North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Martial law revelations, commander-in-chief confusion and North Korea’s response

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

NK News Lead Correspondent Jeongmin Kim sits down in the studio to discuss the latest events on the peninsula since South Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law on Dec. 3.  She explains the confusion over who is in charge of defending the country against North Korean attack after Yoon ceded his authority, growing calls […]

the your T-shirt celebrating DPRK's golden era of aviation in vintage airline chic. Explore the stars with our Nada hoodie, inspired by North Korea's answer to NASA. Or toast to tradition with our Taedonggang beer T-shirt, capturing the essence of North Korea's renowned brew. Each design is a conversation starter. Find yours at shop.nknews.org. Again, that's shop.nknews.org. on the the Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack O's Wetsuit. And as you can probably hear, I'm at the tail end of a cold here.

I lost my voice for a couple of days, but it's almost back to normal. So here we go. And we're recording this in the NK News podcast studio. I'm with Jongmin Kim this morning. Jongmin, welcome back. Thanks for having me. You've had a busy week of podcasts. You also covered me for the long podcast last Thursday, talking all about the fallout from the martial law, the self-coup, whatever you want to call it, the dramatic events of last Tuesday evening. So here's a question to start off with, just a simple one. Who's in charge of the army right now in South Korea?

We've got to put a North Korea spin in here. Who's in charge of defending South Korea from possible adventurism or provocation by North Korea? Ironically or unironically, it's Yoon Seok-yeol. Explain why. Well, the journalists in South Korea since Sunday, I believe, have been pressuring the government very, very hard to answer this question. Who is the commander in chief?

Who's the CIC? And then they just went silent. They're like, oh, it's a very sensitive issue. And then Monday morning, just yesterday, the defense ministry spokesperson was asked this question and then he said said it still remains with the Legal CIC role remains with the president right because he hasn't been impeached. He hasn't stood down. He hasn't been suspended He hasn't resigned so he remains so that's the problem although there has been a political statement and a political promise from the Prime Minister hand Ducks who and the

People Power Party leader handle that-un that... The two hands? The two hands. Two hands. Sorry. Will be that that Yoon will be excluded from all duties. He is not being excluded because first he has been clearing off a bunch of documents like resignations of cabinet ministers, cabinet members, and also he is technically still CIC. So if any North Korea contingency happens, he will be the person that the JCS will have

to report to. Okay, and the JCS of course, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now that is, I mean, we kind of got ourselves into this situation because he was in control of the military, right? He announced martial law, he sent out the army to the National Assembly, to the National Election Commission. The elite forces. Oh yeah, that's right. The special missions.

And also the Kim Oh Joon's house and studio. And now he's still in charge of the military. Kim Oh Joon is a progressive journalist in South Korea that Yoon really hates. And he also owns his own polling company. That I always thought that there's something shady about it because it always sort of paints you in a much, much bad version of him compared to other polls like Gallup or RealMeter. But you don't send military usually to pollsters, right? So yeah, that's the situation going on right now.

And the latest is yesterday, the investigative authorities, there is this weird competition between authorities, like prosecutors and the police going on right now like who calls a shot first and they have been talking about emergency arrest of the president is possible like starting morning they started saying that and then in mid afternoon I believe the Gongsu-cha, the office of the corruption for high-level officials and also the Justice Ministry they confirmed that Yoon is banned from leaving the country. Okay, but he hasn't been arrested yet.

No. They're considering it. Okay. All right. So he's in charge of the military. We know that the former defense minister has resigned. And one of the stories that's come out is that drone that went to Pyongyang with the leaflets that might have been South Korean government after all, right? It reportedly was South Korea according to the leaks that started just piling up right after

a defense minister not only resigned but got arrested, emergency arrest, and there are leaks saying that it was Kim Jong-un, the ex-defense minister's order to actually send the drones to North Korea. Remember the time that South Korean government kept saying that it's not worth responding to the question when Chad asked it to the president? Actually it turns out Chad was the last person ever. To ask. Possibly to ask. President of the UNEQ press conference,

goodness me, wow, okay, let's say have to get that framed or something. And there is a different league which is like more controversial because there has been some pushback from the JCS that the defense minister also allegedly ordered something similar to something that sounded like considering an actual preemptive strike against a balloon launch, North Korean balloon launch origin. This is more controversial though. So this is part of a broader narrative that President Yun and his defense minister might have been starting something with North Korea in order to spark a situation that would make a pretext for putting down

imposing martial law. Well so far it's just correlation. I'm not sure if the causality has been proven so far but I think what so far I would say what has been proven is that the defense minister, who was a key man of the martial law declaration and the implementation, and knew and had a very particular worldview regarding North Korea. Right. Well, and if that narrative is correct, then that would be basically another bookpung like they had 25 years ago to try something with North Korea in order to bring benefits to the regime in charge in South Korea. Right and justify the martial law.

