December 5, 2024 • 30 mins
Mia and Gare discuss why South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol's recent half-baked coup attempt failed in less than 4 hours and how South Koreans defeated it.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-martial-law-25a2a7c957e77a19f771b6b7c56a2173
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/assembly/1170874.html
https://www.mk.co.kr/en/politics/11107769
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2024/12/113_387639.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/03/world/south-korea-martial-law
https://news.kbs.co.kr/news/pc/view/view.do?ncd=8122266
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20241204006400315?section=national/politics
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/politics_general/1170684.html
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/politics_general/1170674.html
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-yoon-wife-scandal-ba065a2f07d5fc4a63fe0e4d36de12f6
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/04/g-s1-36730/south-korea-president-martial-law
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/defense/1170683.html
https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1170893.html
https://www.hani.co.kr/arti/politics/politics_general/1170682.html
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media Welcome Dick it Happened Here, a podcast that
has increasingly become about it happening in other places in
the world.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Via Wong with me his care Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if I'm remember incorrectly, and it is entirely possible,
I have forgotten several coups that I've covered. I think
this is the second coup that I've covered in six
months that feels right. And you know, when we last
left the dumbest coup I had ever seen in my
entire life. We were in Bolivia and it was a
truly spectacularly stupid coup. That coup ended with the army
(00:37):
running away from a bunch of protesters who were just
like yelling at them meanly. So that one had a
thing I've never seen before, which is the army. The
protesters were trying to bring something up to break a barricade,
and the army ran away before they could get the
like anti barricade thing up to the police barricade. So
that was a disaster. Today we are talking about what
(00:57):
I having now studied this since it was since it started,
I genuinely believe this somehow is an even stupider coup
than the last one, like I you have to go
back to like the CIA coup in Venezuela where everyone
just got that like arrested by fishermen to find a
stupider coup in this it is, and even that one,
(01:19):
like at least they like landed guys with guns. It
was over so quick, like yeah, I think the official
number is that the amount of time the martial law
was technically in effect before the Assembly voted to get
rid of it was one hundred and ninety minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Like people could have like slept through this coup, which
is really funny, right, I.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Made an executive decision, right, and I was like, I'm
gonna sleep in for one more hour. So I woke
up at eight am, as at a seven am, and
I missed like half of it because I was just
I slept for one hour. So let's let's let's get
into a bit about what happened here, because you know,
as as dumb as this looks now, because it failed,
this was for people who don't know there was an
(02:02):
attempted coup in South Korea. I don't know what day
it's gonna be when I don't know what day it's
going to be in Korea when this comes out, because yeah,
but on on Tuesday Day, on our Tuesday in like
the it was I think ten thirty at night there
(02:22):
the hideously unpopular president of Korea Sokyel yun, tried to
declared martial law June is. His approval rating is like
half of Joe Biden's approval rating. Like his approval rating
is like twenty percent. He is staggeringly unpopular. He yeah,
(02:42):
so yeah. Youn won one election in twenty twenty two,
very narrowly in a race where neither of the candidates
were particularly good. And he is a hardline far right dipshit.
He's you know, I mean, one of his big things.
He has this unbelievably hardline in North Korea, which is
not you know, doing anything productive at all. He's also
(03:05):
you know, and this is like, if you want to
look at like, who are his twenty percent of supporters left?
He was the guy of the unbelievably unhinged Korean misogynist movement.
I guess you would call them, who are some of
the worst people on earth? I mean, these are guys
who will just There was a court case recently that
decided that you can't just like beat someone up for
(03:28):
having short hair because you think they're a feminist like that.
That's the kind of like unhinged misogynists that we're dealing with.
That's that's Yuan's base. However, com a couple of things
have happened since then. One is that he's racked by
like a thousand scandals. Everyone in his in his cabinet
keeps getting impeached for doing corruption. There are so many
different corruption scandals with him going on right now that
(03:49):
I was considering like reading out a list of all
of them as a joke, but it's too long. One
of the important ones is that he was like basically
doing like a pay for play thing to like fuck
with his his own parties primary process nice and this
has pissed off basically his entire party, which is great,
which is exactly the thing you want to be doing
(04:09):
right before you would take the stage of coup is
piss off your own political party. So all right, let's
get to the coup. He has major problem with One
of his very major problems is that he hasn't been
able to do anything basically since he's been in power.
And the reason he hasn't been able to do anything.
Is that his first sort of like off election was
this unbelievably crushing electoral defeat for his party. The National Assembly,
(04:32):
which is their like parliament, is just straight up controlled
by the opposition democratic like Liberal well okay, let me
be very cific about this is controlled by the opposition
Democratic Party, who are the sort of like Korean Liberal
Party and also a bunch of like minor allied opposition parties,
and they keep on again impeaching all of his cabinet members,
(04:54):
which is very funny. You know, he was trying to
get a budget through and the budget got eviscerated and
he hasn't been able to do it. So he's been
very very angry and very frustrated, and so his plan
apparently to deal with this was just to knock out
the National Assembly.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
This is so funny because like, because of who I am,
I was talking about this at the bar last night,
just completely insunderable. And the one thing I couldn't put
together is like what his exact motivation was besides like
rooting out like political enemies. No one knows that he
like labeled us like quote unquote anti communist, right, but
let's like we were talking about like how funny this
all is, and like I still can't quite understand, like
(05:31):
why he did this?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
No one news like this, this is Jenny, whyey, Nobody
has any idea why the fuck he thought this would work?
Like the best thesis and we'll get to this a bit.
The best thesis that I've seen is that she wanted
to do this because he was pissed off with the
fact that he hasn't literally been able to do anything
his entire time in office, because he's really mad at
the National Assembly and also his own party, And it's.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So funny to do that and then have that be
underscored by them like be like, oh no, actually, you
can't do a coup. No, no, thank you, nice try
legally you cannot kou.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Me yeah, Like the I think the semi serious part
of this is that it doesn't make any sense to
me how this could have been done if there also
wasn't a faction of the Korean military that wanted this. Right,
the Korean military is I mean, most of Korea's history
still to this day, but I think it's still a
(06:29):
majority of the amount of time South Korea has been
in existence has been under military dictatorships of various kinds.
There's been a whole bunch of them. They were staggeringly hideous.
They killed unbelievable numbers of people, they tortured unbelievable numbers
of people. They were fully backed by the United States.
