Judging Freedom - Ryan Dawson: LIVE from South Korea

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

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was that the opposition parties were pro-North Korea. He thought they were moles. He was fighting communism. This isn't really why he did it. And he got this idea from his defense minister, Kim Jong-un, who has now resigned. That happened in the last 24 hours. Nobody went along with this, though.

The head of his own party, he's part of the People's Power Party. And Hong Dong-hoo is the chief of that party. He went against it. And, of course, the head of the opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, who was stabbed a few years ago, also opposed it. They met at parliament. They had to push through National Guard to get into the parliament and voted 190 to zero. There's 300 members. Only 190 could make it to the building so late at night and through the soldiers, and they voted unanimously to end martial law, which never really was enacted. Let me just stop you there if I could. Was the president

attempting to use military force to prevent members of the legislature from actually meeting? The defense, well, now the former defense minister did call to block the building, but what he was doing was unconstitutional. The president can't just declare martial law short of parameters of, say, North Korea attacked or some actual emergency. He can't just do this because the opposition parties won't pass his budget or because they're investigating he and his wife for corruption. You have to understand in South Korea, unlike almost anywhere, nobody is above the law. They put three of the last five presidents in jail and another one killed himself before he went to jail. So when you're getting investigated for corruption, it's not like Hunter Biden. You actually will have consequences for that.

So he was doing a Hail Mary pass. Is the, well, before I ask you if he's being investigated for corruption, what do you believe is the true reason, not fear of the North or fear of Northern collaborators among his political opposition, what you believe is the true motivation or was the true motivation behind the declaration of martial law? Well, if you read through it, he was complaining about how the opposition party simply wouldn't pass anything he wanted to get done. We had our own dog here. They slashed the budget completely. And this is a very unpopular president for a number of different things. His wife is and has been under investigation for several different things. One of those was stock manipulation for this motor company that other people who were involved in the same thing got prosecuted, but she didn't. Of course, it was his own DOJ investigating her. And then she took a bribe. A small thing is a $2,000 handbag. But in Korea, that's a big deal. If you take any bribe at all, you're done. It's not

politics as usual. $2,000 doesn't seem like anything relative to the amount of bribes that go around in the United States, for example. But over here, they won't put up with that at all. And so she was being investigated. The chief investigator actually committed suicide who was looking into her. And it was a suicide. I know people assume, well, maybe he was killed, but he had expressed that people on the inside had pressured him to let it be, to not fully prosecute her. And he just felt like he couldn't really do his job. He ended up taking his own life. There were other unpopular things he did. The president Yoon is trying to solve a crisis. He thinks there aren't enough doctors. So he tried to force medical schools to enroll more students. And then doctors went on strike because whether or not you get into medical school is supposed to be based on merit. You can't set up quotas or so they don't think you can. They're already accepted as many who are qualified. They thought that would water it down. And so people have not been able to get treatment because of the strikes from the doctors, because of union's policy. So he's very unpopular.

He's a lame duck. And then with the investigations into his wife, several other things, her mother, by the way, is in prison for a real estate scam. It's pretty trashy all the way down. Yeah. And, but this is the ironic thing is president Yoon was the head prosecutor when president Park, who was, she was sentenced to 20 years. She got pardoned after only serving about five years. That was Park Kyung-hee, first female and only female president of Korea. And she went to jail. And so Yoon got in as the guy who prosecuted the former president on this bill of sale of anti-corruption. That's what's sad. And now not so much, he wasn't corrupt, his wife was, but he did have a lot of bad policies. Those aren't illegal, but it made him hated. Are you able, from your sources, communication, reading, observations, to have a finger on the pulse of the public's response to this?

Yeah, a lot of Korea is in Seoul anyway. They went to the Blue House. It's like the White House, but it's blue, which recently just moved locations. That was controversial too. But it was amazing to see because even though he announced this around 1030, by midnight, that building was surrounded. Enough people are awake and got the news, the netizens, and the Koreans are very politically active,

like very different from where I used to live in Japan. They're pretty apolitical. But I think over here, just the existence of north korea and that threat forces people to care and be political and so when they heard he was declaring martial law no we're not going back to pre-1980s south korea they had no fear of the police or the soldiers they were pushing and shoving right back so so you can't do this. They helped the lawmakers get over a fence and get in the building. It was pretty dramatic. I don't think a lot of the soldiers guarding the building really wanted to be there or believed in it either. And another thing you have to keep in mind is they have mandatory two-year service here.

