Bro What Happened To South Korea?

South Korea is cooked
Please comment if you know more about this meme's origins.

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#southkorea #memes #politics

[jinxtheunluckypony]

Imagine oversleeping and find out you missed the whole coup.

[help]

So, I'm currently staying in NYC, and when this happened, I immediately contacted my family in Seoul
My mother's response was:
"WTH are you talking about?"
10 minutes later
"Oh wait, that actually happened last night. That's weird."
5 minutes later
"Anyway, I'm thinking about buying another carpet."

[ErOrNWi]

I live in South Korea. I don't live in Seoul, so I didn't hear any helicopters or protests or anything, but I was genuinely pretty concerned. I was worried about the future of the country, and whether or not I'd have to leave.
Then woke up the next morning and the whole situation resolved itself.
Now it's hilarious.

[Geographyandhistory]

Fun fact: Yoon Suk yeol's military coup was so short lived, that Wikipedia editors couldn't keep up.

[RavenWolffe]

Best part about this? The military did everything perfectly.

They fulfilled their lawful orders with minimum force, perfect discipline, and intentionally played softball because they didn't want to hurt anyone and knew those orders would be recinded immediately.

When they were ordered to stand down, they were gone in like five minutes.

One of them even hugged an older protestor.

Top-tier conduct in a stressful and completely out-of-left-field situation they couldn't possibly have been prepared for.

[Jonathan_Collins]

Funniest part was because of mandatory military service for men, a ton of the civilians were former military, so they used the military’s own tactics against the soldiers and barricaded them out of the building.

[oldmanryss]

imagine Kim Jong Un waking up confused when he realized he missed all of this

[REEEPROGRAM]

*”NORTH KOREA, STOP!”*
N. Korea; “What?”

“Sorry, forced of habit”

[akiramasashi]

Yoon at his trial: "Your honor, League of Legends."
Judge: "Death."

[petwisk]

Bro did a dictatorship speedrun and currently has the world record

[marshal_anon]

Imagine having your rights revoked and given back, all while you were sleeping

[RGC_animation]

South Koreans know way too well what happens to a country when they "prevent the enemy from taking over". 190-0 veto is absolutely INSANE.

[betterbaulball]

That mandatory military training tiktok is actually such an interesting point. The only difference between the civilians and the soldiers at that point is weaponry, and if the soldiers aren't willing to slaughter innocent civilians you're not starting martial law, you're starting a fair fight.

[CyberController-]

"IT WAS A MISINPUT, CALM DOWN!"

[robbiegarber]

Some of the specifics:

1. The declaration of martial law came out of nowhere at like 11pm local time. He had told barely anyone he was even going to make an announcement, much less what was in it - even the majority OF HIS OWN PARTY had no idea what was going on.

2. In South Korea, martial law has to be approved/vetoed by their legislature, a 300-member body, which were for obvious reasons not assembled at 11:00pm.

3. Once they heard about this, members of the legislature rushed back to the assembly, although many of them were blocked by the 300 military troops that had been called by the president to BLOCK THEM.

4. Enough of them still got in anyways. The head of the opposition party shared a video of himself literally jumping a fence to get in there.

5. After enough members had assembled to hold the vote, every single present member voted to overturn martial law, including members of the president's own party, 190-0.

6. The president then went on TV again at about 4 in the morning and basically said "fine, martial law is over."

7. Most of his cabinet have now tendered their resignations (they still need his approval to officially resign, and as far as I can tell he's only approved it for the Defense Minister, who supposedly came up with this whole plan)

8. The impeachment process has already begun. The assembly needs a 2/3rds vote to remove the president (which will require at least 8 members of his own party), although the constitutional court gets the final veto.

9. If successful, this would be the second time a South Korean president was imprached AND removes from office under the current government. The only South Korean president to be both impeached and removed (and whose picture is *literally* at the head of the wikipedia page for "Impeachment") was later pardoned of the various crimes for which she was impeached, and for which she was serving a 20+ year sentence. I'm assuming he'll be hoping for the same treatment, as the opposition party is also drafting up treason charges.

10. More of a fun fact (b/c I wanted a full list of 10): In Korea, the president is in power for 5 years, but can ONLY serve one term. Therefore, if not impeached, the current president has 2 more years of power before the next election.

[airplanes_aren.t_real]

Ngl this is a major W for south Korean people, major respect, we have much to learn from them

[TheFinalStarman]

It honestly tracks with South Korea's political climate - if you're unaware, South Korea has, historically, one of the most unstable governments in the world, to the point where every single South Korean president/leader (except one, Moon Jae-In, President before Yoon Suk-Yeol) has been either jailed, assassinated, overthrown in a coup, or impeached. Ironically, the first instance of a peaceful transition of power in South Korean history was Yoon's inauguration. At the time he tried to do this, his approval rating was about 23%, owing to the declining economic living standards for South Korea's working class, political tensions regarding worker's rights and the feminist movement, and Yoon's unpopular anti-Feminist social and conservative economic austerity policies. Him blaming North Korea for the whole debacle is also unsurprising; South Korea has laws on the books designed to be hostile towards North Korea and jails anyone who doesn't speak negatively about the North - laws that are still being enforced, as just a year ago a man named Lee Yoon-Seop was jailed for 14 months for writing a poem advocating for Korea to be reunited under the North Korean government.

Overall, Yoon's attempted coup failed because he lacked the political and military connections to pull it off, and the unwillingness of the military to enact the violence necessary to enforce Martial Law at all. What could have been a very serious situation that undoubtedly would have killed hundreds by now has instead fortunately turned into a rather humorous "what the fuck" moment in an increasingly tense global political landscape.

EDIT: Yes, there have been Peaceful transitions of power before Yoon's inauguration (in the 90s and 2000s), however, Moon Jae-In still stands as the only South Korean leader to NOT be jailed, impeached, overthrown, assassinated, indicted on criminal charges, or otherwise incriminated in any way.

[Yoon]

hey! south korean here. This is a serious situation and Im thankful you guys are posting about it. Without the attention, we would have turned into a second north korea

[DylanoRevs]

North Korea was probably like:
"Dafuq they doing over there?"

[bronzdeck]

He really tried to force Martial Law on the citizens when a vast majority of the citizens had mandatory military training.