Guerrilla History - Korea Dispatch - Martial Law, Impeachment, and More w/ Ju-Hyun Park of Nodutdol

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back our comrade Ju-Hyun Park (whom you will remember from our recent episode  A History of American Imperialism in Korea) to discuss all the latest in South Korea, with the recent martial law/coup attempt, impeachment, attempts to restart a hot phase of the Korean War, and more as topics of discussion.  This is not only an extremely important dispatch, but also a dynamic situation with new information coming out all the time, so be sure to listen to this conversation to get grounded in what happened so that you can better make sense out of new developments in the situation.   Be sure to read Ju-Hyun's recent pieces related to this discussion, South Korea’s impeachment fails—what’s next?, and Was South Korea’s coup an attempt to restart the Korean War?, and also be sure to check out usoutofkorea.org!   Ju-Hyun Park is a writer and activist with Nodutdol for Korean Community Development.  Their writing has appeared in a variety of outlets, and they can be followed on Twitter @hermit_hwarang. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Bamboo? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello, and welcome to Gorilla. History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims

to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Hockimacki, unfortunately not joined by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, who of course is a historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada today, because Adnan is unfortunately a bit under the weather, so we're certainly hoping that Adnan is feeling better by the time this episode comes out, which will be in a few days from the time of recording, and no doubt he will be, and I certainly look forward to having him around for the next conversation, as I'm sure listeners you all do as well. Today we have an excellent returning guest and a very fun and kind of worrying at the same

time topic to talk about, but before I introduced the returning guest, whom I heard from many of you last time, you really enjoyed the conversation that we had together, before I introduce the guest again. I would like to remind you, listeners, that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And you can keep up to date with the show and what Adnan and I are doing individually and collectively by following us on social media. On Twitter, we're at Gorilla underscore pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. And on Instagram, we're Gorilla underscore history. Again, Gorilla with 2Rs underscore history. So today, our returning guest

is Chyuan Park, who is, you will remember from our episode back in August when we talked about a history of American imperialism in Korea. Chouyan is a writer and activist with No Doto for Korean Community Development. Chouyan, it's nice to have you back on the program. How are you today? I'm great. Thanks for having me here, Henry. Absolutely. And today, we're going to be singing bye-bye Mr. Marshall Law guy because, okay, you laughed. We're going to keep this in here. We're going to be talking about the recent declaration of martial law in South Korea as well as the impeachment of President Yun in, well now ex-president Yun in South Korea. And of course, the reference that I'm making is the fact that he sang American Pie for Biden quite

famously and something that we made fun of him for in our last episode together. So that is the topic today. Listeners, before we open this conversation, I also would just like to direct you to two articles that Chiyan recently wrote. If anything else comes out between now and the time of reporting, we'll also include that. But these two links will be in the show notes. Chiyan wrote the articles, South Korea's impeachment fails, what's next, as well as was South Korea's coup and attempt to restart the Korean War? And we certainly will be talking about these today. But again, check the show notes, read these articles, and you'll be all caught up for this discussion that we're going to have.

So, you know, I want to turn back to the declaration of martial law itself. And I want to put us into, kind of orient us the way that we were at the time of the declaration of martial law, because a lot of information has come out since then. But in that moment, it was a little bit of a surprise. and I think probably more than a little bit of a surprise and the way that it was covered in the moment was quite interesting or the way that it wasn't covered, you know, to the extent that one might think. So can you put us back into that orientation of where things were at the moment

of the Declaration of Marshal Law and how things appeared at that moment? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great place to start. Before we jump into that, really quickly just want to point out that President Yun is actually not the ex-president just yet. We'll get more into the process surrounding those things, but just want to make that clear since this is a moment where particularly in international media, it's kind of being presented as, you know,

this is the end of the chapter when actually, in many ways, this is just the beginning of a much longer fight. So looking back to the actual declaration of martial law on December 3rd, let's walk through some of the basics of what happened. At around 10.30 p.m. local time, President Yun made a national address in which he declared martial law. And the reason that he cited for that was to combat so-called pro-North Korea anti-state forces. Now, this phrase is very, very important to spend a little bit of time understanding because it comes directly from South Korea's anti-communist national security law.

So the last time I was here on the show, we discussed the Cheju-Mashu-Mashore. massacre. And the national security law was actually created around that time and used as a legal justification to essentially for that massacre, right? The national security law has a very broad sweeping definition of what it essentially labels as sedition or treason. And that's because it defines the DPRK or North Korea as the anti-state entity in contradiction or contradiction to South Korea as, you know, the state entity. So this can be very broadly applied. It can mean a lot of different things. Different administrations have used it in different ways. But the bones of it are that essentially you can go to jail and people have gone to jail in South Korea for even making mild

statements that can be even just interpreted as supportive of the DPRK or political objectives that the DPRK might support itself. So this is really crucial to understanding the context in which the martial law was rolling out. Now, the other reasons that President Yun cited was the gridlock in Parliament or the National Assembly, which has existed to an extent. But then using that to then declare the National Assembly a so-called, and I'm quoting here, legislative dictatorship, which is kind of a wild accusation to make. He's basically saying, well, you all have elected people that are not of my party. They hold a majority in the legislature. I can't get things done. that's dictatorship, when actually, no, that is supposed to be the liberal democracy that you say

you are defending in action, right? So right away, you know, we see that this is a claim that is really built on shaky foundations, right? And there are legal provisions under South Korean law in which martial law can be declared. The fact that you cannot pass laws and that you are unpopular is not one of them. And so immediately that was felt in the response, Just to follow up, when you say that he's unpopular, he's historically unpopular, even prior to the coup, and his numbers have only obviously fallen since then. Perhaps you can take a moment to just describe why he is unpopular and how unpopular he was even prior to the coup, because I think that, you know, that might help us orient, especially if the listeners haven't listened to that previous episode, which we did talk about President Yun a little bit in that episode, even though it was more historically focused. but this will maybe give them a flavor of who we're talking about. Absolutely.

So prior to the coup attempt, President Yun's approval ratings were already under 20%. And this was not something that had happened recently. He has been struggling with approval ratings since he came into office. He was elected on less than a 1% margin of the vote back in 2022. So he's never really had a popular mandate. And as his administration has gone on, his unpopularity has only increased, and that's due to a number of factors. I think what's top of mind to a lot of your average South Koreans will be just the open corruption of his administration, particularly if surrounding his family. His wife has been accused of receiving designer handbags as bribes.

She was implicated in the stock manipulation case. they have both been implicated in possible election interference. So these are just very obvious political scandals that have been going on. And then in addition to that, there's been a number of very unpopular policies and measures that he's pursued both domestically and on the foreign policy front, which I would argue are connected to one another and actually part of Washington's new Cold War agenda. So to explain that a little bit, the very brief spark notes of it for that. He has drastically escalated aggression against the DPRK. He has named the DPRK as South Korea's main enemy starting last year in 2023. He's advanced a vision of reunification that essentially advocates for the annexation of North Korea

and the total subjugation of its society under the capitalist system, along with the destruction of its socialist state, obviously, which is completely – it's completely the opposite of what all, you know, formulas for reunification from both progressive South Koreans and from the DPRK itself for the last 50 years have been. In addition to that, he's entered the beginnings of a trilateral alliance with Japan and the United States, and this is crucial because Japan is Korea's original colonizer. And in order to make this budding alliance possible, he really steamrolled over the demands for justice from survivors of Japanese colonial crimes, particularly from a force

labor case where the South Korean High Court ruled that, the Supreme Court, sorry, ruled that Japanese companies needed to pay reparations to those survivors. His solution to that was to create a fund taken from Korean corporations to pay those survivors and then say that justice had been served, and of course, that's obviously not what people are asking. Yeah, just to underscore that last point, because it really is one of the most kind of egregious examples of botched policy proposal, Japan is still quite unpopular in South Korea. And when it comes to the issue of especially the colonial era and forced labor, I mean, this is still something at the forefront of mines within South Korea.