Now we've also seen some stories and some video footage of soldiers who have talked about their experience in the raid on the National Assembly and what that did to them and what that did to morale. Now what are we hearing about that? There are two things. One is the 707 Special Mission Commander has done a press conference leaving the unit. We almost never see this. There there is whole controversy on whether or not this was appropriate. But that's a separate issue. And there are a bunch of leaks from the soldiers who actually went

to the National Assembly and other places on the night of. right? And it seems like the gist is first, the morale is down right now because many of them did not know that the target was civilians and the lawmakers. Many of them thought it was a North Korea related situation because of the text messages they allegedly got earlier that day. The word terror was also specifically mentioned. So North Korea related situation because of the text messages they allegedly got earlier that day. And the word terror was also specifically mentioned. So North Korea related, terror related, this is what they thought they were going into when they were getting on the helicopters. Exactly. There were two main special operations sort of units that were involved. One is the

anti-terrorism, very elite forces, very difficult them, right? And the other guys are people who are, you know, simply put, supposed to be trained to assassinate Kim Jong-un, for instance, in contingency. And then they were trained for all of these things, and then they, in the last minute, they hear that their goal is to make sure that there are less than 150 lawmakers at the National Assembly. According to reports, we cannot verify it. But according to what it's Colonel Kim Wontae, have I got it? Or Kim Hyuntae. Right.

And other soldiers as well. And other soldiers. Yeah, because again, the narrative here being that out of 300 lawmakers, if more than 150 were there, if a majority were there to vote down the martial law imposition, then it would be lifted. And so their orders were, make sure that we don't get that majority into the National Assembly. Right. And, right. Okay. So that's going to hurt morale, but it may also hurt readiness and whether soldiers

are confident in the orders that they're receiving from above are legal and sensible and have been rationally thought through Right professor Daniel Pinkston made a awesome point about the chain of command issue as well Leading back to going back to our initial topic. Yes, the IC commander-in-chief right commander-in-chief is still you Yes, the acting defense minister the JCS chief and and Special Forces Commander who is suspended right now, they all vowed that if there is anything related to potential second martial law instruction from you, they will disobey it. Okay, let's say that there's no second martial law. They're still saying that they will disobey their CIC. It sort of tarnishes the whole authority of the CIC. And what if something happens related to North Korea and they get their instruction, they will have a bit of doubt in their mind and it might

slow people down, right? Yes, so this does put South Korea into a precarious situation in terms of its national defense, which now, let's talk about North Korea. North Korea hasn't said much in their state media about what's going on in South Korea, have they and that usually they're quick to seize upon an opportunity to point to a weakness what are they doing here. So it looks like the the martial law aspect of all of this might be making North Korea calculate that it might not be a good idea to tell their citizens just yet about this in detail. So when you look at Park Geun-hye's impeachment era, like she didn't get impeached immediately, you know, right? Like it took months of consideration. But then Rodong was very quick to tell the North Korean people that this is going on. Park is, Park might get impeached and people are protesting. Right now in Rodong, there are

some reports with photos of people wanting Yoon to get impeached, but that continued for weeks, even before the martial law, right? But they're not mentioning the martial law. Nor are they mentioning the fact that it was citizens who went out there to put their bodies on the line, as it were, to clash with police and the military to help to stop this, right? Because that's not a narrative that would be helpful to the North Korean government. Exactly. And also how the institution, like their version of would be Supreme People's Assembly,

the SPA in South Korea, its National Assembly, the institution actually worked, not just DP, but alongside some PPP members, the opposition and the ruling sort of stood together to take this down the order of the Supreme Commander. Yeah. I don't think this is something North Korea might be, you know, excited to talk their people about. No, no. And now I imagine that at the same time across the demilitarized zone,

there's a state of heightened alert there. Are we seeing anything from North Korea, any movements? The JCS has been doing a bit of briefing now and then, and they keep saying that there has been no you know particular movement movements going on at the border although technically a lot of things have been going on at the border anyways with the you know wall being set up and the loud speakers and everything but yeah I don't see I don't I didn't hear any news about any particular movements and if you heard any news in the last week because it's literally a week today since the the whole drama kicked off in South Korea have you heard any news in the last week, because it's literally a week today since the whole drama kicked off in South Korea.