And the military has also always had this real chip
(06:50):
on its shoulder about sort of liberal civilian politicians. And
they have their version of like all of the conspiracy
things that we have about how all democratsic communists, how
they're all like secretly yea et cetera, et cetera. So
this is like they're all secretly North Korea supporters, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Right, And this is something I was also seeing yesterday
people being like, oh wow, when did South Korea become
North Korea? And they're like, oh my god, that's so
that's like what a weird like orientalist racist comment. This
is this is the most South Korean thing to ever happen.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, this is like military coup and then military coup
being overturned by protesters is the single most South Korean
thing ever, right, Like, this is just how South Korean
history has been.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Having the fucking assembly you have to like break in
in the middle of the night to vote. Yeah, it's
so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It's just it's Yeah, we're gonna get to the actual
details of it a second, but I want to I
want to go back to what was actually in this
declaration of martial laws. So the Korean constitution does let
you declare martial law, but you're only supposed to do wait,
if there's like a war going on or like.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
If there's like an actual crisis happening.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, instead of just like I'm mad I can't pass
my budget, which she used to be. What was happening here?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You feel bad on a Monday night and you're like, oh,
I guess I'll dular martial law.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, so okay, I'm going to read some I'm going
to read a thing about what was going on here,
about how unhinged. This was from Hawkura, which is the
Korean media outlet. Quote Commander park Ensou announced quote martial
law Command Proclamation number one, which, by the way, that's
how you know you're dealing with people who have done
(08:23):
this before. When when when they start doing their like
decree number one, Decree number two.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Oh yeah, that's that.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That is an that is an experience the side of
like very very experienced military coup people announced Martial Law
Command Proclamation number one based on the contents of prohibiting
all political activities of the National Assembly and local assemblies.
The proclamation also included contents that controlled the press and
publications and prohibited citizens assemblies and demonstrations, as well as
(08:51):
strikes and workstopages by workers. It is also notable that
it included the content quote all medical personnel, including residents
who are on strike who have left the medical field
must return to their original work within forty eight hours
and work faithfully, and violations will be published in accordance
with the Martial Law Act. Now it's important to note
here if the thing you're trying to do is impose
(09:13):
martial law on Korea according to the constitution, and obviously
if you're in the state where you're opposing martial law,
the law has kind of got out the window. But
you can't get rid of the National Assembly. That is
not a thing that martial law allows you to do.
And in fact, very explicitly in the Korean Constitution it
says that like the National Assembly can't be gotten rid
of by martial law. So this suggests to me that, yeah,
(09:36):
this was something that was also being sort of spearheaded
by parts of the Korean military. Because if you're not
someone in the army who has their own interest in
doing a coup, and someone asks you to just like
overthrow the parliament, which is a thing that they're not
allowed to do, you just say no. Which also makes
(09:58):
the failure of this and how un believably stupidly it
was all put together even more baffling, right, because if
we assume that parts of the cliqus in the army
had to have been involved with this, and like we
know and this only FPR talks about Yun is like
fucked right. There's no way he's holding onto power. He's
screwed and he's gonna be That will make him the
second Korean president in seven years to be ran out
(10:18):
by mass protests and dream the last set of politicians
who were getting read out by mass protests. The army
actually started drafting like procedures for how they were going
to do a military takeover to like to knock out
the protests, and they never did it. But this has
been a thing that's been in the background for a
long time, and the liberal the liberal establishment has been
talking about how the right wants to bring back military
(10:40):
rule for ages. This is a situation that in some
ways is similar to Brazil, where the Right has always
been a sort of like, we like military rule kind
of thing, but nobody actually seriously thought they would do
it until they did. And you know, I'm gonna read
one more thing before we go to ads here, which
is he claimed that the National Assembly was quote the
(11:01):
mastermind behind the downfall of the country, which, okay, that's
pretty normal coup stuff, quote monsters and quote anti state
forces seeking to overthrow the system. Now again, he has
just described the National Assembly, which is the Korean parliament
as quote anti state forces seeking to overthrow the system,
(11:23):
which now gives us the specter of the Anarco Parliament.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I do wonder how much of this type of stuff
is influenced, like by Trump's victory and like the enemy
within rhetoric. I'm not sure how much influence Trump has.
I know he has a degree of influence like pop
culture wise in like Japan, I'm not sure of his
influence in South Korea, but like in terms of just
like geopolitics, like that's very similar to the type of
(11:50):
like deep state enemy within rhetoric that like Trump used
to success. Yeah, I not like tie everything back to America,
but like.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
This like subversive shit is like stuff that you can
trace back to, like the original dictatorship. Right, Like this
is a very very old, long running thing in Korean politics. Okay,
we will get to the coup after I guess we
get to a faction that didn't back the coup, which
is the Korean capitalist class. So here are some ads.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Salute to our comrades.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We are back now. I will say it is true
that this whole thing folded so quickly that we'd never
really got a chance to see how the Korean capitalist
class would have reacted, other than the fact that all
of the newspapers immediately were like, what the fuck are
you doing? So it's also worth noting if you're trying
to do a coup, right, there are four things that
(12:51):
you need to do. You need to arrest your senior
opposition political figures. You need to seize the radio stations
that this includes, you know today like newspapers, TV stations.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Podcasts obviously, you know streamers, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, yeah, we're a vital part of the media infrastructure
that must be controlled.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I show Speed or whatever his name is he has
to come under your control. You gotta get Aiden Ross
locked in the cage fast fast.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think Speed would have fucking gone just gone sicko
mode on their special forces guys, given how just like
unbelievably their asses got kicked. You know, you have to
seize the airports and you have to take the major
government buildings. Right, So how many of these did this
coup manage to do?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They did like zero?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Right, They sort of kind of took most of the
National Assembly. Yeah, but that last and what like an hour? Yeah, yeah,
well we'll get to that in a second. So it
seems like what we have reporting from the Democratic Party
of Korea. They claim that the military attempted to arrest
(13:47):
the head of the National Assembly, the head of the
Democratic Party, and then also the head of the PPP,
which is People's Power Party, which is Yun's own party.
