first coup,
Speaker 2: right well, the first que hopefully the only cue, hopefully
Speaker 2: it is not a second cue. But this happens very quickly,
Speaker 2: and Okay, so the vote rolls around, and the entire PPP,
Speaker 2: the entire party except maybe like two people, just walk
Speaker 2: out of the chambers. And because they walk out of
Speaker 2: the chambers, the vote fails because they don't have they
Speaker 2: don't have quorum. But if you don't have a quorum
Speaker 2: is like there's like a minimum number of members that
Speaker 2: has to be in attendance for for whatever you're doing
Speaker 2: to be legal to stop like two people from showing
Speaker 2: up in the middle of the night and being like, aha,
Speaker 2: I am the parliaments. We've just passed this like order
Speaker 2: that makes me dictator or whatever. And again, the entire
Speaker 2: PPP just walks out and they leave, and the vote
Speaker 2: fails because the PPP managed to whip basically its entire
Speaker 2: membership into into trying to keep union power. And here
Speaker 2: begins the what the fuck is going on part of
Speaker 2: this episode, because A all reports we have suggest that
Speaker 2: Yun was planning to have the leadership, but the PvP
Speaker 2: arrested and b he just literally tried to do a
Speaker 2: coup and they're still backing him. And see we stumble
Speaker 2: into a very very thority question that I saw from
Speaker 2: people in Korea, Like the moment after all this stuff happens,
Speaker 2: but didn't really hit the western press until later, if
Speaker 2: at all, and didn't really hit like the mainstream consciousness.
Speaker 2: And this question will become a parent in a second.
Speaker 2: So here's from the Guardian. Senior PPP politicians have claimed
Speaker 2: you can continue as president while delegating his powers to
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister.
Speaker 3: An arrangement.
Speaker 2: Park that's Park Seoan Day, who's a very powerful Democratic
Speaker 2: Party politician. An arrangement Park described as quote a blatant
Speaker 2: constitutional violence with.
Speaker 3: No legal basis. Now, this is true.
Speaker 2: What Parky is saying is right right, And the fact
Speaker 2: that the Guardian is saying like that their way of
Speaker 2: framing this is Oh, the opposition party person says that
Speaker 2: this is a blatant violation of constitutional law with no
Speaker 2: legal basis. That's not just a thing that he says like,
Speaker 2: this is true, like there is no legal mechanism for well,
Speaker 2: we don't want to impeach our presidents. But also he
Speaker 2: just tried to do a coup, so is said, we're
Speaker 2: going to take his powers away and give it to
Speaker 2: the Prime minister so he can still serve withou us
Speaker 2: impeaching him like that, that's not a thing you can't
Speaker 2: do this. There's no mechanism for this. The Democratic Party
Speaker 2: people are just completely correct here. But because for some
Speaker 2: reason the Guardian feels it, I mean, it's the Guardian
Speaker 2: right like, but they feel it necessary to sort of
Speaker 2: both sides again, a fucking coup.
Speaker 3: This is where we are. Here's more from the Guardian quote.
Speaker 2: The leader of the PPP, On Dung hun said at
Speaker 2: the weekend that Yun would not be involved in foreign
Speaker 2: and other state affairs, with control of the administration shifting
Speaker 2: to the prem Minister. Hon Duk sue Hans said Yun's
Speaker 2: televised apology was effectively a promise to leave office.
Speaker 3: Now, no, it wasn't. It was not a promise to
Speaker 3: leave office. What the fuck are you talking about? Like
Speaker 3: everyone could just go listen to his apology. He didn't
Speaker 3: say that. He did not say he was gonna.
Speaker 2: Leave office, right and no, hell he says it's effectively
Speaker 2: a promise to leave office.
Speaker 3: But it simply isn't right. Everyone could just like see
Speaker 3: this and again.