Of course, it's also in the north, but, you know, we're focusing on South Korea here. The proposal in which to pay reparations to their own citizens, rather than demanding reparations from the colonizing power that actually was exerting force to enforce forced labor, as well as reaping the benefits of that forced labor, it's absolutely crazy. And you know that that is certainly going to be an unpopular proposal. I don't know why that was thought that people would go along with it. or maybe it wasn't, you know, thought that people would be in favor of that proposal. I really, I don't see the political calculus there other than from the perspective of

trying to create alliance with Japan and the United States. I don't see the domestic calculus that's taking place here. Perhaps you have more insight into that. Well, I think the simple answer is that there isn't a domestic calculus. And that's been a defining feature of this administration where policies are not pursued because there's political value to them from the standpoint of the domestic policy. It's entirely about living up to and meeting this agenda that's being imposed by Washington in terms of the reorganizing of the region along military and economic lines, aka the new Cold War. And I think

that's a crucial thing to understand about the UN administration. He has not had a real base of support from within his own society. I mean, he does have supporters. I'm not going to deny that they exist. But in terms of a broad majority is actually capacity to bring together a broad swath of society in support of his agenda, that's been completely non-existent. What he's depended on this entire time is support from Washington. So this is, you know, a leader that has essentially been propped up from abroad from the beginning. And I think that, you know, that really tells us a lot about what led to this coup and also why it got the response that it did. And, you know, just to illustrate a little bit further what I'm talking about

here in terms of, you know, this new Cold War and its effects on South Korea, it's not just, you know, the military situation, which by itself is already egregious. I mean, we had Japanese soldiers returning to Korean soil for the first time since World War II under his rule. We have seen a situation where the inter-Korean relationship has completely collapsed. We are now pretty much at the brink of war and edging closer and closer to that. But on top of that, the new Cold War also requires an economic reorientation, right? Because what is Washington trying to do? They're trying to impose this new Washington consensus where they are attempting to regain

control over key supply chains, particularly over high-tech products. They're trying to reshore or so-called near-shore production, where they're trying to essentially create a new sphere of influence that, is as split off and segregated from Chinese production as possible. And in order to do that, that's required applying economic pressure on countries like South Korea in order to have their companies rearrange their investments out of China and put them more towards the United States. Now, that kind of economic disruption has major consequences in these countries. And in the case of South Korea, we saw a huge issue with trade deficits for, you know, the first time in many,

many years, particularly as a result of these policies, we've seen the Korean One reduced in value. I was looking at some figures from 2020 to now. It was like a 27% collapse over just those four years. And now Yun was only in power for two of them, but I think 2020 is relevant because we're tracking it along with the Biden administration and, of course, the effects of COVID and the war in Ukraine, which have had global financial effects. And so the result for South Korean workers has been diminishing purchasing power, it's been layoffs. Over a million small businesses have closed in just the last year, and that's incredibly significant because that's the sector that employs three quarters of the South Korean workforce, right? And then on

top of all of that, there's been a concerted assault on labor and labor rights, which already were not in a glowing place when the union administration came into power, right? South Korea already has one of the highest number of work hours out of the OECD countries over 1,900 average labor hours a year. Under the UN administration, they tried to erase a reform that happened just a few years before in order to bring legal maximum working hours back up to 69 hours a week, which is just absolutely insane and inhuman. And I think it speaks to the level of exploitation that exists under Korean capitalism, that, you know, that expectation could even be proposed as a viable political strategy. And then on top of all of that, we've seen a very

concerted assault on labor organizers and unions themselves. I was in South Korea last year. I had a chance to meet with the Korean Metal Workers Union, which has been at the forefront of taking on the union administration, calling for resignation, even opposing things like the Trilateral Military Alliance and the war games for many, many years, and they were sharing that at that time, over a thousand of their unionists had been placed under investigation. And out of the entire KCTU, we've seen dozens of people prosecuted, placed under arrest. These are major leaders of the labor movement that, you know, are being thrown into jail on a range of charges that are completely spurious from alleged racketeering to even

being accused of being North Korean agents, right? And so we're seeing that, you know, the union administration was really using the Korean equivalent of RICO laws in addition to the national security law that I mentioned earlier in order to enforce this crackdown on labor at the same time that the South Korean economy is being squeezed by this reorientation in the imperialist agenda. And of course, you know, workers all over the world are just dealing with the runaway effects of collapsing capitalism, the inflation crisis that we've been living through over the last few years. And so this is just the broad context in which all this unpopularity is coming out of. And we do have to pin it back to the closeness between

Washington and Yun and the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, he just wasn't looking to build support from his own society because he could depend on support from abroad. Yeah, with that digression aside, now let's get back to You know, you were discussing that just being unpopular is not justification under South Korean law for invoking martial law. But I want to turn back to that declaration of martial law then. Can you run through the events as they happened a little bit within South Korea and the way that they were being reported at the time? And then, as I said, we'll get into more of the revelations that have come out since then, as well as the process. going up through impeachment, and, you know, as you mentioned, this is an ongoing process

as of the time of recording. But let's turn back to what was actually happening during that time of the declared martial law as well as the reporting that was going on surrounding it. Absolutely. So as I mentioned earlier, the reasons given for the declared martial law were to claim that the opposition had paralyzed the government, that they were acting undemned democratically in doing this and that it was necessary to purge these pro-North Korea anti-state forces from the government. Now, in terms of what actually happened, so that declaration was made around 10.30 in the evening, immediately you saw thousands of people converging on the National Assembly, along with lawmakers, you know, rushing to get there in time in order to beat the

arrival of the soldiers. And a number of journalists and politicians were actually able to to get there before soldiers arrived. What we've learned since then is that essentially while elements of the army were in on the coup plan, the entire military was not informed. So the Air Force specifically did not know what was going on. The skies over South Korea in general, but Seoul in particular, are very tightly controlled because this is a very densely populated country that is also technically still in a legal state of war.

now what that meant is that soldiers were delayed by about 45 minutes in arriving to the National Assembly and so there had already been a crowd built up and then the presence of so many people I think you know there's been a big media focus on like the lawmakers themselves and of course I don't want to diminish any of the heroism that some of them did display on that night but I think what's crucial to understand it wasn't just the presence of politicians and journalists It was also the presence of thousands of people who left their homes in the middle of the night, many of them on foot.

We have accounts of people crossing the bridges in Seoul in order to get to the National Assembly. Seoul is not a small city. This is one of the largest cities in the world. So this is actually an incredible deal that so many people were willing to do whatever it took at the drop of a hat in order to defend the country from martial law. So it's thanks to the bravery of all these people who mobilized

that politicians were able to get inside the National Assembly. There were enough of them to be able to call a vote to overturn the martial law decree, which is something they're able to do under South Korea's constitution. And as a result of that, the martial law order was only in place for about six hours. And so a lot of the reporting that came out in the wake of this was, I think, you know, a lot of the international media reaction just sort of put on this bewilderment of like, oh, no one really understands what's going on. This is such an out-of-the-blue occurrence. And I think a lot of that is because of the image that have been cultivated for President Yunnan on the international stage, right? After progress had been made on the trilateral alliance with Japan, Biden administration official Kurt Campbell, who is also essentially the author of the Pivot to Asia policy, publicly stated that he believed that Japanese Prime Minister Kishita, and South Korean President Yun should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. So, and, you know, we, of course, we had that moment with President Yun in the White House,

singing American pie, like some kind of trained circus act, you know, but presented as, you know, this darling before the American public. And so that image, I think, was really shattered by what he did, because South Koreans have been saying for years that President Yun had extremely anti-democratic, anti-feminist, very militaristic tendencies. There were protests going on for years, involving tens of thousands of times, even hundreds of thousands of people. That rarely, if ever, got any international media coverage.

