Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/7/25 Tim Shorrock on the South Korean Martial Law Episode and Trump’s Potential Korea Policy

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Tim Shorrock returns to the show to talk about the tumultuous last three months in South Korea and the potential for Trump to finally make some serious progress on relations with North Korea. They start with a look at the martial law episode that TKed South Korea last December. Shorrock explains the characters involved and lays out what’s likely to happen next. He and Scott then zoom out and think through what the Trump administration may do differently with North and South Korea this time around.  Discussed on the show: Spies for Hire by Tim Shorrock Tim Shorrock is the author of Spies For Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing and a regular contributor to The Nation and the Korea Center for Investigative Reporting. Follow him on Twitter @TimothyS. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Roberts and Robers Brokerage Incorporated; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; Libertas Bella; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey look you guys on the line we got tim shoreock and he wrote a book a long time ago called spies for hire and he writes a bunch of great stuff about korea which he knows a hell of a lot about welcome back to the show how you doing i'm okay thank you Very happy to have you here. You know, I've been really slacking off on the show for the last year,

trying to get the book done and all this stuff. So now I'm trying to get back in the swing of things, and I'm way behind on Korea. I know that there was all kinds of shenanigans. Why characterize them? I don't know. I read this morning that the ex-president is out of jail, so there's some news.

But can you tell us who's who and who overthrew what and why he declared martial law and what happened then? and which guys are wearing the black hats and the white hats according to your point of view and what have you like that? Okay. That's a lot of questions there, Scott, as usual. But I'll try to get to them.

Well, black hat is definitely Yun Sukul, who just got the court let him get out of jail. He declared martial law to everyone's shock in Korea. I mean, it was just nobody expected this. And on December 3rd, he declared martial law and sent about 1,500 special forces and other military forces, you know, well armed to the National Assembly to take over the National Assembly and prevent any, you know, anything from taking place in the Parliament. And he said that, you know, he did this to eradicate the shameless pro-North Korea anti-state forces who threatened his agenda, which is basically to break the power of Korean unions, deepen strategic ties of Japan and continue its militaristic stance on the North Korea. But a lot of people, he was very unpopular for a lot of reasons. And one is that he's seen as a pro-Japanese politician.

In 2023, he had agreed to this three-way military alliance between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. And to get that agreement going, he agreed to settle Korean differences with Japan. over World War II crimes committed by Japan, right? And then in that agreement, you know, which revolved around the, revolved around the so-called comfort women, you know, women who were forced into sexual slavery and also, you know, people who were forced into labor in Japanese factories during World War II, that's always been a big issue for Koreans.

And the way he settled it was, Japan did not have to pay any reparations. Japan did not have to even apologize. Instead, all the costs would be borne by South Korea. And that infuriated a lot of Koreans. They just saw it as a sellout to Japan. And he was already, you know, quite unpopular because of his, well, he has this, you know, he just always on the attack, you know, in normal times there's a lot of, you know, in the parliament,

in the National Assembly. There's lots of, you know, fierce rhetoric on both sides. But he really attacked his opponents who are basically, you know, left liberals, not leftist, not communist in any way. He attacked him as pro-North Korean communist all the time. And it was just, you know, this kind of attacks from, you know, that used to happen, you know, during the cult, during the dark days, the Cold War. And he was also seen as very corrupt. His wife has been involved in a number of scandals. And so he wasn't very popular, and his popularity was falling.

And his agenda was being attacked in the National Assembly, and he was being criticized very heavily in the media, even. And so he tried to declare martial law for the first time in 45 years. And I think to his shock, tens of thousands of Korean citizens just, you know, alerted by social media, went down to the National Assembly and basically, you know, tried to prevent the military from taking control of the National Assembly. and they did. I mean, there was this one picture that went around the world of this woman legislator grabbing the M-16 of this one guy and just, you know, trying to pull the gun away from him. So they really put their bodies on the line. And they managed to help a lot of the politicians get back into the National Assembly by helping them climb over the fences and stuff like that.