Speaker 2: Like you know, okay, so like the thing that the
Speaker 2: thing that the PvP is trying to do, right, the
Speaker 2: PvP is trying to have their prime minister like gain
Speaker 2: control of the administration. Now, there is a mechanism to
Speaker 2: do this under the constitution. It's called impeachment. The thing
Speaker 2: it happens where you get impeached is that you get
Speaker 2: kicked out of office. And we're gonna get to this later,
Speaker 2: but you get kicked out office and the Prime Minister
Speaker 2: gets put into power, and this happens until this pre
Speaker 2: court decides whether whether whether your impeachment should go through
Speaker 2: or not. Right, So, like there's a mechanism for this,
Speaker 2: but the PvP doesn't want to like impeach un but
Speaker 2: they also don't want him seemingly running the country because
Speaker 2: he appears to be like absolutely unhinged and just again
Speaker 2: declared martial law and tried to knock off the legislature.
Speaker 2: So you have this, You have this whole sort of
Speaker 2: steaming mess of a situation where the PvP is trying
Speaker 2: to like have it both ways of like not having
Speaker 2: union power but also not impeaching him. But this also
Speaker 2: begs one very important question. Hula fuck was running the
Speaker 2: country between the first.
Speaker 3: Appeachment vote and the second one. No one knows. No
Speaker 3: one knows who was running this fucking country.
Speaker 2: This is a country with fifty one million people and
Speaker 2: nobody knew who was fucking running the country, and this
Speaker 2: this barely made the news.
Speaker 3: I'm going insane, How how? Why? Why?
Speaker 2: Why is this a thing that just like completely disappeared
Speaker 2: beneath the fucking.
Speaker 3: Like chatter of the news waves. This just this just
Speaker 3: vanished entirely.
Speaker 2: And speaking of vanishing entirely, we were gonna vanish entirely
Speaker 2: to do these ads.
Speaker 3: And we are back.
Speaker 2: So, as you would imagine from a situation where again
Speaker 2: you have a country, you're fifty one million people, where
Speaker 2: no one knows who is running the country, things have
Speaker 2: been extremely chaotic. So you know, we covered in the
Speaker 2: last episode that like a bunch of ministers were resigning,
Speaker 2: right because you know, they had just taken part in
Speaker 2: a coup and they were like, well shit, the ex
Speaker 2: defense minister, who's one of the people who's been sort
Speaker 2: of implicated as being like saying that he's to a
Speaker 2: large step behind the coup like is true.
Speaker 3: But I mean this was a.
Speaker 2: Cooperative effort between Yun the defense minister, and a bunch
Speaker 2: of the people in the army, and the defense minister
Speaker 2: who resigned in disgrace like got thrown in jail. So
Speaker 2: that's fucking wild, like you just got like arrested by
Speaker 2: the police. A bunch of testimony also has come out
Speaker 2: from the National Assembly investigation, which I'm not covering much
Speaker 2: of the testimony from the National Assembly investstigation because it's
Speaker 2: really unclear exactly how reputable all this stuff is because
Speaker 2: a lot of people are just saying shit, right, and
Speaker 2: some of it may be real. Some of it maybe
Speaker 2: some of the people have you know, obtained their sources,
Speaker 2: but some of it's probably not. But like to get
Speaker 2: a sense of like the kind of stuff that is
Speaker 2: coming out in this investigation. One of the big claims
Speaker 2: was from I think it's some like a TV host
Speaker 2: who claimed he got texted it by a guy in
Speaker 2: the army. But apparently he was saying that the plan
Speaker 2: by union the army, the plan was to have the
Speaker 2: head of the PPP killed and then drop a North
Speaker 2: Korean uniform nearby to like do a false flag and
Speaker 2: implicate North Korean special forces. Now this is unbelievably unhinged, right,
Speaker 2: what the fuck? And it probably isn't true, but you know,
Speaker 2: the source isn't great, But like who knows, right, we
Speaker 2: don't actually know if they're playing to do this and
Speaker 2: fucked it up, or if they weren't playing to do this,
Speaker 2: or if this person is this person just lying, this
Speaker 2: person did get this text, but the person was misinformed.