And so I think the international media was in a position where they had been ignoring a lot of the signs leading up to this, and then suddenly they were in a position where they had to explain it, right? Because this was a very, very clear violation of these so-called democratic principles. And I think that, you know, the effort that's been made sense then is to sort of present this narrative that it's the strength of South Korea's democracy and its democratic institutions that has, you know, permitted for this coup to be defeated. But if you have a strong democracy and strong democratic institutions in the first place, you don't have presidents attempting a coup, right? I think that's something that's very, that needs to be pointed out very earnestly. And you certainly shouldn't have rulers who have such broad unpopularity who are dogged by so many scandals to, you know, had 22 impeachment attempts on him prior to even this coup attempt.

And so now, you know, the most recent vote in which that impeachment passed was attempt number 24 in just two and a half years. So I think that that's sort of the contradiction that's playing out in the media coverage we're seeing now, where it is a lot of the media's own. mistakes, intentional omissions that they're now needing to make up for. But then they're still trying to craft the narrative in a way that sort of preserves the ROK's image as a democratic beacon, as the counterpart to the DPRK in particular. And that has a lot to do with the narrative power of empire and what South Korea's place in that is a sort of an example state that U.S. intervention can work, which of course it doesn't. Yeah. Well, you know, and you mentioned all of these impeachment attempts prior to the declaration of martial law. And then since then, the first attempt at impeachment after martial law was declared was kind of a farce in many ways, laughably so. So perhaps you can talk a little bit about that. But then, of course, there has been a second impeachment attempt since martial law, which we did have something of a breakthrough in that case.

And perhaps you can take a through that. And then where things stand and listeners, I should note that we're recording on December 15th. So that'll be four or five days before this episode comes out. So something may have changed in the last four or five days by the time that you're hearing this. But as things stand right now, where are we? Yeah. So yesterday there was a second attempt at the impeachment, which, well, second attempt since the coup, actually attempt number 24. And that did finally achieve the necessary two-thirds majority of votes in order for that impeachment to pass.

I think something important to highlight here is that under South Korea's laws, impeachment of the president doesn't only require the legislature. The judiciary also has to rule. There are some complications around that, but essentially the court has 180 days in order to make that call, after which elections need to be called within 60 days. for the moment, President Yun has been stripped of all of his powers and responsibilities. Those have been transferred over to the Prime Minister, who is now the acting president. But to kind of take us through a timeline in terms of, you know, what's happening or what's happened from the procedural standpoint, there was an initial attempt at this impeachment the Saturday after the coup attempt on December 3rd, and that vote did fail.

And the reason that it failed was that while the opposition has a majority, they don't have the full two-thirds super majority that is required. And so what the minority ruling party was able to do, the party of President Yun, was to boycott the vote. And there were a handful of people who broke ranks and still remained behind in order to cast their votes. But that didn't amount to the number of votes that they needed from the ruling party, which was eight. What happened in the intervening week since then was that the ruling party, the People's Power Party, attempted this very strange maneuver where they tried to say, oh, he'll eventually resign. We'll make sure of that. In the meantime, he won't participate in state affairs. And instead, it will be the party leader and the prime minister who take those things on. And of course, the opposition immediately pointed out, there's no legal procedure that justifies you doing that. That sounds constitutional. This is a second coup. So that generated a lot of anger, I think, on top of what had already happened. Keep in mind that, you know, this whole time, there's millions of people out in the street, right? And so with each passing day, there's greater and greater levels of pressure from the public that are being applied, which I think is incredibly crucial to understanding why things happened as they did. And I think it speaks back to this point about the South Korean masses as the actual protagonist of this struggle, which of course is not something that's really being focused on in media necessarily. But after this sort of attempted a second coup from the ruling party, there were a number of things that happened. First of all, there was testimony coming.

out within the National Assembly, which revealed the full scope of UN's coup plans, which I'll reveal later. But I think some of the crucial points to highlight here was the possibility that he was trying to start war with North Korea and that he had intentions to Iraq's key members of his own party, as well as the opposition, right, which I think just shows how embattled and isolated he was as a political figure to begin with. And then on top of that, on Thursday, He made a very strange, rambling emergency address as president. And keep in mind, like, a few days before this, he had, like, apologized, tried to, like, you know, look like he was going to, like, go along with the ruling party's plans to, like,

instate this weird sort of situation where they would just sort of assume his powers without any sort of legal process. And then he decides on his own, again, without informing his party, to make a this national address in which he doubles down on his initial points that he was doing the martial law in order to save democracy, that it was a patriotic act, that, you know, the government is filled with pro-North Korea forces, it's filled with forces that I have a quote here, want to transform the country into a den of drugs and organized crime. And, you know, he made a number of other wild claims.

he started saying that it was also about stopping alleged Chinese spies and he named a number of cases where, you know, the government had, you know, allegedly caught some people that were spying for China. He strangely said that, you know, one of the consequences of allowing the opposition party to come into power would be that Chinese solar panels would destroy Korea's forests, which is just a very specific and odd claim for him to be making. But in any case, I think I'm painting an effective picture here that this was a very strange speech. It was also not politically coordinated. And so actually, his party leader was giving a separate address at the time, was not aware that the president had made this emergency announcement. And then when he was made aware of it, immediately announced that he would be moving to change the party line in support of impeachment. And then so as a result of that this Saturday, we finally did get the two-thirds majority in order to pass the vote. So it's been a really topsy-turby ride over the last 11 or 12th.

12 days. Things have been changing day by day. And I think, you know, we'll probably continue to see some level of that same kind of volatility going forward. Previously, we had talked about how, previously in this conversation, I should say, we talked about how a lot of the decisions that Yun had made during his presidency, just largely, had very little foresight into the domestic feelings of these decisions. And this martial law declaration was kind of another one of these. However, it's not quite as explicitly ignoring domestic feelings as some of the other things that he had proposed during his presidency. And what I mean is that as more details have come out, there has been, it looks like some

plans of what the result of this would be. Now, of course, it catastrophically fixed. failed. In many ways, it catastrophically failed in its own right. None of the supposed or I should say unconfirmed objectives of this coup came to bear obviously as a result of how kind of slapstick everything ended up being. As you mentioned, it only lasted for about six hours. But unlike a lot of the other decisions that Yun had made previously, which looked like they were catering explicitly I mean, I'll just be frank about it, catering to what Washington wanted rather than what the domestic populace wanted. There almost was some thinking as to what would be in the minds of people within South Korea. It's just it was a complete misreading of the situation to an extreme

degree. Now, what are these specific things that I'm talking about in terms of what the domestic populace would be thinking have been coming out in recent days? And we're learning more and more every day. As I mentioned, much of it is unconfirmed as of now. They may be confirmed by the time this episode comes out. Listeners, and you will hear it. There may also be more, and there also might be some of these things refuted. So again, just keep in mind that we are recording this on December 15th, and we are reporting

things as they stand currently. But, Xiuyan, you talk about some of these things in your more recent article that I referenced, and also, as I mentioned, more and more is coming out really every day. Can you talk about what we are learning in terms of the underlying reasons for this declaration of martial law that were not explicitly stated? So, of course, explicitly stated was this influence of North Korea within society, within the legislature itself, these people that are trying to turn the country into drug den and organized crime, as you mentioned, within this last speech. But we're finding out more and more as to what actually may have been under the surface, the plan. So can you run us through that? Yes.