So he tried to have the head of his own
party arrested Korean special forces and it didn't work because
none of them were at their offices.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's so funny because they kept putting out a restaurans
for like like the opposition party, his own party, and
the Assembly was like hyer and.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
You know, they did legitimately shut down some news outlets
and that was it. You know, that was sort of genuine.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I saw reporters like fucking like fighting with the military
in the streets. It was sick.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, well, this is why this is such a bad idea, right,
Like in the words of a football commentator whose name
I'm forgetting right now, who had the greatest cast light
at all of human history.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Oh, no, disaster, what a bad idea? Like I okay,
just just from the logistics of this, right pretty up
on the list of countries you don't want to try
to hold by by military force is South Korea, and
there's a lot of reasons for this one. You know,
you're dealing with like one of the largest jushu bases
in the world. The other thing is like this is
an entire country of protesters and capitalist protesters.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Very scary.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, but like like everyone fucking like fucking everyone in
this country either like was a protester when they were
a fucking kid, or was one now to the extent
were like liberal members of parliament know how to build barricades.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It's so cool.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
This actually mattered enormously, Like like fucking guys who are
just like random aids where and there are videos of
this of the of like just like random staffer guys
like holding barricades from like against like paratrooper units and
like like just random staffers like shooting fire extinguishers at
armored special forces units. Like can you fucking imagine that
shit in the US?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Like it was very cool to see.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, they're like this is this is why this is
such a terrible idea because everyone has a whole bunch
of institutional memory and experience of this, right, not just
because you know the Democratic Party, right, which is which
is the party that this was largely targeted at most
of Like the elder statesmen of this party used to
be Koreans like student protesters, Like they're all veterans of
the campaigns that brought down the Milton government. And it's
(16:01):
not just that there's like a there's a memory of it.
It's like there are a protests outside the National Assembly
like every fucking day, right, Like again, the last time
they brought down a prime minister with mass protest was
seven years ago. This is a whole country of people
who know how to do this shit, and for some
reason these idiots were like, we have no popular support whatsoever,
and we're just gonna be able to like roll over
this entire country in one night. So I think the
(16:23):
plan was to hold the National Assembly and prevent the
National Assembly from convening so that there was nobody who
could override the martial law order.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, that sounds pretty basic, right, just to keep them
out of the building so that they can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah. So they failed, easy, right?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh oh no, they failed.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. So the thing the problem here again is that
you're dealing with an entire country that has been doing
this for fucking ages. Right, So they do this at
like ten thirty at night, and immediately what happens is
just like a bunch of drug guys in bars like
show up to the National Assembly. Like the moment I
knew it was doomed, was there. I was reading in
the New York Times they had an interview with this
guy who showed up. This is again the part I'm
not talking about this being a country protesters like these
(17:01):
guys aren't like leftists like revolutionaries, right. This Like one
of the guys they were talking to the New York
Times like their journals on the ground, pulls over a
random guy and he's a sixty year old real estate agent. Right,
this is a guy who should be like, this should
be the base of a military coup. Right, this is
a sixty year old man who doesn't real estate it
and he heard about this and immediately his his life
(17:23):
was quote this is the end. So he drove for
a fucking hour at like one in the morning to
show up to the National Assembly to go fight the army.
There was just no way this is good to work.
And so people, even though it's really late up, people
just flood out. And suddenly there's all of these protesters
in front of the National Assembly and they're doing shit
like there's this unbelievable video of this soldier like tries
(17:43):
to take a guy's phone and this guy has some
kind of emrtial arts trading. It just grabs his arm
and just spins him around, the coolest thing. And the
guy's like, so I'm just like, well, fuck, guess I'm
not dealing with this shit.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And there was such like a resignation. Yeah, in the
movements of that military officer would be like it's just like, well, shit,
we could keep fighting, but why like what's the point,
Like why am I out here? It's midnight, I should
be in bed. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And like and part of this too also and this
is this is a smart decision by someone, is that
these guys weren't issued with actual bullets. So when I
say these guys and this is this is the you know,
the actual loving part about this is that these were
largely Korean paratrooper units, and Korean paratrooper units are some
of the most unhinged like fascist troops in the entire world. Like,
(18:38):
these are people who didn't just fight in the Korean War.
A bunch of these guys fought in Vietnam. Like on
the American side, they are notorious as the people who
the military has always used to sort of put down protests.
One of the most famous examples of this is the
Guandara uprising in nineteen eighty. This was a pro democracy
uprising after one of the various stages of insane military
(18:59):
coups stuff was going on in South Korean nineteen eighty
and there's a large democratic uprising from sort of students
and workers. There's a bunch of strikes. They take this area,
and the paratroopers come and shoot them all. They killed
probably several thousand people and a lot of the paratrooper
units that were deployed to take the National Assembly were
literally the same units that were sent into crushes uprising
in nineteen eighty, So this was in some ways very
(19:22):
very scary, right because these are like, again, these are
the units that were sent in to shoot a bunch
of fucking civilians in the streets in order to keep
military rule intact. However, this time these para units just
got their shitthanded to them. So it's sort of unclear
exactly what was going on in the National Assembly. It
(19:43):
seemed like some National Assembly members were still there, but somehow,
and we don't part of how this happened, which is
protesters were just there's a video of I think it
was like the opposition leader the protesters like pushed them
up over a fence so he could break into the
National Assembly and get past the military barricades. Like one
hundred and ninety lawmakers somehow like got into the National
(20:06):
Assembly and barricaded themselves in.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This also shows a level of like dedication. Yeah that
I suspect none of none of our lawmakers would do. No,
they're not gonna they're not gonna break into the capital
when it's surrounded by military guard.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You know, we had this with January sixth, right, and
like what what what did our congress people do dream
January sixth? They all ran and hid.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
I mean these are slightly different circumstances.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, this is true, but like but like you know, okay,
so if if you look at there's been a lot
of shit talking of the of the American people's willingness
to protest and stuff in the light of like watching
the Korean people overturn this coup in like three hours.
And I will point out that in twenty twenty, this
was this was literally four years ago. Like we put
(20:53):
the President of the United States in a bunker. People
fought the Secret Service hand to hand outside the gates
of the White House. Like the police in this country
lost control of the centers of several major American cities.
So like Americans will fight, right, but can you imagine
like Nancy Pelosi or like like Chuck Schumer or whoever
was around, like trying to set up like like setting
(21:14):
up barricades to stop the army from like marching into
Like no, it's unreal. And these were good barricades too,
These were very well constructed barricades. These were barricades that
like are better than a lot of barricades I've seen
set up by protesters over the like can the US
over the last few years. And the consequence of this
was that the National Assembly just voted for the cup
(21:35):
to be over, because they can just vote to say
that the martial law is over. And then the military
kind of was just like, well shit and just kind
of left.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I mean they waited in the wings for a little bit. Yeah,
and we were all curious to see what the president
was gonna do after this. Emily was like, uh, nice,
try sir, and I guess we will talk about that
after another message from these ads.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And we are so back. We are so back. And it
has never been more over for President UNI. That is true,
it has never been more over. And so part of
the weird part about this is that you just like
vanishes for most of this, Like we don't hear from
him until like the morning when he announces that he's
going to roll back the martial law thing. But he
needs his cabinet there to do the vote, so he's
(22:31):
gonna do it later. I don't know. But the troops
have already all pulled out by this point. And like
they go back to their barracks after the National Assembly,
it is like what the fuck. So there's been a
lot of hay made about how one hundred and ninety
members of the National Assembly showed up and every single
one of them voted to end martial law, and like
that's cool. But I've seen a lot of people be like, oh,
(22:52):
look at how democratic the PPP, which is the right
wing party that UN's a part of, is from, Like
they voted to do it, but like, okay, yes it was,
this was a unanimous vote. I need everyone to understand
that there are three hundred members of the National Assembly
and that means one hundred and ten of them didn't
show up, and that of the people who showed up,
there were only eighteen members. Yeah, of the PPP who
showed up to this now, and part of that, like
(23:13):
it is true. It is. It was a bit difficult
to get through the fucking military occupation bit with paratroopers,
but everyone else you to have managed to, so you know,
and you AND's own party also just hates him because again,
like one of the scandals he's going down for is
like fucking with their primaries and like getting a bunch
of people who had safe seats like losing their safe
seats so he could put his guys in. And again
(23:33):
he also tried to arrest the head of his own parties.
