34: Why the South Korean Martial Law Coup Failed & President Yoon will Probably get Impeached

Howdy. I had to cover it. I had to. Martial law then take-backsies in less than a day? Yes pls. Here's a low-down of Yoon & his current presidency and why he just can't get along with the national assembly. Some more details on the seemingly simple case, its more complicated (and interesting) than you might think.

0:00 Intro - What's President's Yoon's Motivation? What is martial law? A fun speedrun of the events!
4:11 President Yoon's Overuse of Vetoes & the Importance of the Korean National Assembly
7:00 Allegations of President Yoon's Wife's Fraud & Falsification of Doctoral Degree
8:11 Why People Don't Like President Yoon Personally
9:40 Do the Concerns of North Korea Have Merit for Enaction of Martial Law?

Transcript

Hey guys :) Welcome back!!! This is Reese Grey Analyzes and I'm Reese~ On Reese Grey Analyzes we dive into creations and experiences in art media music and even video games to unravel why we think the way we think question what we believe and learn something new if you're new to this channel international relations and Korea subjects those are my jam and the craziest thing happened president Yoon declared martial law during a late night television emergency address and his reasoning was that he needed to protect the nation and eradicate anti-state forces that were undermining the country's constitutional order so to kick this off with a fun fact most Korean presidents do in fact go to jail and I'll give you a second to fact check