So there have been a number of emergency hearings in the National Assembly, particularly over the last week, that have brought a lot, a lot of things to light. And I will say just from the top that, you know, as a result, we've got a lot of major figures in the military going down, including, you know, member, like the former defense minister. key members of the intelligence services, they really are like uncovering the scope of the plot as it is. And, you know, I think I will say this is an evolving situation. We have evidence being presented. We have allegations being made. There is a range of, you know, claims that have either been proven or have yet to be proven. And so I just want to foreground us with that, right? Like,

The things we know right now are not necessarily the hard facts of what happened. But there is a picture coming together. And the picture is that this was actually an extensively planned coup attempt. It was an attempt that was prepared to see the use of mass violence used against the South Korean people and the opposition. and it was very probably connected to an attempt to restart the Korean War in some capacity. So let's just walk through those claims and I'll try my best to stipulate how much evidence and how much confirmation we have for these different things as I am going. So we do have some of the original planning documents for this coup.

We know that the planning goes back to July 2023. So you have about, what is that, like 17, 18 months of planning that have gone into this, right? So this isn't something that was just done at the drop of a hat. Like from the appearance of things, it seemed very sloppy. In retrospect, there were some very obvious details that should have been attempted to from the standpoint of someone attempting a successful coup, but that does not mean that there was no planning that went into this. There was no forethought that went into it.

There was. And we know from these planning documents that a number of the prior martial law decrees were cited. The thing to note here is that Yun's declaration was the 13th emergency martial law declaration in South Korea's history. South Korea has only been a state since 1948. So this is in less than 100 years, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And just if we can for a moment, it's worth mentioning that up through 1987, South Korea was a military dictatorship. you know, the only period of liberal democracy, so-called, in South Korea, begins in 1988.

And as you mentioned, there's been 13 declarations of martial law in the time post-World War II. Can you talk a little bit about any of them before getting back to the, you know, the details that are coming out here? Because I do think that listeners, you know, this is not something that has been presented, as you mentioned earlier in this conversation. A lot of the punditry in the Imperial West is citing strong democratic institutions within South Korea as the reason for the failure of this attempted coup. But again, there is not really any focus on the fact that up through 1987 it was a military dictatorship, and this is far from the first attempted imposition of martial law within the country. So it might be useful for us to take a step back for a moment and talk a little bit about some of those other declarations of martial law before continuing with what's coming out about this current case. Yeah, absolutely. I think actually we can tackle some of those things together because, you know, this planning document cited two very specific instances, which were the Cheju Massacre and the Kwongju Massacre. I believe we talked about both these incidents in the previous episode, but to give a little bit of a recap,

I'll start with Cheju in chronological terms. So the Cheju massacre was the response to the Cheju Uprising, which began in 1948. And the reason for the Cheju uprising were manifold, but to attempt to kind of put it all in a nutshell, South Korea, after 1945, came under the direct military rule of the United States. What the United States did was take the existing colonial apparatus of the Japanese Empire. So that's the Korean bureaucrats, it's the Korean police, the Korean soldiers that had served Japanese imperialism and were essentially sellouts to their country. So these were all the same people that essentially remained in power at the level of the apparatus of the state in South Korea. And, you know, what that meant is that they essentially oversaw the continuing exploitation of the Korean people only now under the auspices of U.S. rule rather than Japanese rule.

And in Chezhu in particular, this was, you know, very, very harsh. There was in particular an incident in, you know, 1947 when, you know, a number of Chezhu islanders were rally in commemoration of the marchion, which was one of a very important struggle from Korea's independence movement. And then police fired on them and killed a number of people who were participating in that. And so the people of Teju along, particularly organized through its People's Committee, which was still in existence at the time, and, you know, with support from, you know, the Workers Party, organized an armed uprising. And they did it in 1948, particularly because that was the year when the UN was going to oversee elections in Southern Korea that were not going to include the northern half of the country. And so this was something that was broadly rejected. by the overwhelming majority of Koreans across the peninsula because it was understood as an attempt to make the division of Korea permanent, right? And so this was an uprising against military rule. It was an uprising against the division of the country.

And then the response to that from the new South Korean state was essentially to oversee one of the most brutal acts in the entirety of modern Korean history, And to do it with not only the knowledge, but actually the support and the oversight of the U.S. military, which, you know, was necessarily very actively involved in the governance of Korea at the time. And what ended up happening in Cheju was you had something between 30,000 and 60,000 people slaughtered. Over 70% of the island's villages were burned to the ground. You had, like, an additional 30,000 people who had to flee the island. And so that is, you know, one of the instances that was cited in,

Yun's coup plans. Now the other one was the Guangzhou massacre, which was another massacre that occurred after an uprising. This was in the context of Chen Duhan's military coup, which occurred from beginning in the end of 1979 into 1980. He declared martial law on May 17th. Prior to that, there had been a movement for democracy across the country that had seen hundreds of thousands of people mobilizing. Guangzhou, which is a city in Korea's southwest, and has been one of the traditional hubs of revolutionary activity was, of course, a leader in this process. And so what the people of Guangzhou did is that essentially they stood up. The inciting incident was that there was a protest at a university shortly after the martial

law order. Soldiers appeared in order to repress it. And in the process of doing so, they killed a deaf man, Kim Jong-jel, who was actually not part of the protest. And because he was deaf, probably was not fully aware of, you know, what was actually happening in his immediate surroundings. And so this really set the city on fire. I mean, you had people raiding police stations, taking their weapons, cab drivers and bus drivers, creating a citizen's blockade around the city to keep the military out. And then people were able to expel the army from their city and essentially established something that looked very similar to the Paris commune. It's actually sometimes called the Guangzhou commune because you had citizens.

citizens' assemblies that were organizing the governance of the city in terms of how are we going to keep people fed? How do we attend to the sick and the wounded? How are we going to organize our self-defense? Things of that nature. And so after nine days, what happened is that elite paratrooper units from the DMZ were deployed to the city of Guangzhou and engaged in a campaign of mass slaughter. I mean, the official toll is something like 500, but there are activist in Guangzhou who insists that it's more like 2,000. And that's only the people who were killed because you also had thousands of people tortured. You also had a campaign of mass rape that occurred during that time, which is one of the most under-discussed aspects of the

repression. And I will know, I have been to Guangzhou and there's a citizen, there's a memorial for, you know, these martyrs. And there's a number of graves there where, with names that have no bodies because their bodies have never been found. Um, and so, you know, their families are still looking for them to this day. Um, so that's something I really want to impress on people because Guangzhou is incredibly important to the political memory and culture in South Korea. Um, and then of course we have to discuss the U.S. role because the U.S. has operational wartime command of the South Korean military. Back then, it all said operational peacetime command. Now, you know, that doesn't mean that