Speaker 2: We don't know if this is just like misinformation that's
Speaker 2: being spread around. This is a good demonstration of what
Speaker 2: the sort of chaos of this moment has been. And
Speaker 2: you know, and there's been a lot of other stuff
Speaker 2: that I think in any other time and place probably
Speaker 2: would have been like front page news. So one of
Speaker 2: the things that happens in this whole process is that
Speaker 2: the South Korean police tried to raid the house of
Speaker 2: the president, and you know, like as part of their investigation,
Speaker 2: there's a whole thing where Union's been ordered by like
Speaker 2: the investigatorial services to not leave the country because he's
Speaker 2: just actively under investigation for this military coup being illegal
Speaker 2: by just like the regular ass police. And so South
Speaker 2: Korean police like try to raid his house and they
Speaker 2: can't do it because the South Korean equivalent of the
Speaker 2: Secret Service stops them from doing the raid. And this
Speaker 2: in and of itself is something that like again would
Speaker 2: be a giant news headline at any other point in time,
Speaker 2: and it's just been completely lost, and it's like it's
Speaker 2: not sort of clear right now how this is all
Speaker 2: sort of going to play out, and whether the police
Speaker 2: are going to be able to do this and you know,
Speaker 2: what's actually gonna happen to you And after he presumably
Speaker 2: leaves office, I mean, I guess the Streme Court could
Speaker 2: save him, but like, you know, there's there's a real
Speaker 2: chance that he and we're going to get into this
Speaker 2: morning a second, there's a real chance that he just
Speaker 2: like fucking goes to prison, right And unlike the last
Speaker 2: president who was going to move from office, like, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine him getting pardoned by the next administration because
Speaker 2: that was merely an unhinged corruption scandal involving the president
Speaker 2: of South Korea being under the influence of a shaman
Speaker 2: and doing a bunch of corruption that did a bunch
Speaker 2: of horrible shit. But this is, you know, this is
Speaker 2: like he tried to do a coup, right, So it's
Speaker 2: sort of unclear if he's going to get saved from that.
Speaker 2: It does seem very likely that he's going to face
Speaker 2: a bunch of charges for this because everyone is unbelievably
Speaker 2: pissed off. Here's from dw On Monday, former head of
Speaker 2: Special Warfare Command Kwak Jung Gwyn and former head of
Speaker 2: the Capitol Defense Command Lie Jin Wu were arrested on
Speaker 2: charges of deploying military personnel to the parliament. Former chief
Speaker 2: of the Defense Counterintelligence Command Yo En hung has been
Speaker 2: accused of orchestrating the implementation of marshal law, and Army
Speaker 2: Chief Park Ensiou has been suspended from his role. Yun's
Speaker 2: former Defense Minister Kim Yong yun, who stepped down immediately
Speaker 2: following the board in martial law declaration, and former Interior
Speaker 2: Minister Lee Song min also face investigations. So what we're
Speaker 2: seeing here effectively, right, is the house cleaning of the
Speaker 2: ranks of the Korean military who've been involved with this
Speaker 2: whole thing, right, And they're going through a lot of
Speaker 2: different people. This is also clearing out some of like
Speaker 2: the clicks in the military who've been sort of backing
Speaker 2: you and and who people have suspected have been a
Speaker 2: bunch of the people behind a lot of this stuff,
Speaker 2: And this is a good and necessary process. The entire
Speaker 2: time this has been going on, everyone has been terrified
Speaker 2: of the possibility of a second coup, and the only
Speaker 2: way to avoid that in the short term is to
Speaker 2: remove the senior leadership with the military and get them
Speaker 2: away from their troops. They don't have the ability to
Speaker 2: sort of plan anything, and sometimes this can make people
Speaker 2: just go for it, right like that that's what happens
Speaker 2: in Bolivia. It looks like where the failed Bolivionque was
Speaker 2: a product of you know, people trying to do house
Speaker 2: cleaning and get rid of military guys before they did
Speaker 2: a coup, and so that this makes them go off
Speaker 2: half cocked, and like, you know, that's a bad situation
Speaker 2: for I mean, it's that situation for everyone that says
Speaker 2: that there's a coup happening. But it's a bad situation,
Speaker 2: especially for the military because they don't have their coup
Speaker 2: preparations in place, so it's easier to knock them off.
