South Korean President Who Won on Misogyny May be Forced to Resign Over Comically Inept Coup

Six hours after right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, mass mobilization for democracy shot the attempted coup d’etat dead in the water.

By Kylie Cheung  |  December 4, 2024 | 2:46pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics
South Korean President Who Won on Misogyny May be Forced to Resign Over Comically Inept Coup

Late Tuesday night in South Korea, right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law to try and consolidate power amid his rising unpopularity and a slew of corruption scandals. Yoon baselessly accused South Korea’s liberal Democratic party of North Korean sympathies and “anti-state activities,” and sent the military to barricade the capitol so that lawmakers couldn’t enter and vote against the martial law mandate. 

But within hours, the attempted coup was over. In near-freezing weather, citizens stormed the streets, clashing with the military at the capitol and quite literally hoisting their representatives over barricades to enter the building and vote against martial law. According to the Verge’s Sarah Jeong, who happened to be on the ground in Seoul that night, protesters were overwhelmingly drunk and (understandably!) angry at their government, which is quite conducive to taking to the streets! When protesters and Democratic politicians successfully shut down the whole ordeal, Jeong reports that protesters began chanting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol!” and “The people are victorious!”

Incredible courage of South Koreans defending their parliament from President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt to overthrow democracy.

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— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 11:08 AM

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the nation’s Democratic Party, live-streamed himself scaling the barricades with help from pro-democracy protesters. Video shows one female lawmaker grabbing a soldier’s gun when he pointed it at her chest, while another shows a protester nearly flipping a soldier over for trying to grab his phone while he filmed events at the capitol. All of this, mind you, took place in the dead of the night.

South Korean citizens helped lawmakers scale the National Assembly walls so they could bypass military barricades and vote against martial law.

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— Adam Schwarz (@adamjschwarz.bsky.social) December 3, 2024 at 12:15 PM

Six hours after Yoon declared martial law, the attempted power grab was over when 190 of 300 members of parliament rejected it. Yoon backed down, agreeing to respect the vote. Now, he’s facing pressure to resign; he could face an impeachment vote as early as Friday, per the Associated Press.

As an American who just watched my country reelect a far-right president who staged his own failed coup not so long ago, I am… in awe of all of this: the mass mobilization for democracy, lawmakers who actually cared enough to wake up in the middle of the night, push their way through armed soldiers and barricades, and do their job. It’s pretty hard to imagine any of that happening here, but nonetheless, it’s heartening!

There are, after all, fairly chilling parallels between Yoon and our very own President-elect Donald Trump. Two years ago, Yoon won his election riding a wave of virulent anti-feminist backlash, not unlike the anti-feminist, “anti-woke” backlash Trump seemingly coasted on to handily win in November. Yoon, Time magazine noted at the time, campaigned on a promise to shut down the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and also campaigned on accusing the government of discriminating against men, treating them as “potential sex criminals.” (In 2018, at the height of MeToo, Trump — a legally recognized sexual abuser — declared that it’s a “very scary” time for young men.) Exit polls in South Korea showed Yoon won handily with young men — 59% of men in their twenties, and 53% of men in their thirties — while just a third of women in their twenties supported him. “Anti-feminist sentiment was widely used to gain voters in the election,” one South Korean feminist activist told Time at the time. “It was even the main strategy.” That… sounds familiar. A little too familiar!

Now, South Korea’s right-wing, strongman president might be forced out of office because his ultimately toothless attempt to flex power over an organized, determined resistance movement failed spectacularly. [Insert “Jesus, I see what you’ve done for other people, and I want that for me” meme.] Trump is about to start his second term with decisive majorities in Congress, and all after years of openly salivating over autocrats who staged military power grabs. So, naturally, I hope that on top of being very funny, South Korea’s six-hour coup — and the unwavering resistance that swiftly shut it down — also serves as a lesson, for the rest of the world and certainly the U.S.

 
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