So like, these people don't like him for very immediate
person or reason. Is not because the PPP is somehow
like a party more committed to democracy than the Republican
Party is here like no, these people all suck, Like,
oh god. But this leaves us with the aftermath of this,
and the first thing I want to kind of go
(23:56):
over is what the fuck were they doing? Because again,
if you look at the sequence of events here, right,
there's this coup, right, the martial law goes into effect,
the army backs it and tries to occupy the National Assembly,
but then the National Assembly votes that the martial law
is over, and then the army just leaves. Now, what
(24:20):
if you go back to remember when I was talking
about the beginning of this, right, seizing the National Assembly
is not something you were allowed to do when at
a state of emergency or a martial law in position, Right,
that's something explicitly the army is banned from doing. They
did it anyways, which means that like probably like a
bunch of generals are also going to prison for this.
(24:41):
But then they also immediately backed down when it became
clear that you know, they were going to there was
going to be resistance, and that if they were going
to try to stop this, they were either wouldn't have
to beat the shit out of or just like actually
shoot a bunch of lawmakers in the National Assembly. And
I understand that that's a bad idea, and I get
why these people didn't want to do that, just put
like from the their own things politically. But if if
(25:01):
you weren't willing to do that, why did you do
this in the first place? Like, how did you think
this was gonna go? Like the only thing I could
think of was that they thought they could just should have.
I thought it was ten thirty at night, we can
just shock and awe everyone. Yeah, we'll just roll them over.
But like, do you know what country you were in?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean, yeah, it's a massivenst calculation. That's what makes
this the worst coup since Bolivia. I think it's worse
in Bolivia, Oh absolutely, because it shows a complete like
disconnection from understanding the country that you're in.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
What were they doing?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah, Like the willingness of the people to like get
mobilized at ten thirty. Yeah, and the willingness of your
own lawmakers to try to put like some level of
resistance to this, even if it's not like physically fighting
the army, which someone that ended up doing.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Which they did. They fought the army, Like, ah, what
a world. And also with Bolivia too, you know, there's okay,
so a with Bolivia, there's a lot of debate over
where that coup is real or not. I lean towards
it was. There's a lot of people think he was staged.
But also if it wasn't stage, the excuse they have
is that the general who was leading it was about
(26:06):
to get fired, so he just had to go, right.
It's like, well, yeah, okay, it looked like a completely
half cocked coup because it was they just they had
to go before he got fired. This one, there was
no time pressure. He could have just done this whenever
with better planning. And I don't know, it's all very
very deeply weird in terms of what's happening next. I mean,
(26:28):
Yun was finished anyways, Like he again, he had a
twenty percent of proof of rating going into this. Coming
out of this, there's immediately a democratic party is trying
to impeach him, like a bunch of the PPP, who's
again supposed to be his party, are also going along
with it because they hate him. There was some very
funny comments from PPP guys who were like his supporters,
who were like, well he literally one of them said
(26:49):
that he did this thing. Has anyone thought about like
the pressure of burden placed on him, maybe someone should
have gotten to talk to him. He did this because he
was lonely, which is the most insane thing I've ever
heard of my life. Like, he just he just tried
to Aren't you that this guy get a coup because
he was lonely?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
What the fuck? It's the in cell evolution. It's finally
happening in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, And like he is going to get impeached. The
only way he's not going to get impeached is if
the judiciary steps had to save him. And I can't
imagine them trying it. After again, he just tried to
do a coup. He's going to prison, Like probably his
defense secretary is going to prison, like Confesse Minister's going
to prison. Probably a bunch of military guys are going
to prison. Like this is it's so funny. They have
(27:32):
just effectively annihilated their own political power for a generation.
Like this faction of people who have been running the
country is just gone. I mean they'll still be the PPP, right,
this will be like conservatives, but like they just have
obliterated themselves in maybe the most spectacular fashion I have
ever seen. And you know what happens when they were
(27:53):
sort of unclear? Is it right now? We're recording this Wednesday, Yeah,
Wednesday at like ten am. Yeah, so it's it's unclear
exactly what's gonna happen in the time between when this
when we record this and when this goes out, but
unis finished. This is it's pretty ver Yeah, And I'm
I'm hoping that we see a serious attempt to actually
(28:14):
like deal with the fact that the army is ran
by a bunch of people who tried to do a coup.
We won't we might well, no, like it, here's the
thing in the US, absolutely not South Korea. Maybe there's
a chance there's like a there is a slight chance
that people get purged from this, right and in a
similar way to like Lula kind of purging some of
(28:36):
the army.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
My South Korea Does Good Things card is already full
up because of yesterday.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I can't imagine they're gonna do more because it's South Korea.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Well, I will also say, like one of the things
that's happening is Korea is like major trade union Federation
is like doing a general strike until until the impeachment happens.