U.S. officers are always telling South Korean soldiers directly what to do, but what it did, but what it did mean in this context was that the South Korean government had to ask permission from the U.S., the Carter administration, to redeploy units from the DMZ, which is administered by the U.S. through the U.N. command, in order to have those troops go to Guangzhou and enact this repression. So the U.S. was fully aware of what was going to be done, and they were willing to, you know, see it through to retain South Korea as a military base. You have to remember that the 1979 revolution in Iran had just happened like the year prior. So, you know, they were also very pressed to not lose more of their assets at this time. And, you know, other things the U.S. did as well was deploy an

aircraft carrier to the vicinity of Tullah province where Guangzhou is located. And they also sent a number of reconnaissance aircraft as well. There are also accusations from Guangzhou citizens that there was a U.S. military helicopter present that fired on people. That's still something that is being investigated and, you know, trying to be proven to this day. But I've been to the building where you can see the bullet holes. And they definitely didn't come from like a soldier carrying a light arm. I will say that. So those are just examples of, you know, this martial law order and, you know, martial law

orders from the past in South Korea. So it's important for us to review Jeju and Guangzhou specifically not only as examples of martial law in South Korea's recent history, but also because they're cited by President Yun's martial law plans, which indicates that he was willing to enact this level of violence again. We've also seen details coming forward that they were going to use a presidential bunker that could house up to 500 people to arrest folks on the night of the coup and that there were orders given to secure hospitals. And why would you need to secure hospitals if you plan on inflicting massive violence? That's why. I want to turn towards the point that you make in

your latest article and also one of the things that's come out regarding restarting. potentially the Korean War. Last time that you were on the show, which again, listeners, was back in August, and we will have that episode linked in the show notes here. So, you know, if you haven't already listened to that, you can either just go back in the guerrilla history feed or the link will be directly in the show notes here. We did talk a bit about what the state of Korean relations were light on the peninsula. but this would obviously be a very major step in a negative direction.

I think it's fair to say. But can you talk a little bit about what the idea was regarding utilizing this martial law declaration and some of the actions that were being proposed? And I'll let you get into the specifics of that because there were specific things that have been reported as to what would be done that would, lead to a, you know, quote-unquote limited confrontation with North Korea, which then, of course, would inevitably spiral from there. Yeah, absolutely.

Let's get into the meat of this. So, as I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of hearings happening in the National Assembly, the legislature of South Korea, and these are bringing forward a number of allegations from various sources. So I will try my best to kind of share what the assessment from various elements of South Korean society are around the veracity or the probability of some of these claims. But I think it's important to share what is being said in the National Assembly because this isn't just, you know, random people making conspiracy theories and making claims, right? These are lawmakers. These are reporters who are being asked to testify essentially under oath, right? and so these are claims that carry some weight.

Now, to begin, one of the most important claims that's come forward is concerning an incident that occurred this October, or rather a series of incidents in which Pyongyang reported that for the first time ever, they had seen South Korean drones violate their airspace and drop a number of leaflets over the capital and that a number of these drones had also a crash. And they were actually able to produce photographs, demonstrating that these drones bore a very, very strong resemblance to models

that are used by the South Korean military. I myself am not like an expert in military hardware, so I'm not going to attempt to say that, you know, I know for a fact that they are or are not. It's also notable just to throw in there that at this time that this was being reported, that Pyongyang was reporting this, the U.S. media was vehemently denying

that this was actually. happening. Of course, later it came out that it was entirely true. But yeah, the reaction was vehement that it absolutely was not the truth and was a provocation by the North to report that this was something that was happening. I think that that's worth bearing in mind. Yeah, absolutely. And I think one thing I'll point out, and this is a phrase we're going to hear a lot, is when the defense ministry was asked about it at the time, they simply said, we cannot confirm that. And I want to emphasize the careful wording of that language,

because saying we cannot confirm that is not the same as denying something, right? And I think that's very important for us to point out. And at the time, I think many people were confused because from a military standpoint, there's not much to be gained by sending a drone into North Korean airspace, because the U.S. and South Korea are perfectly capable of monitoring that airspace without engaging in this kind of provocation, right? What has since started to come to light is that it is looking like there was a military plan

to essentially use this incident to spark some form of retaliation from North Korea, which could then rise to the level of a so-called limited war. And that's, you know, the phrasing that's being used in this testimony, which is the reason why I'm using it, I would argue that there's no such thing as a limited war in Korea, you know, that can very easily spiral, whether in a number of days or in a number of months into a peninsula-wide and even a regional or global conflict, right, just given all the interests that are represented in the Korean Peninsula. Now, and also just to add in on that last point, you know, I also use that same phrase spiral, and I think that given what actually has come out even more recently, like within the last month, maybe month and a half, but I believe within the last month

is some of the treaties that have been signed between Russia and the DPRK regarding defense. And so as you're talking about a limited war, quote unquote, very quickly becoming something that spirals to a peninsula wide or even regional wide war, given the fact that there are some new treaties that have been signed very recently between Russia and the DPRK, that potentially could spiral even beyond just a regional war at that point. Like, we're talking far beyond just, you know, Korea, the Korean Peninsula, Japan, maybe China. We're also talking Russia potentially being involved. And then, of course, once Russia is involved, you know who else is certainly going to be involved,

either by sending weaponry in the case, as they are in some other regional contexts, or by actually having troops involved, then where does things actually end at that point? So I'm with you entirely that there cannot be a limited war in this context, but given recent developments, I think that the spiraling could actually be much, much larger than one may even begin to think. Yeah, I think the essential thing to understand

is that the United States, Russia, and China all have strategic military agreements in Korea. And it's not with each other. is on opposing sides, right? So, you know, returning to sort of these allegations that are coming forward, you know, concerning this drone situation,

what's coming forward as a potential name for this is Operation North Wind. Things have especially gotten interesting in the last week because on Sunday, December 8th, there was a container fire at a military base that houses these drones. And then the next day,

a lawmaker Pomeghe came forward and said that he received a tip from a military whistleblower saying that they were responsible for these drone incursions. And then the theory that has started to come together from a number of opposition lawmakers

is that maybe this fire was said deliberately in an attempt to destroy evidence after the failure of the coup. And so when the head of drone operations command was summoned before the National Assembly and submitted to questioning, he was asked point blank, who gave you the order

to send the drone to Pyongyang and where did you launch the drones from? And again we hear the same phrase. I cannot confirm that. Those are the only answer, that was the only answer that he gave to those specific questions. And so this is, of course, only continued to

raise suspicions. Now, a separate claim has also been made from lawmaker, Eihon, who has reported to the National Assembly that he has also received a tip that the former defense Minister, Kim Jong-hun, who is now under arrest, he attempted to order a direct strike on North Korea just one week prior to the coup attempt, so on November 28th. And this was allegedly

in response to the garbage balloons that the DPRK has been sending South in retaliation for the propaganda balloons that, you know, the South has sent or allowed to be sent for a number of decades, really. And, you know, according to this report, the defense minister attempted to do this, but then was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff has since come forward denying the story, but they haven't denied that there were conversations had about striking North Korea and that the defense minister was part of those discussions. So those are kind of the claims that point towards attempts to start a war with North Korea

in the lead up to the coup. And kind of the prevailing theory from the opposition around this is that, you know, this must have been about creating a justification for the martial law order, right? And that, you know, at some point that failed, and then, you know, they went ahead with attempting to implement martial law anyway with this sort of other explanation that there was a legislative dictator. There was too much gridlock and the government and things like that. Now, there are other claims also coming forward that there may have been plans on the night

of the coup to, I mean, I don't love using this phrase, but this. essentially to stage a false flag operation. And, you know, this is where, you know, things do get a little bit shakier because they involve a variety of different claims that are being made. So I'll start with the claims that are coming from lawmaker, Kim Jong-ju, who is also a former four-star Army General. So this is someone with a lot of military connections. So he has said that he has received a number of anonymous military sources coming to him and saying that on the night of the coup, there was a special forces unit, HID, which stands for headquarters intelligence detachment, that were on standby at a location in Seoul. There were about 20 of them.