Speaker 2: But what's interesting about this too is to a large extent,
Speaker 2: we're seeing other parts of the Korean state like really
Speaker 2: go after the military, right, and this I don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean, like I'm hoping this kind of like has
Speaker 2: a precedent inside of the sort of Korean like liberal
Speaker 2: democratic societal norms that like, you can't let this just
Speaker 2: unhinged military do all of this stuff that the precedent
Speaker 2: of this sort of like military house cleaning, I think
Speaker 2: is a good one. Right, this is going to be
Speaker 2: a rare, a rare Mia agrees with the people who
Speaker 2: founded the US moment because oh my god, those people
Speaker 2: suck shit like a bunch of slave owning, gedicidal bassards.
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the things that they were
Speaker 2: right about is the political danger to any democratic system
Speaker 2: of having a standing army, right, and especially when you
Speaker 2: have a standing army that's like permanently on a semi
Speaker 2: war footing the way the South Korea is is there's
Speaker 2: always a real political risk that they attempt sees power
Speaker 2: and you have to fucking stop them from doing that.
Speaker 2: And ideally you just fucking acts as much of it
Speaker 2: as you possibly can, right, I mean, I think you
Speaker 2: should act. You acts the entire political system to make
Speaker 2: sure this doesn't happen. But you know, this is a
Speaker 2: this is hopefully a good first step. I also want
Speaker 2: to mention that the specific charge of insurrection is being
Speaker 2: thrown at a lot of these people and also at
Speaker 2: Un himself, and like he absolutely did it right, Like
Speaker 2: there's not much of a dispute that he did in
Speaker 2: fact do uh An insurrection under under sort of Korean law,
Speaker 2: and this technically like carries the death penalty, but I
Speaker 2: don't think they're gonna kill him, but you know, this
Speaker 2: is the sort of severity of this stuff under the
Speaker 2: Korean legal system. And Okay, so, like all of this
Speaker 2: fucking chaos happening, right, and eventually there's a second impeachment vote,
Speaker 2: and this time the public pressure is enough that the
Speaker 2: PvP stays in the chamber to vote no, and only
Speaker 2: about a dozen, like per MPR, only about a dozen
Speaker 2: tpp lawmakers actually vote to impeach the guy who just
Speaker 2: tried to have their fucking parliament disbanded.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: And this is like one of the really depressing things
Speaker 2: about this, right, even after everything, right, and this is
Speaker 2: something that we can trace back to sort of the
Speaker 2: roots of the conservatism of the PPP, even after all
Speaker 2: of this shit, right, like, these people still backed him.
Speaker 2: And that's a really really grim and depressing thing. And
Speaker 2: part of the reaction to this has been from the
Speaker 2: South Korean trade Union Movement, which has been calling for
Speaker 2: just to straight up the disbanding of the PPP as
Speaker 2: a political party, right, And that's something that I think
Speaker 2: is extremely reasonable. Again, if your party's president tries to
Speaker 2: do a military coup, I think I think you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be allowed to have a party anymore. This is the
Speaker 2: liberal opinions, right, Okay, So like eventually this vote does
Speaker 2: go through, and the stage that we're at right now
Speaker 2: is that. Okay, So once you get impeached by the
Speaker 2: National Assembly, you're suspended from all your duties and the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister takes power. So it's happening right now is
Speaker 2: he doesn't have any power formally, but we're still in
Speaker 2: this sort of holding period. We're waiting for the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court to weigh in and either like approve the impeachment
Speaker 2: or not. And that's kind of where things stand now.
Speaker 2: After an unbelievably unhinged wee get a half of just
Speaker 2: everything being extremely unboud two weeks, I guess everything being
Speaker 2: just unbelievably extremely weird. And yeah, but I think I
Speaker 2: think there is a mild hopeful note, which is that like,
Speaker 2: if you fight back against these people, they can be defeated.
Speaker 3: It sucks, but you can eventually get them to crumble.
Speaker 2: And all I can really say for this is I
Speaker 2: hope the South Korean people prevail over the shitty military dictators,
Speaker 2: and I hope that we too are able to sort
Speaker 2: of prevail in the US against our sort of equivalents
Speaker 2: of these forces.
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