So you know, there is a lot of pressure to
clean house here. And like a lot of Korean liberalism
is based on the sort of mythos of like of
the student protesters, and like the protesters, you brought down
(29:07):
the military dictatorship and trying to do a military coup
and immediately failing is like the best possible thing you
could have done for them. The consequences of this for
you and are going to be extremely bad. I hope
we get a better Korea out of this. I hope
this sort of starts to stem the tide of the
unhinged right wing surge that's been happening there for a
(29:27):
while now.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It'd be nice that this was like the tip of
the bell curve. Yeah, in the global far right takeover. Yeah,
I mean it's wow, it went bad. I may every
single right wing attempt to do this, go this badly,
because good lord, what a heartwarming tale. Yep. Well that's
(29:49):
that's been it for us today. You're at It could
happen here. Tune in tomorrow for more exciting tales of
political collapse.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, and quite quite possibly, quite possibly, this is going
to happen to you too. And I want everyone to
understand that, in terms of military ques in the last
six months, the protesters are two to zero and the
armies zero and two. So if this happens to you soon,
Witchie very much might go get them.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Also media Welcome Dick it Happened Here, a podcast that
has increasingly become about it happening in other places in
the world.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Via Wong with me his care Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if I'm remember incorrectly, and it is entirely possible,
I have forgotten several coups that I've covered. I think
this is the second coup that I've covered in six
months that feels right. And you know, when we last
left the dumbest coup I had ever seen in my
entire life. We were in Bolivia and it was a
truly spectacularly stupid coup. That coup ended with the army
(00:37):
running away from a bunch of protesters who were just
like yelling at them meanly. So that one had a
thing I've never seen before, which is the army. The
protesters were trying to bring something up to break a barricade,
and the army ran away before they could get the
like anti barricade thing up to the police barricade. So
that was a disaster. Today we are talking about what
(00:57):
I having now studied this since it was since it started,
I genuinely believe this somehow is an even stupider coup
than the last one, like I you have to go
back to like the CIA coup in Venezuela where everyone
just got that like arrested by fishermen to find a
stupider coup in this it is, and even that one,
(01:19):
like at least they like landed guys with guns. It
was over so quick, like yeah, I think the official
number is that the amount of time the martial law
was technically in effect before the Assembly voted to get
rid of it was one hundred and ninety minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Like people could have like slept through this coup, which
is really funny, right, I.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Made an executive decision, right, and I was like, I'm
gonna sleep in for one more hour. So I woke
up at eight am, as at a seven am, and
I missed like half of it because I was just
I slept for one hour. So let's let's let's get
into a bit about what happened here, because you know,
as as dumb as this looks now, because it failed,
this was for people who don't know there was an
(02:02):
attempted coup in South Korea. I don't know what day
it's gonna be when I don't know what day it's
going to be in Korea when this comes out, because yeah,
but on on Tuesday Day, on our Tuesday in like
the it was I think ten thirty at night there
(02:22):
the hideously unpopular president of Korea Sokyel yun, tried to
declared martial law June is. His approval rating is like
half of Joe Biden's approval rating. Like his approval rating
is like twenty percent. He is staggeringly unpopular. He yeah,
(02:42):
so yeah. Youn won one election in twenty twenty two,
very narrowly in a race where neither of the candidates
were particularly good. And he is a hardline far right dipshit.
He's you know, I mean, one of his big things.
He has this unbelievably hardline in North Korea, which is
not you know, doing anything productive at all. He's also
(03:05):
you know, and this is like, if you want to
look at like, who are his twenty percent of supporters left?
He was the guy of the unbelievably unhinged Korean misogynist movement.
I guess you would call them, who are some of
the worst people on earth? I mean, these are guys
who will just There was a court case recently that
decided that you can't just like beat someone up for
(03:28):
having short hair because you think they're a feminist like that.
That's the kind of like unhinged misogynists that we're dealing with.
That's that's Yuan's base. However, com a couple of things
have happened since then. One is that he's racked by
like a thousand scandals. Everyone in his in his cabinet
keeps getting impeached for doing corruption. There are so many
different corruption scandals with him going on right now that
(03:49):
I was considering like reading out a list of all
of them as a joke, but it's too long. One
of the important ones is that he was like basically
doing like a pay for play thing to like fuck
with his his own parties primary process nice and this
has pissed off basically his entire party, which is great,
which is exactly the thing you want to be doing
(04:09):
right before you would take the stage of coup is
piss off your own political party. So all right, let's
get to the coup. He has major problem with One
of his very major problems is that he hasn't been
able to do anything basically since he's been in power.
And the reason he hasn't been able to do anything.
Is that his first sort of like off election was
this unbelievably crushing electoral defeat for his party. The National Assembly,
(04:32):
which is their like parliament, is just straight up controlled
by the opposition democratic like Liberal well okay, let me
be very cific about this is controlled by the opposition
Democratic Party, who are the sort of like Korean Liberal
Party and also a bunch of like minor allied opposition parties,
and they keep on again impeaching all of his cabinet members,
(04:54):
which is very funny. You know, he was trying to
get a budget through and the budget got eviscerated and
he hasn't been able to do it. So he's been
very very angry and very frustrated, and so his plan
apparently to deal with this was just to knock out
the National Assembly.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
This is so funny because like, because of who I am,
I was talking about this at the bar last night,
just completely insunderable. And the one thing I couldn't put
together is like what his exact motivation was besides like
rooting out like political enemies. No one knows that he
like labeled us like quote unquote anti communist, right, but
let's like we were talking about like how funny this
all is, and like I still can't quite understand, like
(05:31):
why he did this?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
No one news like this, this is Jenny, whyey, Nobody
has any idea why the fuck he thought this would work?
Like the best thesis and we'll get to this a bit.
The best thesis that I've seen is that she wanted
to do this because he was pissed off with the
fact that he hasn't literally been able to do anything
his entire time in office, because he's really mad at
the National Assembly and also his own party, And it's.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So funny to do that and then have that be
underscored by them like be like, oh no, actually, you
can't do a coup. No, no, thank you, nice try
legally you cannot kou.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Me yeah, Like the I think the semi serious part
of this is that it doesn't make any sense to
me how this could have been done if there also
wasn't a faction of the Korean military that wanted this. Right,
the Korean military is I mean, most of Korea's history
still to this day, but I think it's still a
(06:29):
majority of the amount of time South Korea has been
in existence has been under military dictatorships of various kinds.
There's been a whole bunch of them. They were staggeringly hideous.
They killed unbelievable numbers of people, they tortured unbelievable numbers
of people. They were fully backed by the United States.