So a lot of the protesters have already been in the military. All the men have training, so you can't really push these people around. What happens now that the legislature voted unanimously to undo it and it's been rescinded? Is there a realistic probability that President Yoon will be removed from office or that he'll resign if he feels that impeachment is inevitable. So they would need two-thirds majority to do that. They would need 200 members to vote on that. I think he'll be impeached on Saturday. They'll put that in motion and then they'll vote on it on Saturday. All they need is eight members of his party to come to the other side and they'll have enough to impeach him. I would place that above 95%. And if they decide it's treason, he could be put to death,

but more than likely he'll have a long prison sentence. But unlike in America where there's an actual impeachment trial, there's no trial here. Everybody understands what happened. It would be a very short one if there was. Everybody knows what he did, and he doesn't have grounds to show an actual emergency. Now, there have been attacks from North Korea. They've been sending these balloons, but he's exacerbated this. A lot of the steps that he took forced the North to walk away from unification talks. They were very close under President Moon, not Yoon, President Moon and sunshine policies.

That's where you had Trump and Kim and Trump's coming back in. And so the public was wondering, now we've got a new American president, could broker this? Could we finally move forward on creating a cooperative economic zones in North Korea like they used to do? But with President Yoon, no, he's very anti-North. He said some very anti-feminist things as well. And so he's put his own foot in his mouth many times. Sounds like he has. About a month ago, there were rumors in the Western press of the presence of North Korean troops in Ukraine. That's pretty much been discarded as a deception. Now, there's no thing to do with the declaration of martial law. No, listen, North Korea has always trained in Russia that's not a new thing right not on the front line they're not they train in Russia they're training in drone warfare because the Ukraine Russia conflict and damas have it's really evolved the way war is done with drones

in particular and that's what they are doing South Korea does the same thing with the U.S. and what's called the Quad with Japan and Australia and India. So they weren't there to bolster the Russian front lines or something, and they wouldn't get involved with that. They did send artillery to Russia, but that was in response after South Korea sent half a million rounds to Poland knowing it would go to Ukraine. And the Korean public was very upset about that. They wanted to normalize relations with Russia. And so did the Japanese. Did the speed with which the democratic process worked surprise you or did you expect it? I think you predicted that before this happened, or as soon as it happened,

that it would be over within a matter of hours. Were you surprised that it was over within six hours? Yeah, I heard about it on Twitter from my friend Andrew. He goes, martial law in South Korea? I said, no, that's North Korea. He goes, no, they just declared martial law. I said, what? Turned on the TV, saw it was Yoon. I knew immediately what this was about. And no, this didn't surprise me. This is how things work over here. They have the division of powers as you're supposed to. They have a constitution that they actually uphold as you're supposed to. And they're very efficient. They don't drag things on and on in litigation here. And that's all because of two factors. They have a functional media and they have a

citizenship that's not apathetic. Everybody here has a political opinion. And I think that's because of North Korea. You can't just ignore politics when you have a nuclear armed power at your border that technically is at war with you. And so people are very involved and things happen swiftly. And I will tell you this, by Saturday, he's going to get impeached. Okay. Well, he should be impeached, but I appreciate your prediction. It's a very valuable resource for us. The United States ambassador to South Korea didn't hear a peep from him. Is it not because it was at night or did the U.S know this was going to happen it might have been partially by at night but you think within

an hour or so after they would have said something I don't know they're not on the I mean the U.S has bases in Korea too so if there really was law, there's something they have to comply with. They didn't say anything. I think maybe if they knew what I knew, they could have said that too. So I don't know. I mean, I don't think, oh, it was at night is a good excuse, but there's a lot of incompetence in the U.S. The U.S. has between 28,000 and 30,000 troops in South Korea. It is the largest concentration of American troops anywhere in the world outside of the United States. It appears there wasn't a peep from the U.S. ambassador. There wasn't a peep from the Secretary of State. There wasn't a peep from Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor. There wasn't a peep from whoever the commanding general is of all those troops. Why the silence? For a long time. Not even the next morning, our time,

