Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 739 posts

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#601

Post by vundercind »

nickff wrote: post #569
yeonsh wrote: post #425

Democracy in Korea at a Crossroad On December 3, 2024, at 10:27 PM, President Yoon Seokyeol declared martial law. This declaration is illegal and constitutes a criminal act, directly violating the Constitution and other laws. It is essentially a coup d'état. The current political and social situation does not meet the criteria of "a time when it is necessary to respond to military needs or maintain public order in wa…

How is this a coup? It doesn't seem to fall under Wikipedia or any other definition I can find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat#:~:text=A%2... . Do you consider Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act in Canada to have been a coup?

Declaration of martial law isn't necessarily a coup attempt, in the same way that walking into the parliament building—hell, maybe even walking in armed—isn't necessarily a coup attempt.

On the other hand, declaration of martial law or walking armed into parliament might well be a coup attempt.

Context and intent is everything.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#602

Post by bluGill »

MrMcCall wrote: post #459
bluGill wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the conservative out of that. You see it in every human. If it isn't in you it means you are carefully suppressing it. Often those who seem to be suppressing it are really just aware they would be caught and so the image of being honest is important to maintain. The above should not be confused with values. Many people abusing power really have values against what they are doing. They have just figuring out how…

Let me just acknowledge the excellence of JoshTriplett's comment and add a bit of my own. What you are really saying (not that you have the wherewithall to admit it) is you don't believe this can be done, and therefore no one can do it. In other words, you don't believe we can self-evolve into being better people, much less being beyond temptation to selfishness at the expense of others. And so, by believing this, yo…

It can be and is done. However it is only by careful effort as your base nature will sometimes do something that isn't a good thing. You are the same type of human as everyone else. There isn't anything special about Stalin that made him evil, all the evil in him could come out of you in the right situation. (and he thought he was doing good).

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#603

Post by vundercind »

jp_nc wrote: post #589
vundercind wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is further complicated by a history (yes, in the US) of not just failing to prosecute obvious war criminals, and of pardoning many who do somehow manage to get convicted, but wide swaths of the population treating them as heroes . There are recent examples, but look at how we treated those with the most direct culpability for the My Lai massacre, and further, how the guy who took direct action to stop it got tre…

The recent SCOTUS decision in the US will make this endlessly complicated. If the illegal order is deemed an official act, SCOTUS has said POTUS has liability. So does the military carry out an illegal act (which can’t be illegal), or refuse and face charges of insubordination?

Part of what makes this so obviously a fucked-up decision is that now some poor E-3 can easily be prosecuted for egregiously-illegal horse-shit while the "buck stops here" fucking President who ordered it is untouchable.

Like, if it's not plainly an awful decision on its face (and god, it so very is) then the fact that just about every plausible application of it looks something like that, as far as who can and cannot be held responsible for their actions, should demonstrate that the decision is, in the highest ideal of what it means to be American, deeply un-American.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#604

Post by bobthepanda »

bluGill wrote: post #59
tokinonagare wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> President Yoon Suk Yeol declared an “emergency martial law,” Tuesday accusing the country’s opposition of controlling the parliament [...] Yoon — whose approval rating has dipped in recent months — Seems like a coup. > Yoon’s conservative People Power Party had been locked in an impasse with the liberal opposition Democratic Party over next year’s budget bill. Yeah, just like in France where the government is expec…

Not just link in France. France is in the midst of a government fall, but this is something built into how they do democracy and so a new one is expected to form in a few months on the backs of their democratic process. This is instead a rejection of the democratic process. I don't know enough about SK's internals to say if the democratic process is already dead because of corruption (as the leader claims), or if the…

SK's last presidential election in 2022 was very, very close (48.5-47.3), the closest in South Korean history.

Legislative elections take place at the midpoint between presidential elections, and the opposition kept their majority in 2024, so there was hardly a mandate, if anything the legislative elections indicated a rebuke.

Yoon Suk Yeol is the one of the most unpopular democratic heads of state with 19% approval and 72% disapproval.