And the military has also always had this real chip
(06:50):
on its shoulder about sort of liberal civilian politicians. And
they have their version of like all of the conspiracy
things that we have about how all democratsic communists, how
they're all like secretly yea et cetera, et cetera. So
this is like they're all secretly North Korea supporters, et cetera,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Right, And this is something I was also seeing yesterday
people being like, oh wow, when did South Korea become
North Korea? And they're like, oh my god, that's so
that's like what a weird like orientalist racist comment. This
is this is the most South Korean thing to ever happen.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, this is like military coup and then military coup
being overturned by protesters is the single most South Korean
thing ever, right, Like, this is just how South Korean
history has been.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Having the fucking assembly you have to like break in
in the middle of the night to vote. Yeah, it's
so funny.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
It's just it's Yeah, we're gonna get to the actual
details of it a second, but I want to I
want to go back to what was actually in this
declaration of martial laws. So the Korean constitution does let
you declare martial law, but you're only supposed to do wait,
if there's like a war going on or like.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
If there's like an actual crisis happening.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, instead of just like I'm mad I can't pass
my budget, which she used to be. What was happening here?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You feel bad on a Monday night and you're like, oh,
I guess I'll dular martial law.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yeah, so okay, I'm going to read some I'm going
to read a thing about what was going on here,
about how unhinged. This was from Hawkura, which is the
Korean media outlet. Quote Commander park Ensou announced quote martial
law Command Proclamation number one, which, by the way, that's
how you know you're dealing with people who have done
(08:23):
this before. When when when they start doing their like
decree number one, Decree number two.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Oh yeah, that's that.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
That is an that is an experience the side of
like very very experienced military coup people announced Martial Law
Command Proclamation number one based on the contents of prohibiting
all political activities of the National Assembly and local assemblies.
The proclamation also included contents that controlled the press and
publications and prohibited citizens assemblies and demonstrations, as well as
(08:51):
strikes and workstopages by workers. It is also notable that
it included the content quote all medical personnel, including residents
who are on strike who have left the medical field
must return to their original work within forty eight hours
and work faithfully, and violations will be published in accordance
with the Martial Law Act. Now it's important to note
here if the thing you're trying to do is impose
(09:13):
martial law on Korea according to the constitution, and obviously
if you're in the state where you're opposing martial law,
the law has kind of got out the window. But
you can't get rid of the National Assembly. That is
not a thing that martial law allows you to do.
And in fact, very explicitly in the Korean Constitution it
says that like the National Assembly can't be gotten rid
of by martial law. So this suggests to me that, yeah,
(09:36):
this was something that was also being sort of spearheaded
by parts of the Korean military. Because if you're not
someone in the army who has their own interest in
doing a coup, and someone asks you to just like
overthrow the parliament, which is a thing that they're not
allowed to do, you just say no. Which also makes
(09:58):
the failure of this and how un believably stupidly it
was all put together even more baffling, right, because if
we assume that parts of the cliqus in the army
had to have been involved with this, and like we
know and this only FPR talks about Yun is like
fucked right. There's no way he's holding onto power. He's
screwed and he's gonna be That will make him the
second Korean president in seven years to be ran out
(10:18):
by mass protests and dream the last set of politicians
who were getting read out by mass protests. The army
actually started drafting like procedures for how they were going
to do a military takeover to like to knock out
the protests, and they never did it. But this has
been a thing that's been in the background for a
long time, and the liberal the liberal establishment has been
talking about how the right wants to bring back military
(10:40):
rule for ages. This is a situation that in some
ways is similar to Brazil, where the Right has always
been a sort of like, we like military rule kind
of thing, but nobody actually seriously thought they would do
it until they did. And you know, I'm gonna read
one more thing before we go to ads here, which
is he claimed that the National Assembly was quote the
(11:01):
mastermind behind the downfall of the country, which, okay, that's
pretty normal coup stuff, quote monsters and quote anti state
forces seeking to overthrow the system. Now again, he has
just described the National Assembly, which is the Korean parliament
as quote anti state forces seeking to overthrow the system,
(11:23):
which now gives us the specter of the Anarco Parliament.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I do wonder how much of this type of stuff
is influenced, like by Trump's victory and like the enemy
within rhetoric. I'm not sure how much influence Trump has.
I know he has a degree of influence like pop
culture wise in like Japan, I'm not sure of his
influence in South Korea, but like in terms of just
like geopolitics, like that's very similar to the type of
(11:50):
like deep state enemy within rhetoric that like Trump used
to success. Yeah, I not like tie everything back to America,
but like.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
This like subversive shit is like stuff that you can
trace back to, like the original dictatorship. Right, Like this
is a very very old, long running thing in Korean politics. Okay,
we will get to the coup after I guess we
get to a faction that didn't back the coup, which
is the Korean capitalist class. So here are some ads.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Salute to our comrades.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We are back now. I will say it is true
that this whole thing folded so quickly that we'd never
really got a chance to see how the Korean capitalist
class would have reacted, other than the fact that all
of the newspapers immediately were like, what the fuck are
you doing? So it's also worth noting if you're trying
to do a coup, right, there are four things that
(12:51):
you need to do. You need to arrest your senior
opposition political figures. You need to seize the radio stations
that this includes, you know today like newspapers, TV stations.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Podcasts obviously, you know streamers, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Yeah, yeah, we're a vital part of the media infrastructure
that must be controlled.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I show Speed or whatever his name is he has
to come under your control. You gotta get Aiden Ross
locked in the cage fast fast.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
I think Speed would have fucking gone just gone sicko
mode on their special forces guys, given how just like
unbelievably their asses got kicked. You know, you have to
seize the airports and you have to take the major
government buildings. Right, So how many of these did this
coup manage to do?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
They did like zero?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Right, They sort of kind of took most of the
National Assembly. Yeah, but that last and what like an hour? Yeah, yeah,
well we'll get to that in a second. So it
seems like what we have reporting from the Democratic Party
of Korea. They claim that the military attempted to arrest
(13:47):
the head of the National Assembly, the head of the
Democratic Party, and then also the head of the PPP,
which is People's Power Party, which is Yun's own party.
So he tried to have the head of his own
party arrested Korean special forces and it didn't work because
none of them were at their offices.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's so funny because they kept putting out a restaurans
for like like the opposition party, his own party, and
the Assembly was like hyer and.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
You know, they did legitimately shut down some news outlets
and that was it. You know, that was sort of genuine.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I saw reporters like fucking like fighting with the military
in the streets. It was sick.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
Yeah, well, this is why this is such a bad idea, right,
Like in the words of a football commentator whose name
I'm forgetting right now, who had the greatest cast light
at all of human history.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Oh, no, disaster, what a bad idea? Like I okay,
just just from the logistics of this, right pretty up
on the list of countries you don't want to try
to hold by by military force is South Korea, and
there's a lot of reasons for this one. You know,
you're dealing with like one of the largest jushu bases
in the world. The other thing is like this is
an entire country of protesters and capitalist protesters.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Very scary.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Well, but like like everyone fucking like fucking everyone in
this country either like was a protester when they were
a fucking kid, or was one now to the extent
were like liberal members of parliament know how to build barricades.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
It's so cool.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
This actually mattered enormously, Like like fucking guys who are
just like random aids where and there are videos of
this of the of like just like random staffer guys
like holding barricades from like against like paratrooper units and
like like just random staffers like shooting fire extinguishers at
armored special forces units. Like can you fucking imagine that
shit in the US?
