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When will the marketplace of insurrection close?

Published: 25 Nov. 2025, 00:01 Updated: 25 Nov. 2025, 12:12

Song Ho-keun

The author is a columnist of the JoongAng Ilbo and a chair professor and director of Doheon Academy, Hallym University.

A year after the events now labeled the Dec. 3 martial law declaration, Korean politics remains mired in what amounts to an insurrection panic. The Democratic Party (DP) continues to deploy the term as a weapon, even though the political system that collapsed that night has yet to show signs of recovery. The repeated summoning of the episode, as if to relive it, reflects an obsession that only heightens public anxiety.

President Lee Jae Myung (right), embarking on a tour of four countries including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Turkey, speaks with Democratic Party leader Jung Chung-rae at Seoul Air Base on Nov. 17. [Yonhap]

The purge has widened. More than 30 corps-level generals and hundreds of field-grade officers have been placed on a personnel reform list. The government has also shifted its attention to senior civil servants. The administration appears determined to identify even the faintest sign of “passive complicity” surrounding the insurrection. During a meeting at the Defense Ministry, President Lee Jae Myung encouraged officials to “select carefully.” Yet when so many state managers become targets of investigation, it is difficult to see how the machinery of government can regain normal function.

The Dec. 3 insurrection was an indefensible incident that deserved full condemnation. It was born of the toxic climate in which both major parties hurled accusations of being “insurrectionist forces.” No insurrection is carried out in isolation. If conservatives resorted to unlawful measures to escape impeachment moves, budget cuts and legislative suffocation, responsibility lies across the political class. Still, former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s deployment of force, which ended in a decisive victory for the DP, forms the essential backdrop. The current government may feel compelled to hang the label of insurrection around the People Power Party’s (PPP) neck, but it should not ignore its own political failings. Restoring the pillars of democracy that all sides helped weaken must be the core purpose of any effort to eradicate the remnants of the insurrection.

This raises a central question. Is the DP repairing the structural flaws that crippled the Yoon administration? These include an unrestrained presidential style, opaque advisory networks, the breakdown of dialogue with the PPP, and intensifying ideological confrontation. It is widely understood that removing these undemocratic traits is the heart of “eliminating insurrection.” Yet there is little evidence that such work is underway. If the strategy is to dismantle a diminished PPP entirely, that would amount to another form of democratic suffocation.

With its overwhelming majority in the National Assembly, the DP has become an invincible force. The impression grows that the goal is to choke the life out of an already demoralized political system, leaving the PPP barely conscious. President Lee’s comment to “select carefully” and Yoon’s earlier calls to “sweep them all away” differ in tone but express the same logic of adversarial politics.

What principle, accepted by the public, guides the DP’s campaign to eradicate insurrection? In the military and civil service, where hierarchy governs all conduct, rooting out vague traces of “insurrectional neglect” risks dislodging the core of the system itself. Such punitive measures can damage the very institutions the government will later rely on to restore stability. A more responsible approach would be to narrow the scope of punishment and repair essential functions.

Yet when prosecutors protested the recent lenient ruling in the Daejang-dong case, the DP revived a bill to make it easier to dismiss them. A government that once punished obedience now punishes dissent. Constitutional norms have faded from view. Rather than responding to broad public expectations for democratic reconstruction, the DP has opened a marketplace for selling insurrection rhetoric.

The government has launched an administrative reform task force and is soliciting anonymous complaints. But it must close the marketplace of insurrection and open one devoted to democratic redesign. If the administration hopes to revive the conviction with which it once confronted Yoon’s accusations of “pro-North, anti-state forces,” it must first stop the politics of eliminating people.

Former presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, both seasoned by state persecution, did not pursue retaliatory politics. But administrations since the 2000s have failed to inherit that restraint. Few countries imprison former presidents as readily as Korea. Even if insurrection leaders must be held accountable, can democracy endure if every transition of power brings mass arrests of senior officials?

Former finance minister Kang Man-soo, jailed after a separate investigation, published a novel titled “Final Statement,” which ends with him throwing his national medal into the Han River. He was another casualty of politics built on total eradication. How many more such figures will the current purges produce?

People Power Party lawmaker Choo Kyung-ho walks toward the main chamber of the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, on Nov. 13. The session discussed a motion to arrest him, with a vote scheduled for a plenary meeting in late November. [Yonhap]

The political crisis remains acute. Six lawmakers of the PPP received fines over the Fast-Track clash. Former PPP floor leader Choo Kyung-ho now faces charges of “engaging in key insurrectional tasks,” and more than ten other lawmakers are under investigation by three special prosecutors. Counterintelligence units and military commands have been shaken to the core. Additional anonymous complaints will add fuel to the fire. Many public officials may soon be discarding their phones into rivers.

On the first anniversary of democracy’s death, prospects for revival appear dim. Opposition repression, media control, reshaping of the judiciary, tightened political control of the military and bureaucracy and fraying public policy capacity have all weakened the government’s credibility. Political scientists abroad are monitoring Korea closely for signs of democratic collapse. President Lee has long kept a low posture behind party leader Jung Chung-rae. One year after the insurrection, what is this administration trying to achieve?

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.