This is both opposition and, you know, ruling party politicians, and they came back and they, and they voted about six hours later to, to, well, to declare martial law illegal. And so the martial law decree was rescinded. And then that started that really began. this three-month period of political tumult, basically, because then the opposition wanted to impeach him, which they did. But at first, the ruling party, Yuan's ruling party didn't want the impeachment to go forward, and they blocked it. And then finally, a few of the ruling party politicians, you know, joined. with the opposition, and they did impeach him. And then he was arrested for treason, for declaring this martial law illegally. And he, then he was, you know, his supporters came to, came to, you know,

try to prevent that from happening, but they failed. And he was jailed. And then this trial's been going on in the Constitutional Court. And probably maybe about 10 days from now or so, two weeks maybe, the decision is going to come down from the court, which is likely to throw him out of office. He's already been impeached, and this will basically back up the impeachment and then declare him that he can't be present anymore. And then elections will be called right away once that happens. So I expect that there will be an election in South Korea soon.

And it's very likely that the opposition party will win. And the U.S. national security forces are not very happy with that because they think they're not, the opposition party in South Korea is not tough enough on either North Korea or China. And so like the right wing in South Korea, you know, says the opposition is, you know, pro-China, pro-North Korea. There's no truth to that whatsoever, but they do want to have different relation with China and different relations. You know, you remember in the past when, you know, Trump was president in his first administration, there was a, you know, near war with North Korea, right? And then Moon Jay-N., who was the progressive president of South Korea, opened, you know, did this opening to North Korea during the Olympics in 2018.

And they began this dialogue that led to some important agreements between them to build, you know, to try to defuse tensions and so on. And as a result of that negotiation, you know, Trump began to negotiate with Kim Jong-un, also to the shock of the U.S. national security establishment. But that's the background to this, you know, political crisis that grips South Korea right now. Hang on just one second for me here. You guys, I'm so proud to announce the publication of the Libertarian Institute's 14th book. It's Israel, winner of the 2003 Iraq Oil War, Undue Influence, Deceptions, and the Neocon Energy Agenda by Gary Vogler, former senior oil consultant and deputy senior oil advisor for U.S. forces during Iraq War II. Remember how I wrote and enough already about how Ahmed Chalabi sold the neoconservatives on a plan to rebuild the old British oil pipeline

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gold. Don't let the Fed and the war party inflate all your savings away. Look up Roberts and Roberts at RRBI.CO. That's RRBI.c.O. Okay, so it's, I guess the vice president is the acting president for now until they hold new elections, or how does that work? Because he's still, you're saying, still the president? It was another, they don't have, they don't have.

have a prime minister. They have a kind of a different system. There's not a vice president that automatically assumes power when a president's picked out. They have a system where sort of the number, you know, well, it's, you know, another ruling, another senior leader of that party became, so they have an acting president now who's, you know, part of the conservative party. And he's been, you know, trying to carry out, you know, government policies. But it's, you know, there's no, I mean, it's just a big, nothing will be clear until there's, there's, you know, at least this impeachment is settled. And then there's a new election and a new administration comes in. So it's kind of a chaotic situation. But,

The thing that's been really frightening to a lot of Koreans and people here, too, who follow there, is that when, you know, Yun was in jail, he began to appeal to this really extreme right that hasn't really emerged for years in South Korea. I mean, you know, there was during the 1940s before the Korean War, I mean, one of the things that led up to the Korean War was the takeover of South Korea by the far right, extreme right, fascist right. And they were, you know, they used violence against the left opposition. And there was, you know, lots of military clashes between the rightist government in South Korea and left-wing forces in South Korea. In South Korea before the North Koreans invaded and crossed the 38th parallel in 1950. From about 1948 to 50, there was basically a civil war inside of South Korea. And of course, this was during the time when the U.S. ran things with its U.S. had military

governments in Korea. So anyway, that far right, that fascist right really emerged. after, you know, during the Korean War and afterwards. And then there was a military coup in 1961 where there was a dictator named Bak Chung-hee, who was a general, who had also been trained in the Japanese military during colonialism. He ruled for 18 years. And that's when, you know, this really far right was very very very. much in power. And, you know, Pachshundi was assassinated. And that, and, and, and, and as a result, there was

another coup after he was assassinated. And there was another period of authoritarian rule. But, as I've talked about in your show before, there was an uprising in 1980 when that general massacred all these people in the city of Kwanju who were demonstrating against martial law. And he took over the country at the time. But that Kwongju uprising was the spark for a democracy movement throughout the country in South Korea in the 80s. And by 87, they had basically forced the military to step aside. And then there were elections and conservatives won, liberals won. and the elections had followed for president.

