WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: South Korea Impeaches Its President

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

This week we discuss the recent impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Tune in to hear about democracy in the Eastern hemisphere, the way President Yoon halted the processes of said democracy, and the art of American influencers making this whole thing about them.

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 1.1.7 FM where we examine the truth disparity between what is on social media and what is actually true. I'm Gillian Parks. And I'm Garrett Goulsby. And today we are talking about a genre of subject we haven't hit on in a while. Do you agree, Garrett? I think so, yeah. It's been a minute since we've done some sort of like international news. What's happening in the world? Yeah, we do a lot of American news, a lot of TikTok-fied news. No, but this, we're taking it straight to the heart of the matter.

In South Korea. Straight to the Korean Peninsula. Yippie. We are talking about something that seems to have happened maybe a month or two ago, but has been unraveling since then. December till the present day. To the present day. And probably beyond the present day. More than likely, yes.

Because the funny thing about the 24-hour news cycle is it makes it seem kind of like everything's over in 24 hours. But there are lasting consequences to things. And things are still timely even after they happen, believe it or not. It's a crazy thought, especially as a journalist. But today we're talking about the fact that their president, President Yun, attempted to overthrow the South Korean government. Or at least that's what he's being charged with, right? Yes. Well, and I'm super surprised that more people haven't been talking about this.

It seems like, because I haven't really heard a lot about it other than researching for this show. And we'll get into this in a minute, but I don't know. It seems like a really big deal to me. I don't think you want more people to be talking about it just based off of what I'm finding. We'll get to that. Actually, we'll hop into it right now. What are the people saying? I'll tell you. So here's the facts that I know. The only important context I have is that about 40 years ago in the 80s, South Korea had a military dictatorship. And so a lot of people who were alive in the 80s remember that era and have reacted very strongly to the idea of that coming back. So there's

this president, President Yun, who is apparently incredibly unpopular. just generally disliked. There was kind of growing political pressure and like low ratings is what they kept saying. He said he had low ratings with the country. And in light of this, he said he was going to try to protect the country from anti-state forces. And so his response to that was he declared martial law, which is bizarre. What a thing to do. where basically the military rule kind of replaces the civilian government from what I can tell.

So he had, there were a lot of videos of, do I call them soldiers? What do I call them? Yeah, that works. Soldiers out on the streets with protesters, kind of having these face-to-face debacles. But the interesting thing about it is that not only do the soldiers not seem inclined to want to use. their weapons at all, but the people are very bold in fighting back. So there's, there's was a video that went viral in December that I did see of a South Korean woman grabbing the barrel of a soldier's rifle and like pushing him back with it and yelling like, aren't you embarrassed, aren't you

ashamed over and over again? He's not shooting her, but she's holding the gun in her hands. Another video I saw was someone was filming the soldiers and the soldier tried to take his phone and the guy like flips his arms around him and like puts him in some sort of like situation where he gets his phone back. And it kind of just underscores this idea that these people, a lot of these people were conscripted, it seems, back in the 80s maybe. And so they kind of know this already. They're almost, a lot of the comments were saying like these people are as well equipped

as the soldiers to kind of fight back against them. It's not necessarily a civilian versus military thing in the normal sense that you'd think it would be. So it was a short-lived attempt, apparently six hours is what I kept hearing. Yep, about six hours. That's democracy, baby, right there. Is that democracy? Yeah, because the wheels didn't stop turning.

You know, he tries to take over the government and the democracy is like, don't do that. I guess you're right. I guess I was just... Let's take to the streets. Get out of here. I guess I'm confused how something can happen in six hours. Maybe it's like an American's perspective, but... Well, you know, you have to understand that Korea, it's a much smaller country than America, right?

If something happens like this in D.C. And all of America is mad about it, it's going to take all of America a really long time to get to D.C., right? Korea, there's a little bit more of an immediacy, especially in the capital city in Seoul. There's a lot of people that's a huge population center. And it's pretty politically diverse, is my understanding. So, you know, you have all of the political dissidents as well as those that are in favor of President Union, kind of in one place. So everybody can just get together and start being mad. I guess that makes sense to me.