And something to understand about this unit is that it's usually deployed to the DMZ, and its purpose is to commit acts of sabotage and assassinations in North Korean territory in the event of war. So this is an assassination squad, essentially. And he's claiming that, you know, this unit was present in Seoul on the night of the coup. And, that they would have, like, they probably had some planned role in the arrest of some of Yun's political enemies, and even potentially their assassination, although he didn't specify that that was known for certain or that there were particular figures that would be assassinated. He did also say that, you know, given the nature of this unit, it's possible

that, you know, they could have been given North Korean uniforms to wear. He also said that they at second-day orders to cause disturbances at the National Election Commission. And so he's starting to paint a picture that, you know, there was an attempt to essentially use dirty war tactics as the coup was launching in order to create the political justification for it. Now, what has also come forward is from an independent journalist who kind of has a celebrity influence in South Korea. His name is Kimo-jun.

And he appeared before the National Assembly on Friday. And he took, he made claims that were even more explosive. And I will point out that, you know, this is probably the testimony that at this moment has the least amount of evidence. He even said himself that he was not able to independently verify this, but it was stated in the National Assembly. And there have actually been media groups that have come out and criticized the National Assembly for allowing that to happen without a proper process of presentation of evidence, of like corroboration of facts. and things like that. So I just do want to state from the outset that this is for the moment from an evidentiary standpoint, the shakiest claim that's been made.

But according to this journalist, and I will state that it's known that a studio was targeted by the military in the early hours of the coup. So some of the things that he says make sense in light of that. But he has said that the embassy of a friendly country has informed him that President Ewan planned to assassinate his own party leader on the night of the coup, that this would have been done by special forces wearing the North Korean uniform, that those special forces would have then also targeted a number of opposition figures, including himself, and then staged a fake sort of rescue operation of them from other members of the South Korean military to make it

appear that North Korea had intervened to protect political enemies of President Yun. And then, you know, these uniforms were been buried, discovered, you know, at a later point in time. And then that would have been used to discredit the opposition and to create, bolster Uyn's claim that he was, in fact, you know, legitimately fighting pro-DPRK forces within his government. In addition to that, he has claimed that there may have been plans to kill U.S. soldiers. in an attempt to get the U.S. to get involved in a war against North Korea. He has additionally said that there may have been a biochemical terror attack as part of these plans as well. And also brought forward that he's received a tip that the First Lady was in contact with a retired intelligence agent on that night, although he doesn't know the content of their conversation.

So there's a lot of claims being made by this reporter, right? He's not naming his source. There's a lot of speculation about who is this friendly country, and then, you know, a lot of people are pointing out, well, if the friendly country is the United States, why would the U.S. tell you that? So, you know, I think we have to handle these allegations in particular very carefully. I don't want to say that, you know, these things are known for sure, but I do think that there are two sets of, you know, storylines emerging here, right? There's everything prior to the coup, which aligns with the timeline that we've seen in terms of the drone encouraging. into Pyongyang, the circumstances surrounding that, that is, you know, the case currently that seems to be building a lot more of an evidentiary basis. And then there's the claims about the potential to cause mischief that could lead to war on the night of the coup itself, which I think are, we still need a lot more investigation to be able to, you know, make strong claims. But what I think is important is that we're having this conversation in English at all,

because this is not being covered by the international media. And I think that these are very explosive allegations, right? At minimum, we have a situation where the president of a U.S. ally attempted to manufacture a conflict that could have very easily led to World War III, right? And, you know, he had motivations to do this from the standpoint of protecting his own political kind of ambitions and also because, you know, as I stated before, South Korea has been put in a very difficult position economically and politically as a result of the new Cold War. And so they're trying to resolve those contradictions within Korea itself. And then, you know, at the furthest extent,

you know, we have a potential situation where this may have even risen to the level of killing U.S. service people in order to, you know, generate this conflict. I think the questions we need to be asking right now are, why does the U.S. have this massive military presence in Korea? what is the real purpose of this alliance? Is it actually serving the interests of, you know, the majority of the U.S.? Or is it serving this, you know, tiny minority that would profit off of something like World War III? And then finally, what is the level of communication and coordination that existed between President Yun and, you know, either the U.S. government writ large or, you know, factions within it. What was known, what was jointly planned, et cetera, et cetera. We, you know, don't have much to go on when it comes to that. But, you know, at minimum, we can say Washington is responsible for creating Yun as a political figure and as this kind of monster. And that, you know, this was in fact an incredibly dangerous situation that could have had global consequences. And there's a lot to be questioned in terms of the U.S. relationship to the Korean Peninsula overall. And, you know, that is something that, you know, I think

should be looked into by way more people because the majority of people, people in the U.S. just don't have like a concept of any of these things happening in Korea. And yet there, you know, there could have been immense consequences for them as well. Yeah. I think that that pretty much summarizes where things stand now in terms of what we know and in terms of what is happening with these hearings at the time of recording. And again, listeners, I sound like a broken record we're recording on December 15th and everything has to be seen in light of that. Before we turn to the last part of the discussion, which is going to be talking about what happens from here, there is one other

character that I think is quite fascinating and has had quite a fascinating time since the attempted martial law declaration, who has come up in passing in a few of your responses, but I think might warrant a little bit more discussion, which is the former defense minister. So, as we mentioned, the former defense minister currently imprisoned, apparently tried to commit suicide using his own underwear according to reportage that I have seen. Maybe you can confirm or, you know, whatever with regard to that specific claim, but that was what I had seen. Can you talk a little bit about who this defense minister was? Because, you know, it was quite interesting. Obviously, he was not only going along, with this attempt at declaring martial law, but as more details have come out since then, it turns out that he was more involved than it had appeared even at that moment. But the interesting thing is, is that after Marshala failed, of course, he resigns. And I had seen some media trying to portray this as this, again,

uh, victory of, you know, some sort of like democratic, a thought within. in Korea that something unpopular happened. He tried to fulfill his role given the imposition of martial law by the president. But then once that then was overturned by the legislature, he takes the correct and just decision to step down, only then to, of course, be arrested and try to commit suicide with his underwear. But a very fascinating figure. And as I had mentioned, more of the reporting that has been done in the last two weeks has shown that he was more involved and more aware of what was happening than was being portrayed. We didn't have any information at the time of Marshal Law being declared, of course,

but the way that things had kind of started to be portrayed on that day and in the first couple days after the declaration of martial law, really the picture has changed quite a bit with regard to his role in the last two weeks. So if you could talk about him and his role a little bit before we get to that last part of the conversation. Yeah, absolutely. So the former defense minister, Kim Jong-hun, I think what's essential to understand is that he's one of the closest

to President Yun in his ruling circle, not just beyond being a member of his cabinet, but he was actually Yun's high school classmate. And there are a number of figures in Yun's cabinet in the People's Power Party who went to high school. school together, and they're referred to as the Chungnam faction for, you know, the name of their high school and, you know, the part of the country that they're from. And a lot of the members of this faction are now being identified as key leaders of the coup. And I think this goes back to the point that I mentioned earlier around the extensive plotting that did go into this coup plan, right? Despite initial sort of impressions and reports, this wasn't something that was actually as thrown together as it appeared, right? So in terms of what we know now about Kim Jong-hang is that he was extensively involved, he is the person who is being accused of having tried to order a strike on North Korea just a week before the coup plot itself.