---

It's worth noting that it seems like he didn't talk to anyone about this and even the head of his party in the National Assembly said they would vote to overturn it.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#605

Post by mriet »

exe34 wrote: post #521
s1artibartfast wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, I thought there was some legal provision in the US for the military to disobey unconstitutional orders. If it doesn't exist de jure , I suppose it always exists de facto , both in the US and elsewhere. I think it is always interesting when the curtain gets pulled back to reveal how all of our political systems and norms simply overlay the fact that power is the ultimate law of the land.

it's interesting that very few people would admit this, that society is founded upon violence.

See "Debt, the first 5000 years" by Graeber.

Debt exists because of (the threat of) violence. Money exists because of debt (.. is in fact debt). Modern society is based on our monetary system.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#606

Post by foxglacier »

johnny22 wrote: post #553
foxglacier wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if there's no solution that has both equity and survival of the society? I don't think we have any known solution yet. Of course if the society collapses, the equity goes with it. By the way, how is women being housewives them at the bottom? Housewives have an equal share of their husbands' income, so they're just as wealthy as men. They also traditionally control what it's spent on. It's just that their job is…

if that's how you wanna put it, then yes. Women should have the same rights to choose which machine's buttons they push.

Even if it leads to the collapse of the society which enables them to have those rights, so future generations are back to sex-discriminatory religious rules? That's the problem. Equal rights seems like it might be a self-destroying culture.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#607

Post by stoperaticless »

cameldrv wrote: post #547
onlypassingthru wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about just basic energy inputs like fuel and fertilizer? This is a country that is so abysmally poor the state has a feces collection quota. Peasants must collect their daily dumps and give them to the state for use in the field or suffer the wrath of the local DPRK gangster.[0] [0] https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/manure-02012022130916...

Perhaps that could have been true for the shipments of shells, but I can't see NK sending tens of thousands of troops to a meatgrinder that they have absolutely no stake in just for some fertilizer and oil. NK has the ability to demand much more strategic things and I'd be virtually certain that they have.

Also, “well being of people” < “military stuff”

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#608

Post by phire »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #442
s1artibartfast wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the National Assembly's resolution to end martial law, the military stated that it would remain in effect until ended by the president >Martial law will remain until the president lifts martial law"...Armored vehicles also seen in the city center https://m.ytn.co.kr/news_view.php?s_mcd=0101&key=20241204013...

Which means that the president is ignoring the constitution. And so is the military. Very much not good...

The military are technically correct here.

As the constitution is written, the nullification vote doesn't directly end martial law. It simply binds the president to withdraw martial law.

In hindsight, that might be a slight flaw, there doesn't seem to be any time limit or mechanism for what happens if the president doesn't. I'm not sure their constitution was written with an autocoup in mind.

In the end it wasn't an issue. The President did eventually withdraw martial law, I wonder what pressure was put on him to do so. And by who.

Re: South Korean president declares martial law, parliament votes to lift it

#609

Post by philistine »

derefr wrote: post #510
blitzar wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South marching north would force China into the conflict and the West would very tentitatively stand by while South Koreans were being fed into a meat grinder. Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. The North marching South would get little to no support from their allies and would be repelled rapidly before returning to the current status quo. So yes, I am sure. Neither sides al…

> Should South Korea manage to unify North & South it would bankrupt them. What if they didn't do that (at first), but instead (as an intermediate step) annexed the north as a colony with its own economy but South Korean governorship; and then opened said colony to worldwide foreign aid? This would be very similar to the short-term arrangement negotiated between West Germany and East Germany after the fall of the Ber…

East Germany was a tenth the economic strength of West Germany. North Korea is a hundredth the strength of South Korea, and not because South Korea is far more advanced than West Germany.

It's one of the richest country in the world, right next to one of the poorest. Unification in any sense at this point is suicide by the South. The misery inflicted upon the southern Koreans will be immeasurable if both countries are unified. The leaders of both Koreas know this.

Post reply on HN