they still hadn't said anything. And the only foreign news outlets that were really covering it in any kind of detail were British. What are your thoughts on why the American silence? Well, Biden and Yoon are good friends. You know, you can see them singing American Pie. Well, Yoon was singing American Pie with Biden and they've chummed up and they have this, the Biden regime, I'll call it. It's pretty hardline stance on North Korea. They don't believe in talking to them. They don't believe in negotiations. They have the John Bolton ideology. And so this sort of people

powers party went right along with the Biden-Harris ideology on dealing with North Korea, but it just made it worse. But maybe they were seeing how the South Koreans would play it out, but I don't know what the excuse is. I mean you mean but the bidens have proven they're not really in communication with with a lot they still don't have lines to russia right was there any uh palpable reaction of which you're aware in beijing they were surprised by it like the rest of the world um but yeah you know i don't think a lot of people know the internal politics in south korea unless you live here like who's going to know the scandal with the first lady and that's just not global news but it's a big deal here and so japan has their you know they watch

everything closely and and china to a degree but they were pretty surprised everybody was shocked that he actually did it. And I kind of laughed. I go, well, that's, he's done. He just made it. Was the, aside from the defense minister trying to block members of the legislature from gathering in their legislative hall in order to vote,

was the military put on alert? Were there any other militaristic or police behaviors? I mean, I don't want to get conspiratorial, but they didn't try to seize media outlets or anything like that with the military taking over the press. They can't really do that because the press in Korea is decentralized. They don't just have like three channels like a lot of places. It's almost impossible to do that. And it's set up that way on purpose. But I didn't see, outside of Seoul, people woke up and didn't even know he had declared martial law and some of them by the time they got the work it was over so well all except for the impeachment

say that again is the press in south korea freer than the press anywhere else i don't know about anywhere else but a lot more free than the United States, a lot more fair too. They have a high degree in social media as well. They have their own social media networks plus the ones we all know about. But what it is, is it's not monopolized. So you can get a lot of different angles on stories. And then they... If President Yoon is impeached on Saturday,

is there a vice president or some person in the government who will step in? And what do you expect from that individual? They do. This whole government was voted out. They had less than 25% last April. So it'll be an interim president. And then the opposition parties will suss out who the next leader will be. But I am almost certain he will be impeached. And then they will audit he and his wife. His wife is the CEO of this art exhibition company, just like Hunter, selling art? And they accuse her of selling influence because you can't really definitively say what art is worth. So you don't know how much of that was paying for pay to play versus paying for the art.

They're going to audit them both. They're going to dig through their past and consequences will come. And yeah, the vice will be the president temporarily, and then it'll be up to the parliament will decide, and the people will vote on a new president. It's almost as if there's an insanity defense here. It's hard to believe that President Yoon thought he could get away with this. Yeah, that's what a lot of people here think, that he must have lost it.

He wasn't drinking or anything like that. He gave a long speech, but mostly of his wife i think because that ties to him too and that part of the reason he's protecting her is she's his hunter biden it's uh as a conduit yeah chris do we have a picture of president Yoon and President Biden. There you are. Now, was that President Yoon with the guitar? That's where he sang American Pie. So he's fluent in English. Yeah, his English is pretty good. I mean, it appears as though he's in the White House.

Those look like members of the Marine Corps band behind him. Yeah, I don't remember, but I remember him singing it. Not a bad singer. Give him that. Well, Ryan, how are you doing? When are you going to be back in the U.S.? Well, I just got my passport renewed, so I won't be going anywhere for about three weeks. All right. Well, best of luck to you. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for coming on the last minute.

You have given us the best description, I must tell you, of what happened in South Korea, and we deeply appreciate it. Thank you, as always. We'll see what happens Saturday. Thank you. All the rest, it. Thank you, as always. Okay, what happens Saturday? Thank you all the rest by Ryan. Bye bye. And coming up later today at one o'clock, Professor Gilbert doctor row at two o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at three o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.