And there are a number of other leaders within the military that are also being identified and, you know, have now either had indictments placed against them or having placed under arrest for involvement in the coup. And, of course, you know, all of that would have necessarily been coordinated through the office of the defense minister, right? And there's still details coming to light in terms of who played exactly what role in different situations. But we know that, you know, Kim Jong-hun played a key role in organizing a lot of the specific commanders that were called upon when the martial law order was given, that this happened prior to the martial law order. And so, you know, this initial story that, like, he was unaware or kind of caught off guard is simply not. true, right? He was very deeply involved. And I think, you know, the incident of his suicide attempt also aligns very interestingly with the story because he did that shortly after the testimony was given to the National Assembly concerning the drone operations. Now, I don't know, like, did he have

access to news while, you know, he was in custody and things like that. So I'm not going to say that that there is like a direct sort of relationship because we don't really know that yet. But it is a very intriguing timeline at minimum. So that's sort of, you know, the picture that's coming together, I think, you know, the key takeaways are that, you know, it connects back to the point about this actually being a planned-out coup attempt. It connects back to his alleged role in this plot to potentially start this so-called limited war with North Korea. And it's certainly something that I think will continue to need to be investigated and that, you know, as a fuller picture comes together, we'll start to understand better, you know,

the extent of this coup plot and, you know, what it was aiming to achieve. So into the final part of this conversation, and it'll be the final question, but I'm going to make it a kind of a two-part question, which is what happens from here. Now, when I say what happens from here, this is the two parts of that. One part of that is what happens from here within Korea, you know, what is the process that is going to unfold from here? What is likely to happen? What are we, again, barring any unexpected developments that happen between now in the time of this episode coming out in about five days? You know, what will the listeners be seeing in the near future after this episode comes out?

And what do you think the role of, again, the mass public in Korea is in this time? But then the second part of the question, what happens from here? What happens from here in terms of activist groups globally outside of Korea? So, of course, you were very heavily involved with Notatoll. I just saw an email that came out from Notatoll yesterday regarding a campaign that is going. Your name was on it. So, you know, I'm sure that you'll be able to discuss this with us. You know, what are kind of these activist groups globally?

What is the role of them and what, I guess, to put a finer point on it, what are groups like Norto planning on doing from this point as well? So within Korea and outside of Korea is basically the two sides of this question. Yeah, I think that is the essential question, right? We've reviewed everything that's happened, but of course, we need to understand, all right, so what now? So I think to begin with the political situation in South Korea and what is actually going to happen from a procedural standpoint. So I mentioned earlier that the impeachment process doesn't just require the vote from the National Assembly. It's also going to require a ruling from the Constitutional Court in South Korea.

Now, that court has 180 days to make this ruling. And, you know, I think that gives some indication of how much longer this can drag on, right? Listeners may remember back in 2017, the president, Park Gunhe was also impeached. And President Yun had a very big role to play in that as well, which might, yes. he were worth a prosecutor. Exactly. It might be worth mentioning that. Yeah, absolutely. It's funny how politics goes. But in any case, you know, her court case took something like 90 days, I believe. So, you know, this can't actually drive on for some time. And what's critical to understand now is that due to the gridlock in the legislature, the court actually only has six out of nine of its seats filled.

there was some question about whether they could even constitutionally rule on an impeachment proceeding, you know, with that number, because there are very specific rules in the South Korean Constitution concerning this. It's since been determined that they can make the ruling, but of course that means they need to make a unanimous call in order to uphold the vote. And so there's some expectation that opposition lawmakers will attempt to nominate new judges. and, you know, that's out of concern for, you know, ensuring that, you know, will a unanimous vote actually be achieved and also because while they might legally be able to meet the threshold of this being a legitimate ruling, that doesn't mean it can't be politically contested by the ruling party and by the right wing, right? If they're able to say, well, you know, you didn't really have like a full bench, you know, there should have been a better process around this, etc., etc., right? So I think that's going to be a pretty long, slog in the National Assembly. Yuen still has a lot of loyalists in his party, and I think we can expect that they'll do everything possible to attempt to influence the court, attempt to, you know, stack the bench and things of that nature, attempt to, you know, block any sort of judges being placed on that they feel could, you know, upset the outcome from their standpoint. But, you know,

assuming that a ruling is made that upholds the impeachment, then Yuen will be immediately stripped of his title. He's already been stripped of all in the state powers. You know, that's being held by the prime minister for the moment. And then, you know, after the court ruling, South Korea will have 60 days to hold snap elections. And there's a great deal of, you know, like political intrigue also surrounding this because the opposition leader I Jemyang is, you know, currently appealing a guilty verdict in an election interference case,

which also involves a level of bribery. And then so there's sort of this question of, you know, will the election be held prior to, that appeals case, will the appeals case be called, and will his guilty verdict be upheld before there's an election? Because that influences the ability to even run for office, right? So there's going to be a lot of little skirmishes playing out in the next several months, I think, we can, you know, we can definitively say. So it's going to be a very volatile time in South Korean politics. I think the U.S. is watching the situation very closely. Every single statement

we've seen from the U.S. government has made sure to emphasize continuing U.S. commitment to the so-called ironclad U.S. R.R.K. alliance. I think that really speaks to like the core interests that the U.S. is trying to protect here. I think, you know, there's an understanding from Washington that they can't be too heavy-handed in getting involved in the situation. At the same time, you know, they're not willing to see an outcome that, you know, will threaten their military interests in particular. And so I think they're going to do everything possible to try to, you know, sort of do whatever work they can in order to protect that. And, you know, we've already seen a number of statements coming forward from current and former U.S. officials, including people

like Senator Jack Reed, including, you know, Representative Brad Sherman. I think one of the most telling quotes that I want to read, which is from the acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. His name is Evan Revere. He said, this isn't an interview with voice of America. If you look back at the impeachment resolution, one of the paragraphs in that impeachment resolution directly attacked President Yun for the trilateral partnership that he had established with Japan and the United States, that was very disturbing. And so you have these career imperialists, you know, like speaking out to the media to like, you know, just behave like some kind of like schoolmaster wagging their finger at the Korean people. Like, don't get too

carried away with your democracy now. You know, remember that you need us, right? So I think, you know, we're seeing the kind of beginnings of an overt sort of media campaign around this. And I'm sure that there will be other elements of that as well in terms of how the U.S. attempts to influence what happens next. Because the opposition party in South Korea, the Democrats, I will point out, you know, and this is, you know, despite me, like, probably having some political disagreements with them, well, definitely. You know, they hold positions like opposition to sanctions against the DPRK, right? which is huge, right? It's not something that, you know, the U.S. wants to see from a ruling party in one of their vassal states in this region, and they're also very opposed to the alliance with Japan.

And this is supposed to be, or next year 2025 is supposed to be the year that alliance becomes concretized and formalized. And so this is actually a very critical time, you know, for U.S. interests. And, you know, shortly after the coup, a number of high-level meetings of the nuclear consultative group, which is a joint military body that is exploring and creating the plans by which U.S. nuclear strategic assets could be placed in South Korea openly. They, you know, canceled their next meeting indefinitely. They also canceled their next nuclear tabletop exercise, which would have been carried out to sort of, you know, rehearse the actual use of a nuclear

weapon in the Korean peninsula. So there's a lot of U.S. interests that are, you know, wrapped up. in what is going on right now that, you know, could be potentially derailed or delayed. So I think that's also going to be a serious factor in terms of what plays out in South Korea in the coming months. Now, you know, regarding this point about what do people around the world do about this? I think that what is really essential right now is that we break through this media narrative that essentially is seeking to retain, you know, South Korea's image as this leading democratic power that ought to be fully supported no matter what

because if you look at the substance of what life has been like under the UN administration that is clearly not the case, right? I will point out that like about half of the South Korean workforce are irregularized. What that means is that they don't have contracts. That means they're not protected by labor law, right?

So if half the workforce in your country is not protected by labor law, I would argue that functionally means they have no rights. You know? like not even the bare assemblage of those things, right? So I think it's, you know, really critical for us to be breaking through this media attempt to recuperate South Korea's image. I think we need to be paying attention to the hearings in the National Assembly, paying attention to the ongoing investigations and to UN's plans. I think that, you know, this should be raising questions about who are the real aggressors on the Korean Peninsula?