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Like it was very cool to see.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, they're like this is this is why this is
such a terrible idea because everyone has a whole bunch
of institutional memory and experience of this, right, not just
because you know the Democratic Party, right, which is which
is the party that this was largely targeted at most
of Like the elder statesmen of this party used to
be Koreans like student protesters, Like they're all veterans of
the campaigns that brought down the Milton government. And it's
(16:01):
not just that there's like a there's a memory of it.
It's like there are a protests outside the National Assembly
like every fucking day, right, Like again, the last time
they brought down a prime minister with mass protest was
seven years ago. This is a whole country of people
who know how to do this shit, and for some
reason these idiots were like, we have no popular support whatsoever,
and we're just gonna be able to like roll over
this entire country in one night. So I think the
(16:23):
plan was to hold the National Assembly and prevent the
National Assembly from convening so that there was nobody who
could override the martial law order.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
Yeah, that sounds pretty basic, right, just to keep them
out of the building so that they can't do anything.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
Yeah. So they failed, easy, right?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Oh oh no, they failed.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. So the thing the problem here again is that
you're dealing with an entire country that has been doing
this for fucking ages. Right, So they do this at
like ten thirty at night, and immediately what happens is
just like a bunch of drug guys in bars like
show up to the National Assembly. Like the moment I
knew it was doomed, was there. I was reading in
the New York Times they had an interview with this
guy who showed up. This is again the part I'm
not talking about this being a country protesters like these
(17:01):
guys aren't like leftists like revolutionaries, right. This Like one
of the guys they were talking to the New York
Times like their journals on the ground, pulls over a
random guy and he's a sixty year old real estate agent. Right,
this is a guy who should be like, this should
be the base of a military coup. Right, this is
a sixty year old man who doesn't real estate it
and he heard about this and immediately his his life
(17:23):
was quote this is the end. So he drove for
a fucking hour at like one in the morning to
show up to the National Assembly to go fight the army.
There was just no way this is good to work.
And so people, even though it's really late up, people
just flood out. And suddenly there's all of these protesters
in front of the National Assembly and they're doing shit
like there's this unbelievable video of this soldier like tries
(17:43):
to take a guy's phone and this guy has some
kind of emrtial arts trading. It just grabs his arm
and just spins him around, the coolest thing. And the
guy's like, so I'm just like, well, fuck, guess I'm
not dealing with this shit.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
And there was such like a resignation. Yeah, in the
movements of that military officer would be like it's just like, well, shit,
we could keep fighting, but why like what's the point,
Like why am I out here? It's midnight, I should
be in bed. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
And like and part of this too also and this
is this is a smart decision by someone, is that
these guys weren't issued with actual bullets. So when I
say these guys and this is this is the you know,
the actual loving part about this is that these were
largely Korean paratrooper units, and Korean paratrooper units are some
of the most unhinged like fascist troops in the entire world. Like,
(18:38):
these are people who didn't just fight in the Korean War.
A bunch of these guys fought in Vietnam. Like on
the American side, they are notorious as the people who
the military has always used to sort of put down protests.
One of the most famous examples of this is the
Guandara uprising in nineteen eighty. This was a pro democracy
uprising after one of the various stages of insane military
(18:59):
coups stuff was going on in South Korean nineteen eighty
and there's a large democratic uprising from sort of students
and workers. There's a bunch of strikes. They take this area,
and the paratroopers come and shoot them all. They killed
probably several thousand people and a lot of the paratrooper
units that were deployed to take the National Assembly were
literally the same units that were sent into crushes uprising
in nineteen eighty, So this was in some ways very
(19:22):
very scary, right because these are like, again, these are
the units that were sent in to shoot a bunch
of fucking civilians in the streets in order to keep
military rule intact. However, this time these para units just
got their shitthanded to them. So it's sort of unclear
exactly what was going on in the National Assembly. It
(19:43):
seemed like some National Assembly members were still there, but somehow,
and we don't part of how this happened, which is
protesters were just there's a video of I think it
was like the opposition leader the protesters like pushed them
up over a fence so he could break into the
National Assembly and get past the military barricades. Like one
hundred and ninety lawmakers somehow like got into the National
(20:06):
Assembly and barricaded themselves in.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
This also shows a level of like dedication. Yeah that
I suspect none of none of our lawmakers would do. No,
they're not gonna they're not gonna break into the capital
when it's surrounded by military guard.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
You know, we had this with January sixth, right, and
like what what what did our congress people do dream
January sixth? They all ran and hid.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
I mean these are slightly different circumstances.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah, this is true, but like but like you know, okay,
so if if you look at there's been a lot
of shit talking of the of the American people's willingness
to protest and stuff in the light of like watching
the Korean people overturn this coup in like three hours.
And I will point out that in twenty twenty, this
was this was literally four years ago. Like we put
(20:53):
the President of the United States in a bunker. People
fought the Secret Service hand to hand outside the gates
of the White House. Like the police in this country
lost control of the centers of several major American cities.
So like Americans will fight, right, but can you imagine
like Nancy Pelosi or like like Chuck Schumer or whoever
was around, like trying to set up like like setting
(21:14):
up barricades to stop the army from like marching into
Like no, it's unreal. And these were good barricades too,
These were very well constructed barricades. These were barricades that
like are better than a lot of barricades I've seen
set up by protesters over the like can the US
over the last few years. And the consequence of this
was that the National Assembly just voted for the cup
(21:35):
to be over, because they can just vote to say
that the martial law is over. And then the military
kind of was just like, well shit and just kind
of left.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
I mean they waited in the wings for a little bit. Yeah,
and we were all curious to see what the president
was gonna do after this. Emily was like, uh, nice,
try sir, and I guess we will talk about that
after another message from these ads.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And we are so back. We are so back. And it
has never been more over for President UNI. That is true,
it has never been more over. And so part of
the weird part about this is that you just like
vanishes for most of this, Like we don't hear from
him until like the morning when he announces that he's
going to roll back the martial law thing. But he
needs his cabinet there to do the vote, so he's
(22:31):
gonna do it later. I don't know. But the troops
have already all pulled out by this point. And like
they go back to their barracks after the National Assembly,
it is like what the fuck. So there's been a
lot of hay made about how one hundred and ninety
members of the National Assembly showed up and every single
one of them voted to end martial law, and like
that's cool. But I've seen a lot of people be like, oh,
(22:52):
look at how democratic the PPP, which is the right
wing party that UN's a part of, is from, Like
they voted to do it, but like, okay, yes it was,
this was a unanimous vote. I need everyone to understand
that there are three hundred members of the National Assembly
and that means one hundred and ten of them didn't
show up, and that of the people who showed up,
there were only eighteen members. Yeah, of the PPP who
showed up to this now, and part of that, like
(23:13):
it is true. It is. It was a bit difficult
to get through the fucking military occupation bit with paratroopers,
but everyone else you to have managed to, so you know,
and you AND's own party also just hates him because again,
like one of the scandals he's going down for is
like fucking with their primaries and like getting a bunch
of people who had safe seats like losing their safe
seats so he could put his guys in. And again
(23:33):
he also tried to arrest the head of his own parties.