But the far right had really been minimized, you know, because they were seen as the problem in the dictatorship period and the authoritarian period. And so, you know, even conservative candidates, you know, had to disassociate themselves from the far right to win elections. you know, to appeal to the middle. And, and, and so the far right was, was really kind of ostracized in a way. But Yun is sort of over that ilk, and he's really appealed to the far right.

And by far right, I'm talking about, there's this one, you know, fundamentalist preacher who's leading all these people and, and condemning, condemning the opposition as communist. pro-North Korean and pro-China. And there's a lot of older people that are, you know, very, very anti-communist. They're part of that. And then there's lots of young men who are like kind of in-cells who are, and some of them even identify with the Hamaga movement in the United States and with Trump. And they kind of together form this far right of today.

And, you know, they've used violence, you know, to support you. And, you know, just today I saw something about, you know, some foreign reporters that were just covering demonstrations were beat up by these far right people. And these reporters that were beat up are not, you know, left wing or anything. They're just, they're fairly conservative reporters from this poll. publication called North Korea News that follows events in North Korea. And so, you know, it's a, it's a really, you have a big splits now between open splits, violent splits between, you know, the left and the right there now. And so it's causing, you know, the, you know, like some of, yeah,

Yesterday, I think, this week, I think, Colby, the, what's his name, he's the new, he's Trump's new, Elbrich. Eldritsky Colby, who's this scene, he's kind of this realist, you know, he has this kind of realist approach to the, to the world. Yeah, I saw his confirmation hearing. He seemed less worse than a lot of guys. Well, he is, he's, I've been critical of him in the past, but he does. have a, you know, he, he, he recognizes the reality of the situations, I think. And like, he's, and he's, he's, uh, like, you know, he says, like, we don't have to be, you know, 100% enemies with China. We can be, you know, we can be like sort of antagonist. We don't have to be, necessarily go to war with them, but we, you know, there are, there are, there are,

there are enemy, but they're not like, you know, the enemy is about to storm the gates. I mean, And we should have dialogue with China, right? And like he was saying, at his hearing, he mentioned a little bit about he was asked about this trilateral relationship between Japan, the U.S. and South Korea. And he said that, you know, probably that may not last because of the political situation within South Korea, because there is a lot of opposition. He recognizes that there's a lot of opposition to it and to this trilateral relationship in South Korea. And he recognizes that as a reality, which is a good thing, I think, you know, because the Biden people just were like, they wouldn't hear of any opposition.

It's like, well, too bad. You know, this is the way they have to go. Yeah. And, you know, they, I mean, the Biden people and, you know, Tony Blinken and the guy who was the ambassador to Japan, you know, former mayor of Chicago. Robert Manuel. Yeah, exactly. They were saying things like, you know, this trilateral relationship has to remain. And this is the foundation of our alliance system and, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

And they really scoffed at any kind of opposition. And it's like, you know, what we say goes, basically. And so, you know, I don't know exactly how Colby's going to operate as far as, you know, military policy. But he seems a lot more pragmatic and a lot more. Hey, is, do you know Tim? Yeah, do you know Tim if Stephen Began is back? he was the most reasonable guy last time around i don't know i haven't been following it that closely but you know i i do know that i mean the thing is like you know you see you know that you know

trump is talking about uh well he you know he said something yesterday about the u.s japan alliance the military alliance saying that you know we don't have to we have to defend japan but they don't have to defend us which is actually not even true But also, he doesn't even, he doesn't seem to understand that, that, you know, the U.S. formed this military alliance with Japan in 1952 during the Korean War and really, you know, pressured him into this. But that, you know, that, that agreement gave Japan, gave the U.S. the right to have bases in Japan, military bases in Japan, basically forever.

