Martial law crisis revealed weak checks on Korea's presidency, but also resilience of country's democracy

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Martial law crisis revealed weak checks on Korea's presidency, but also resilience of country's democracy

Published: 02 Dec. 2025, 07:00 Updated: 02 Dec. 2025, 12:40

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

A man with the Korean flag draped over his shoulders stands on the wall of the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, in the early hours of Dec. 4, 2024. [AP/YONHAP]

[NEWS ANALYSIS]

Almost a year has passed since Dec. 3, 2024, when then-President Yoon Suk Yeol declared a state of emergency martial law, stunning Korea and setting off a political crisis that continues to reverberate today.

Within hours of Yoon’s announcement, soldiers and police had encircled the National Assembly and other key institutions. For a moment, it appeared that democracy in Korea would be suspended for the first time since the end of the country’s military dictatorship almost 40 years ago.

But Yoon’s imposition of martial law unraveled almost as quickly as it began. Alarmed lawmakers from the liberal Democratic Party (DP) and its allies rushed to the legislature, pushing past armed soldiers and police barricades, determined to vote down the decree. By dawn, after a tense all-night showdown, the National Assembly had forced Yoon to withdraw his declaration of martial law.

What had looked like the return of executive rule by decree instead became a vivid demonstration of how fiercely both institutions and ordinary citizens will defend Korean democracy, even as the crisis exposed the fragility of the country’s governing institutions and the deep polarization that is fraying its political fabric.

Institutional fragility exposed

In the days and months that followed the crisis, debate turned sharply to how the president could invoke such sweeping powers so easily.

Under the Constitution and current legislation, the use of martial law is reserved as an extreme last resort to maintain domestic order in the face of foreign invasion or armed violence, not to resolve political disputes between elected leaders. To impose martial law, the president also needs the formal support of his Cabinet.

President Yoon Suk Yeol announces a state of emergency martial law on Dec. 3, 2024. [PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE]

Yet Yoon’s ability to ride roughshod over those conditions, however briefly, revealed just how weakly constrained Korean executive power remains.

That vulnerability concerns Shin Gi-wook, a professor of sociology and contemporary Korean studies at Stanford University.

“The 2024 martial law declaration exposed how fragile Korea’s winner-take-all presidential system remains,” he told the Korea JoongAng Daily. “When institutions lack strong checks and political actors treat potential power transitions as existential struggles, crises quickly escalate.”

Independent analysts reached similar conclusions regarding the absence of robust safeguards against a potential power grab by the executive.

A post-crisis report from the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) published in May attributed the readiness of elite military and police units to carry out Yoon’s decree to his placement of loyalists from his personal and professional networks in command positions across the military, intelligence and law enforcement, thereby undermining these institutions’ political neutrality.

How democracy held

If the crisis revealed the fragility of institutional design, the response revealed the power of civic action and resolve.

Within hours of the president’s decree, lawmakers convened inside the National Assembly building. Though soldiers attempted to prevent them from entering and later tried to forcibly remove them from the legislature, 190 lawmakers stood their ground and voted unanimously to revoke martial law, forcing Yoon to rescind his decree less than six hours after he had announced it.

Ahn Gwi-ryeong, a spokesperson for the liberal Democratic Party, grabs the weapon of a soldier stationed in front of the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Dec. 3, 2024. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Civil society provided a parallel line of defense. Protesters — students, labor organizers and ordinary citizens — rapidly gathered outside the National Assembly to protest the imposition of martial law. After martial law was lifted, protesters continued calling for Yoon’s impeachment, which was passed by the National Assembly on Dec. 14.

The outcome illustrated what Jin Young-jae, a professor of political science and diplomacy at Yonsei University, calls “reactive resilience” by institutions and the public rallying together at a moment of acute danger, even if the underlying structures meant to prevent such a moment are weak.

But despite widespread condemnation and political shock, no comprehensive legal reform has yet been passed to tighten or clarify the circumstances under which emergency powers may be invoked. Nor has current President Lee Jae Myung followed through on his earlier suggestions for constitutional reform to rein in the powers of the presidency.

For Shin, the episode “underscored the need [for Korea] to strengthen democratic guardrails rather than rely on extraordinary measures,” such as the impromptu parliamentary gathering that undid Yoon’s decree.

Jin said Korea’s experience shows that “well-established democracies remain vulnerable to backsliding,” highlighting the potential for constitutional checks to fail amid persistent pressure.

Polarization, identity politics and the deepening crisis of trust

The near-suspension of Korea’s democracy was not merely a dramatic miscalculation. Experts argue it was a symptom of a political culture poisoned by polarization, where political actors view typically cyclical losses of power as catastrophic outcomes and eschew compromise.