Who are the more rational parties, right? Because we're always being fed this story to, oh, Kim Jong-un could start a war at any moment, North Korea's itching to start a conflict for no reason. North Korea has demonstrated incredible restraint throughout this process, right? Their airspace was violated by military drones, right? That could have resulted in an attack on their populace. And yet they did not, you know, retaliate, you know, at the level of carrying out any kind of strike in South Korea, which I think if the situation had been inverted, we would have very likely seen, you know, a much higher level of military retaliation. Instead, what the DPRK did is that they detonated roads and bridges within their own

territory along the DMZ, and in light of the information that's coming out, that makes a lot of sense because they were essentially attempting to forestall a ground invasion and shape a strategic environment in order to protect themselves, right? We've also seen that, you know, North Korea has been very reticent, actually, on commenting too much about what's happening in South Korea. You know, there was a big story that was kind of like papered all over the Western media when there finally was something reported in Pyongyang on the matter. And, you know, this was kind of, you placed in the typical anti-communist sort of orientalist framing of like, oh, like they were afraid to let their people know about democracy, yada ya.

But then that's actually North Korea being very tactful because the South Korean president just said that he did this coup to root out pro-North Korea forces. If North Korea comes in and makes very public statements about the coup, about the people out in the streets, about the opposition, that's endangering people's lives. right? And so I think that their silence is actually in an attempt to not make the situation worse, in an attempt to, you know, not empower this very unpopular leader who is, of course, very antagonistic to them as well. So I think that, you know, we need to be informed about the situation. We need to be having these conversations in order to break through, you know, this information war, which is ongoing, right?

and is, you know, part of an attempt by the imperialist class in the U.S. to continue to protect, you know, its assets in South Korea. And I think that, you know, past that level of narrative and information, I think that there are actually many, many people around the world, not just people in the U.S., who should be posing questions to their governments about their relationships to South Korea, right? A South Korea is a so-called observer member in NATO. And what that has meant functionally is that we've seen increasingly a greater and greater number of countries becoming involved in the occupation in South Korea and the war games against North Korea. To give a really important example that Germany just joined the United Nations Command a couple of months ago, the United Nations Command, is one of the command structures that is dominated

by the United States and oversees the occupation. in South Korea. Also earlier this year, in March, we had 11 countries in addition to the U.S. and South Korea participating in war game in the Korean Peninsula, and I'll list all of them out for you right now. It was Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, France, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. So I think, you know, anyone listening from any of those countries, this is something

you should be followed about with, you know, with your anti-war movements, with your government in terms of, you know, why are we deploying troops to Korea for these aggressive war games that, you know, are helping to stage a process that could very easily lead to World War III. All of the countries I just named, I'll just go ahead and say it, have immense social problems with their own at home, probably don't need to be, you know, expending their valuable treasure in order to, you know, contribute to the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, right? So I think, you know, this is something that I would bring to the table as, you know, many, many people having a role with in terms of, you know, raising these questions, breaking through the narrative,

questioning their own government, the involvement in Korea, and, you know, helping to sort of break down this international support for figures like President Nune and more broadly, the reactionary forces within South Korea, because, you know, these aren't people that, you know, they rely very heavily on this international support, right? I'll go ahead and say they're sort of like Zionists in that way, right? Without that, you know, protective layer, they would be much more embattled in their society than they are. And so I think that, you know, that is the part that everyone can be playing regardless of where you are. And then I think the final point I'll make is that, you know, if you are part of a labor union, please, please make efforts to, if you don't

already, like, establish relationships with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, to support their political demands. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has over a million members. They've called an indefinite general strike until UN resigns. I will point out that does not mean that all the members are on strike at the same time. That's because of the particularities of South Korea's labor laws. But they've played a leading role on the ground and at the political level in this struggle. There were KCTU members that were present at the National Assembly on the night of the coup attempt. They were some of the most organized forces there from what I've heard from people others who are, you know, present on the ground as well. They've played a leading

role in pushing for demands beyond resignation, right? They use this framework of total social transformation. And under that rubric, include things like addressing labor exploitation in South Korea, addressing inequality. And, you know, as a union, they have also historically opposed U.S. war games on the peninsula and other attempts at war, Hungary and, you know, the expansion of military bases in South Korea as well. So they are a very important progressive political force in South Korea. And, you know, if you're an organized worker, then, you know, that's one of the most immediately things you can do. You can push your union to establish those relations if they don't already have them, to issue solidarity statements

and take other measures as well to support them as a political force. Because why should only the ruling class enjoy this international support? What about South Korean workers that actually have an interest and a vision to transform their society. Well, my friend, I agree with you on everything that you said, except for, you know, you did describe Voice of America as a media outlet, whereas I would describe them as a propaganda organ. Of course, I'm just teasing you. I am not suggesting that you are claiming that Voice of America is a legitimate media outlet or a objective media outlet.

But I did have to tease you just because you did say the words media outlet next to Voice of America rather than the word propaganda, which I think is much more suitable. But again, listeners, our guest was returning guest, Zhiyan Park. I, again, will have those articles that we discuss South Korea's impeachment fails, what's next as well as was South Korea's coup, an attempt to restart the Korean War. Linked in the show notes, as well as Zhuryan's previous appearance on the show, in the show notes as well, I highly recommend that you check out all of those things. The articles are not overly long, so they won't take you very, very much time.

and, you know, if you're at this point in this episode, you won't find that other episode overly long either. I think it was about the same amount of time, and you certainly will have more of the picture if you listen to that discussion as well. Julian, thank you for coming back on to the show. Can you tell the listeners how they can keep up with you and find more of your work?

Absolutely. Well, I would point everyone first towards the direction of N-O-D-O-T-O-L. That's spelled N-O-D-U-T-O-L. You can visit the website, Nordutol.org. You can also find us on social media just at N-U-T-O-O-L. Once again, that's N-O-D-U-T-O-L. If you want to find me personally, I'm on social

media under the handle Hermit O-R-A-R-A-R-R-A-N-G. Hermit, as in the English word, underscore H-W-A-R-A-N-G. And I don't, well, I guess lately I've been tweeting more, but I've been trying to, you know, use social media a bit less and, you know, be a little bit more engaged on, you know, trying to understand the forces that are shaping our world at a, you know, a more granular level than, you know, just being on Twitter would allow for. But, you know, that's how you can keep up with my continued sort of reporting

in journalism, things of that nature. And, yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Henry. Finally, please check out the U.S. Out of Korea campaign, which you could find at U.S. out of Korea.org. That's a campaign launched by Nurudol, earlier. this year. There's a very strong demand platform there that helps, I think, you know, articulate what exactly the problem in Korea is and how it can be addressed, at least from the standpoint of the U.S. Yeah, absolutely. That was one of the topics of discussion in that previous episode,

and we will have the U.S. Out of Korea campaign linked in the show notes as well, listeners, interesting. There was a car that just almost crashed outside of my window while I was looking, so I got a bit distracted. There's quite a bit of snow outside right. now. But now that I've got myself back focused again, I will tell the listeners that my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, again, was unable to join the conversation today. But you should follow him on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N. Follow his podcasts, The M-A-J-L-I-S, which should be available on most major podcast applications. And as for me, you can follow me on Twitter at UK-1995, H-U-C-K-1-995.

To remind you, listeners, you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to Patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history, that's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history, and follow the show on social media to keep up to date with everything that we're doing by going to Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A underscore pod, and on Instagram, where Gorilla underscore History. That's Gorilla again with 2Rs underscore history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know,