that yeah so it kind of looks like President Yoon is on his way to do that for us now as well he is a little bit unstable he's not doing very well right now there are a couple things going on you know both in his personal and professional life it's all speculation this just happened his motivations are likely a combination of well yes my wife definitely did do the corruption That She's accused of and I wanted to distract from that or perhaps I can't veto this spending Bill like I've been doing with the rest of my bills because the National Assembly is an opposing party or most likely he's probably thinking I'm going to lose my job and go to jail what more do I have to lose this action seems to be rooted in absolute lunacy so maybe he was even thinking well it's Tuesday night near midnight in Korea maybe no one will notice because everyone's asleep but oh contrare they did notice and you're probably at this point shocked because oh my gosh is there some type of military coup is there a war happening because typically martial law is meant to only happen during actual emergencies South Korean citizens reported military helicopters were seen flying over the National Assembly in Soul causing lots of panic in fact this caused so much civil unrest the opposition controlled National Assembly convened an emergency session themselves and the National Assembly voted unanimously to anul the martial law decree and then despite this the military originally said um... yeah we're still going to enact this until the President says officially that martial law is done with and then thousands of citizens gathered outside the National Assembly to protest the martial law declaration and now you're thinking well president Yoon can just say no right he can just keep enacting martial law right and yes and no because legally if the majority of the National Assembly want to anul martial law he is legally obligated to lift it however he could have said no if he had some type of military coup or was supported widely and generally by the population however he does not have that type of power or influence all of this news reporting happened in basically in less than a day in like a 12-hour period it was kind of cool to see like the nation basically just really get together and say what they wanted and get it so fast it's pretty it's pretty cool thing to witness I think but even so this event has raised concerns that South Korea's political stability is off-kilter right now and the potential impact on its economy and international relations now I mentioned that the National Assembly of South Korea have significant influence and the National Assembly basically acts as like a counterbalance to the executive branch or the South Korean president and this leads to a lot of contentious debate so the majority of people people who hold the seats in the National Assembly are from the opposing party and the National Assembly basically has control over legislative decisions including approving or rejecting laws budgets and policies and this opposition between the National Assembly and the president leads to a lot of arguing and not a lot of getting things done which basically leads to drama so since president yoon's inauguration only about 29% of the bills submitted by his administration have been enacted and this is compared to 61% during the previous Moon Jae In's presidency and president Yun the current president's policies are very controversial and this includes proposals like abolishing the ministry of gender equality and these issues intensified after the 2024 National Assembly elections where the opposition or the National Assembly gained even more momentum of opposition party members but failed to achieve a super majority still needed to override the presidential vetos whenever the National Assembly would try and push a bill through so both sides are essentially like deadlocked and this is why the National Assembly is so frustrated with these presidential vetos Yoon has broken records in using his veto power since last July he's broken the record of using the most vetos for a sitting president and for comparison the previous president Moon Jae In used zero vetos actually so it's not like this has some sort of President notable things president Yun has vetoed have been the nursing act in the labor union act so the nursing act would have allowed nurses to establish independent institutions which doctors were against because they didn't want them leaving their hospitals and the labor union act would have required unions to close Financial records making their activities more transparent to reduce corruption and ensure unions are accountable but vetoed these which sparked controversy with the National Assembly because the National Assembly believed that he kept vetoing bills that would give power to more individuals so they asserted that Yun was trying to undermine individual rights in power and he gets into even more trouble because of these corruption allegations against his wife the first lady Kim Keon Hee she's been embroiled in like multiple controversies basically so allegations include that she falsified her doctoral thesis more recently there was a Dior bag Scandal where a pastor gave her a $2,200 Dior bag which exceeds the legal limit for gifts which is $800 USD so it's almost triple regarding the academic allegations she has a background in management and earned her master's degree from Korea University which is like the tip tippy top university of Korea and when she earned her doctoral degree people picked it apart and said that there was no academic rigor to it there's a lot of similarity between her work and other work which is really ironic because her thesis was on the social responsibility of businesses and focused on ethical aspects of corporate governance so oops president y has also been known to be super dismissive and had a lot of controversial statements as well basically people don't like him as a person and he's made several contentious remarks particularly when addressing people who criticize him the most infamous involvement actually involves a hot mic so he didn't know his mic was on and he referred to the US Congress members using a derogatory term basically some people say that he was saying nallimyeon which is basically like crazy people and some people said it sounded like jeotdeunda and honestly both are rude right so this created confusion and led to a lot of debates about the exact wordings and as a defense he said oh I was saying that aiming it to South Korean lawmakers and meant no offense to the US Congress so he's not even saying that he wasn't being rude he's just like no it was uh to to uh South Korean people not not the US Congress which of course still caused scrutiny and he's basically famously known for responding to any type of criticism saying that they prioritize North Korea's happiness over the Republic of Korea's happiness so basically when anyone disagrees with them he calls them a North Korean sympathizer and this brings us to our original point he was saying that martial law had to be enacted because of concerns of National Security considering North Korea so we have to look into that is there Merit in North Korea concerns and the answer will be sure always so there's always like this heightened tension on the Korean peninsula because of North Korea's erratic military activities but there hasn't been one specific event that I could find that could have prompted this martial law that he enacted yesterday but recent developments basically if you guys are curious about what's happening in North Korea they're testing these Advanced weapons such as Hypersonic warheads and these are basically nuclear capable underwater drones which is not good additionally what is most concerning is that Kim Jong-un has shifted his North Korean stance by declaring South Korea a permanent enemy earlier this year and using language calling South Korea a primary foe an invariable principal enemy is not great on its own but he also announced policy shifts that included ending efforts towards reconciliation and dismantling current organizations dedicated to Peaceful reunification and this is probably because North Korea and China have very good business agreements right now check out my other video on North Korean amusement parks if you are interested in that Kim Jong Un also proposed removing symbols of past unification efforts like the Arc of reunification in Pyeongyang so of course we can't say that President Yun had no merit in doing this and I am releasing this video pretty early but this is a pretty crazy thing to happen and I just kind of wanted to give you guys a Lowdown of what's going on with the current president of South Korea it's a little teaser taster about uh some international relations tea so I hope you guys enjoyed this cuz that was a really weird thing to happen and I just had to give you guys the lowdown whenever something crazy like that happens um I also wanted to say something kind of weird because you know how this lighting is like horrible right so I tried to use a filter on my phone to like add lighting and I didn't know that it inherently came with like this beauty filter thing and like gave me eyebrows and then as I saw some of the videos that I uploaded like they're going to come out like this month and I have like these floating eyebrows but like guys I'm not going to re-record the videos okay so I'm going to look kind of crazy and some of them where I used a filter but now that I noticed that I'm just going to have bad lighting okay so so oh my God yeah those of you who listen to the podcast version of this episode are probably like what like this is what you guys are missing out when you listen to the podcast and not the YouTube videos you guys miss out on my ugly so anyway guys I hope you guys enjoyed this and with that okay love you bye