Have you heard any news about new trash balloons or new leaflets from North Korea or new messaging on the loudspeakers? Anything like that? Nothing. Really? That's fascinating. It is fascinating because it seems unusual. North Korea never loses a, never fails to take advantage of a good crisis.

Right. I think two things. One is ultimately this will be a propaganda material on the silver platter when they decide it's the right timing. But second, because Yoon is still technically CIC, and also second, he mentioned North Korea threat in the martial law decree and announcement. Right. I don't think they want to help you justify the decision at the time with further movements. Look, let's in our remaining minutes, let's drill down on that little bit. Why did you bring up this element of a North Korea threat of anti-state elements in South Korea?

So partly the worldview thing that I mentioned earlier might explain it, but that's not enough to you know Explain why as extreme as martial law, right? But if you look at the Constitution and you know the legality of it, which is a controversy right now Was it legal to you know issue this martial law? It looks like just citing the budget cuts from the opposition party and the political opposition and the medical strike, it would have been not enough for you to justify something as extreme as emergency martial law, which is different

from usual martial law. It has to be a security crisis, a time of war or something like a time of war. Exactly. That's why I think he included the North Korea aspect into it to sort of, you know, line of defense in case this, you know, tanks. But he has also said that, has he not said that or accused E.J. Myung of being the leader of the opposition party, of being an agent of North Korea? Well, he didn't exactly say it in those terms. He would, like rather than pro-North forces, I think in Yoon's mind, he like,

each time I'm in the opposition party, it might be like anti-state forces. But anti-state forces was also in the announcement. Yeah, that's right. But I'm just wondering who are the Jong-Buk right now? These are the pro-North Korea forces. Who are the specific targets of that? So I don't know.

It's very unclear, but if I channel, you know, Yoon's mind, try to think from his position, like his point of view, I think seeing this comes after a lot of domestic context, like Itaewon crowd crushed. After that, there was like whole lot of, you know, protests, protests against the government, medical strikes and the labor union strikes, like all these sort of civilian voices against the government. From Yoon's point of view and defense minister's point of view, these sort of count might have counted as sign of potential insurrection or riot, which in South Korean traditional way of thinking might be linked to pro-North forces.

Ah yes. And who knows there might have been some North Korean spies or whatnot. They always have been sort of here and there in the country. That is, you know, that's a fact. Exactly. Let's assume that there are always going to be some North Korean spies and agents here, trying to foment rebellion and stir up insurrection, and that they're probably in there amongst it all. There may have been some at the National Assembly, but there's certainly not enough to turn the tide,

to direct South Korean people in a direction that they're not already going. So I think why Yoon did the martial law was it's a big risk and a big bet. But through martial law andiding the election committee building, I think he wanted to find a hard evidence to show that pro-North forces or North Korea spies were involved in some of the legislative procedures like the general election. I think maybe that was a reason why he did something as risky as that because he thought

there would be benefit from it. Finding the evidence that they were involved. Yeah, which despite having gone to the national Election Commission, well before the soldiers and helicopters arrived at the National Assembly, I don't know if they got anything. I haven't heard of them actually finding any evidence of tampering. I saw a exclusive report this morning showing CCTV footages

of the soldiers arriving at the NEC, the election committee building, and moving around. There were defense intelligence, counterintelligence, people who were shown or reportedly sort of just strolling around and not really running or trying to do something. They were not doing a very enthusiastic and passionate job to actually follow the instructions, but that's just one report. Fascinating.

Okay well we we keep an eye on this so thank you once again for coming back on the show Jung Min Kim. Thanks for having me. In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com solutions

today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode, and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you, and listen again next time. you