And those bases, of course, are not just for defending Japan. Those bases were the main bases that the U.S. used in the Korean War to bomb Korea. You know, those U.S. bases in Japan were critical to the U.S. war in Vietnam. So it's not just, you know, protecting Japan. It's like protecting American interests all over the globe. And that's why the, well, that's the, yeah, that's the tradeoff for Europe, too. It's, you let us keep our military bases in your country and you can have open access to American markets and you can keep your tariffs on our stuff.

Exactly. And but the thing is why, you know, he's also, you know, going to impose tariffs apparently on, you know, steel and some really important products that come out of Korea and Japan. But, you know, like the other day he said, and along his speech the other day, he said to the Congress, he said, Korea pays, you know, we pay quadruple the tariffs that Korea does. And actually, there's no tariff. I guess he does, forgot that there was this Korea-U-S-3 trade agreement where they cut tariffs for almost everything. So, you know, but also during the, when he was talking with North Korea and was having these negotiations with Kim Jong-un,

which, of course, ended when John Bolton told him not to sign an agreement that would, you know, reduce the size of North Korea's military nuclear industry in return for dropping of sanctions. And, you know, Bolton told him that would be a terrible thing and can't do it. And so Trump walked away, but he really walked away from quite a deal, I think. And, of course, you know, since then, tensions between North and South Korea and the U.S. have really increased. Yeah. And with Japan, of course. You know, so a lot of Koreans fear that they will be cut out of any negotiations between Trump and Kim Jong-un if he starts that again.

And, you know, I think they have a legitimate complaint. there. Well, so last time they had essentially a liberal in Moon who wanted to deal, who asked Trump for permission, hey, can we please deal here? And Trump said, go ahead. So now, I guess you're saying, well, we got this right wing group who they identify themselves with maga types, but they don't agree with them on this, I guess. But then it sounds like you're saying, though, that the liberals are going to win the next election and then maybe it'll be all right or not. And real quick, because I'm sorry, just realize what time it is and I've got to go. That's okay. I think the left liberals are going to win.

And I think there's all signs point toward that. And they've already said, actually, one of the leading opposition politicians a week ago or so said he thinks Trump should get it a Nobel Prize for negotiating with North Korea. So they want to have negotiations. They support it. Well, and look, and maybe the right. wingers are fond enough of Trump that they're willing to go along if he's the one taking the lead on it. I don't know. I want to see it end of this war. And I'm so regretful that Trump was not able to see this through last time because, of course, W. Bush and Barack Obama would have rather

died than to see America make peace with North Korea. And so that tells me that it's probably a really good thing to seek. And Biden, too. Biden would be. No desire to do that. And I remember well how Moon pulled this off was he got Trump on, I think it was a Friday night and said, hey, come on, let me deal. And Trump thought, hey, my staff is going to hate this, right? McMaster's going to blow his lid and I want to see that happen. So sure, go ahead, Mr. President, right? He bucked the Washington establishment. Yeah, his own White House, which, you know, at that time was occupied territory from the rest of Washington establishment there where now I think he's got freedom of action in a way that he didn't before.

If he leaves this four years without a deal with North Korea, Tim, I'm going to be pissed because he's got every opportunity to do it now, seems like. He does, and I think actually, ironically, I mean, this right wing in Korea does not want to have a negotiated peace with North Korea, not at all. They'll follow his lead if he pushes them, I bet. The left, I don't know if they will or not, but they might, but it would not be as easy in terms of resolving North-South issues. so you know it's always been a case in south korea when progressives are in office they make much more

progress in peace talks with north korea yeah i think that that i mean that there's no reason that couldn't happen you know in the next four in the next two to four years yeah i'm sorry i got to go dude i'm so over time thank you for coming back on the show let's catch up again soon tim appreciate it man take care all right bye all right so guys that's a great tim shorrock uh you can find them on Twitter he's Timothy S the Scott Horton show anti-war radio can be heard on Kpfk 90.7 FM in LA APS radio.com antiwar dot com Scott horton.org and libertarian institute.org