So like, these people don't like him for very immediate
person or reason. Is not because the PPP is somehow
like a party more committed to democracy than the Republican
Party is here like no, these people all suck, Like,
oh god. But this leaves us with the aftermath of this,
and the first thing I want to kind of go
(23:56):
over is what the fuck were they doing? Because again,
if you look at the sequence of events here, right,
there's this coup, right, the martial law goes into effect,
the army backs it and tries to occupy the National Assembly,
but then the National Assembly votes that the martial law
is over, and then the army just leaves. Now, what
(24:20):
if you go back to remember when I was talking
about the beginning of this, right, seizing the National Assembly
is not something you were allowed to do when at
a state of emergency or a martial law in position, Right,
that's something explicitly the army is banned from doing. They
did it anyways, which means that like probably like a
bunch of generals are also going to prison for this.
(24:41):
But then they also immediately backed down when it became
clear that you know, they were going to there was
going to be resistance, and that if they were going
to try to stop this, they were either wouldn't have
to beat the shit out of or just like actually
shoot a bunch of lawmakers in the National Assembly. And
I understand that that's a bad idea, and I get
why these people didn't want to do that, just put
like from the their own things politically. But if if
(25:01):
you weren't willing to do that, why did you do
this in the first place? Like, how did you think
this was gonna go? Like the only thing I could
think of was that they thought they could just should have.
I thought it was ten thirty at night, we can
just shock and awe everyone. Yeah, we'll just roll them over.
But like, do you know what country you were in?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I mean, yeah, it's a massivenst calculation. That's what makes
this the worst coup since Bolivia. I think it's worse
in Bolivia, Oh absolutely, because it shows a complete like
disconnection from understanding the country that you're in.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
What were they doing?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yeah, Like the willingness of the people to like get
mobilized at ten thirty. Yeah, and the willingness of your
own lawmakers to try to put like some level of
resistance to this, even if it's not like physically fighting
the army, which someone that ended up doing.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Which they did. They fought the army, Like, ah, what
a world. And also with Bolivia too, you know, there's okay,
so a with Bolivia, there's a lot of debate over
where that coup is real or not. I lean towards
it was. There's a lot of people think he was staged.
But also if it wasn't stage, the excuse they have
is that the general who was leading it was about
(26:06):
to get fired, so he just had to go, right.
It's like, well, yeah, okay, it looked like a completely
half cocked coup because it was they just they had
to go before he got fired. This one, there was
no time pressure. He could have just done this whenever
with better planning. And I don't know, it's all very
very deeply weird in terms of what's happening next. I mean,
(26:28):
Yun was finished anyways, Like he again, he had a
twenty percent of proof of rating going into this. Coming
out of this, there's immediately a democratic party is trying
to impeach him, like a bunch of the PPP, who's
again supposed to be his party, are also going along
with it because they hate him. There was some very
funny comments from PPP guys who were like his supporters,
who were like, well he literally one of them said
(26:49):
that he did this thing. Has anyone thought about like
the pressure of burden placed on him, maybe someone should
have gotten to talk to him. He did this because he
was lonely, which is the most insane thing I've ever
heard of my life. Like, he just he just tried
to Aren't you that this guy get a coup because
he was lonely?
Speaker 3 (27:05):
What the fuck? It's the in cell evolution. It's finally
happening in South Korea.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Yeah, And like he is going to get impeached. The
only way he's not going to get impeached is if
the judiciary steps had to save him. And I can't
imagine them trying it. After again, he just tried to
do a coup. He's going to prison, Like probably his
defense secretary is going to prison, like Confesse Minister's going
to prison. Probably a bunch of military guys are going
to prison. Like this is it's so funny. They have
(27:32):
just effectively annihilated their own political power for a generation.
Like this faction of people who have been running the
country is just gone. I mean they'll still be the PPP, right,
this will be like conservatives, but like they just have
obliterated themselves in maybe the most spectacular fashion I have
ever seen. And you know what happens when they were
(27:53):
sort of unclear? Is it right now? We're recording this Wednesday, Yeah,
Wednesday at like ten am. Yeah, so it's it's unclear
exactly what's gonna happen in the time between when this
when we record this and when this goes out, but
unis finished. This is it's pretty ver Yeah, And I'm
I'm hoping that we see a serious attempt to actually
(28:14):
like deal with the fact that the army is ran
by a bunch of people who tried to do a coup.
We won't we might well, no, like it, here's the
thing in the US, absolutely not South Korea. Maybe there's
a chance there's like a there is a slight chance
that people get purged from this, right and in a
similar way to like Lula kind of purging some of
(28:36):
the army.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
My South Korea Does Good Things card is already full
up because of yesterday.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I can't imagine they're gonna do more because it's South Korea.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Well, I will also say, like one of the things
that's happening is Korea is like major trade union Federation
is like doing a general strike until until the impeachment happens.
So you know, there is a lot of pressure to
clean house here. And like a lot of Korean liberalism
is based on the sort of mythos of like of
the student protesters, and like the protesters, you brought down
(29:07):
the military dictatorship and trying to do a military coup
and immediately failing is like the best possible thing you
could have done for them. The consequences of this for
you and are going to be extremely bad. I hope
we get a better Korea out of this. I hope
this sort of starts to stem the tide of the
unhinged right wing surge that's been happening there for a
(29:27):
while now.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
It'd be nice that this was like the tip of
the bell curve. Yeah, in the global far right takeover. Yeah,
I mean it's wow, it went bad. I may every
single right wing attempt to do this, go this badly,
because good lord, what a heartwarming tale. Yep. Well that's
(29:49):
that's been it for us today. You're at It could
happen here. Tune in tomorrow for more exciting tales of
political collapse.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, and quite quite possibly, quite possibly, this is going
to happen to you too. And I want everyone to
understand that, in terms of military ques in the last
six months, the protesters are two to zero and the
armies zero and two. So if this happens to you soon,
Witchie very much might go get them.
Speaker 4 (30:17):
It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 4 (30:29):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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