Shin noted that today’s divide in Korean politics surpasses straightforward disagreements over policy.

“Polarization today is not only ideological but deeply emotional, amplified by generational and gender divides and turbocharged by digital populism,” he said. “YouTube-driven political fandoms reward confrontation, while parties increasingly mobilize resentment instead of building consensus.”

This trend has fostered a political culture in which rival factions treat political competition as a zero-sum struggle that can justify increasingly extreme measures.

Benjamin Engel, an assistant professor of politics at Dankook University, blamed “competing nationalisms embodied in the conservative and progressive political parties” for producing “a competition to capture the state by whatever means necessary” in the December 2024 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal.

According to Engel, these opposing national visions are rooted in the Cold War era. Successive right-wing authoritarian governments painted their challengers on the left as communist sympathizers, while the Korean left countered by emphasizing the right’s ties to Japanese colonial collaborators and its role in maintaining the division of the Korean Peninsula.

Yoon’s rhetoric on Dec. 3 showcased this logic. He called the opposition-controlled legislature a “den of criminals,” invoking unspecified “threats from North Korean communists” to justify extreme action. During his impeachment trial, his lawyers further argued that he believed “antistate forces” had tampered with the 2024 general election, which saw the DP increase its majority in the legislature.

This framing of political rivals as illegitimate and posing an existential threat rendered the unspeakable suddenly thinkable. As Shin put it, “Korea’s layered cleavages and political culture of confrontation make democratic conflict more explosive than in many advanced democracies.”

Ultimately, the martial law episode exposed a political culture prone to escalation. Without the intervention of institutions and citizens alike, Yoon’s imposition of martial law could have taken Korean democracy beyond the brink.

Referendum on the crisis

The events of Dec. 3, 2024, not only precipitated a constitutional crisis but also reshaped the political landscape.

After Yoon’s impeachment was upheld by the Constitutional Court in April, a snap presidential election was held on June 3 and was won by current President Lee.

That election was widely understood as a de facto referendum on the martial law episode and the broader question of executive overreach. Voter turnout was exceptionally high at 79.4 percent — the highest in nearly three decades — reflecting a widespread perception that the stakes were existential.

Protesters calling for President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment fill the main road leading to the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, on Dec. 14., 2024. [NEWS1]

However, a breakdown of the election result by the Seoul-based East Asia Institute showed that this level of engagement did not translate into a newfound public consensus after the martial law episode. Rather, the election made the scale of polarization impossible to ignore.

The campaign and electoral outcomes underscored entrenched ideological divides as well as growing generational, gender-based and class-driven cleavages. Lee’s victory, despite breaking the vote total record, still fell short of a majority, demonstrating the difficulty of forging broad political agreement in a fragmented landscape.

While voting results showed that regional political leanings remain powerful, they also showed some signs of erosion, especially in younger and urban areas such as normally conservative Busan, where over 40 percent of the vote went to Lee.

Younger voters were also divided sharply along gender lines, with disparities in income and housing access fueling a clearer class-based pattern of political behavior. Taken together, these trends indicate that Korea’s political conflict is expanding beyond historical regional identities into new forms of social division.

Ultimately, the election illustrated both the threats and opportunities facing Korean democracy. The removal of an authoritarian-leaning president through constitutional means affirmed the strength of institutional safeguards, but the polarization, heightened distrust and a political discourse dominated by negative campaigning continue to pose risks.

How to avert another crisis

The reversal of martial law offered relief, but not resolution. Scholars and analysts agree that preventing a future crisis requires structural and social reform, and not merely vigilance.

Avoiding another crisis will require changes in political behavior as much as in formal rules, according to the authors of the GIGA report.

Political elites across the spectrum, they argued, need to “commit to democratic norms of mutual tolerance and institutional restraint” and resist the temptation to weaponize polarization for short-term gain.

They also urged civil society to “maintain its watchdog role “while also creating “spaces for inclusive, cross-partisan dialogue” that can rebuild trust and reduce social fragmentation.

Others, like Shin, argued that reforms must also address resentment generated by unresolved social challenges.

“Korea must address the socioeconomic grievances fueling frustration, such as housing, youth employment and inequality, while reforming institutions that magnify conflict,” he said, adding that “a more proportional electoral system, stronger judicial independence and renewed civic education on pluralism and democratic restraint would help stabilize the system and rebuild public trust.”

The lesson many draw is that constitutional reform alone cannot guarantee democratic survival — only the active stewardship of institutions and the resolution of social and economic problems can.