The response time, you know, it's very, very short. It seemed like while the country, apparently from social media, while the country is pretty politically divided, there was a, like, unification that sort of happened in order to impeach him. I don't know, but they said that he was taken away from his official residence in, like, law enforcement vehicles. And apparently this vague term of, like, South Korean investigators tried to detain him. but his security stopped them. This is all like two weeks ago, or like three or four, three weeks ago maybe.

Yeah, about three weeks ago. In January, January 15th, this is the day that I'm seeing here. At least it's the day that this was uploaded. It might not be the day that it actually happened. And then that day, the 15th, the investigators were coming in by the hundreds. And apparently some of them were armed with ladders and bolt cutters.

So they were in to try and take President Yun and he left in a motorcade about six hours after that. So six hours seems to be the magic number here. Apparently also the Korean Federation of Trade Unions, which is about a million workers adjusted for, if this was in America, it would be about 7 million American workers, so that they were going to go on strike indefinitely until President Yun resigned.

Yeah, it's the largest union in Korea. And they were like, we're not going to work until he's out. Which is really interesting. And then here's the social media part of it all that makes me kind of like sick. Not sick of like, not sick like, oh, this is horrible, but like, I'm so bored of this. It's kind of the same thing we talked about last episode. It's everybody in these who's posting about it being like, South Korea just gave us a

blueprint for what we want to do when Donald Trump does the same thing. Oh. It's the exact same thing where it's like if South Korea can do it, we can do it, which is like you just said, the size difference makes that kind of a silly claim. But it's saying that one person said now President Yun is facing. charges that if convicted could lead to the death penalty or life in prison. And the South Korean people did all of that in 20 days. It's time to copy homework.

I don't even know what it's time to copy homework means. But the idea there is, like, we should also be staging a similar revolution because we have a president who's just like President Yun. So the thought on social media is that Donald Trump's actions are going to mirror President Yun's actions. Yes. Another little way that they do this, actually news outlets are doing that, is saying that, like, this party, the Democratic Party that wants President Yunn removed are like these normal people.

And that it's like this, it made it make them look like this weird fringe group who, I mean, their rallies apparently mirror that of kind of Trump rallies. Well, remember this. He got elected in a Democratic election, right? So at one time, he had popularity enough to be elected. Right. He's not a fringe figure. Donald Trump also not a fringe figure.

actually kind of won the election by a lot. So it's very interesting that social media continues to push this idea that somehow he's like coming in from the outs and how did he, you know, how did he get in here? You know, the same idea could not be applied to President Yun. You know, he's now very unpopular, right? Even more so after this event because, duh, you know, when you try to militarily take over the government, people don't like that. Right. But even before that, you know, unpopular. But there was a time when he was.

right because it turns out to get elected to office it tends to be pretty advantageous to be at least kind of in the middle and be able to appeal to more than a fringe group of people yeah so yeah very interesting that social media keeps putting that there was a clip of a woman wearing a hat that said i don't know what it said but it is the same font and layout as make america great again i don't think it said america i'm assuming it says korea or something like it um and then they had these signs that looked very familiar to me written in English. So there was kind of a mirror happening between them and Donald Trump, but I don't know how widespread that is or if that's, if they have similar beliefs at all. I know nothing about either of the

parties and what they stand for. But the information I do know is what I've been given, which is that this is a great thing that has happened because we can do it in America to Donald Trump is the social media. I mean, there are other videos that are just factual and like saying this is what's happening. Those have like a couple hundred likes. The ones that are about how this is similar to America have almost a million. Well, we'll talk about what this is similar to in a second. Perfect. But it's not America.

Good. Okay. So for those of you who are just tuning in right now, we are not talking about America for the first time in a couple episodes. We are talking about South Korea on the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. I'm Jillian. And I'm Garrett. And he's going to take it away. This is not America.

This is incredibly different than America. In fact, with a situation that President Yunn, tried to invoke is more reminiscent of the Roman Empire. Oh, really? Yes. So way, way back in the day, in the days of the Roman Republic, when there was a time of war or there was an imminent threat, right? Some of you know this and are probably really tired of hearing people talk about it.

But they also, I think Christian Bale quotes that says this in the Dark Night actually. He says one man would take control for the people. He'd become a dictator, right? basically to get the people out of a scrape, and then he was supposed to step down. And that is kind of where the idea of instituting martial law came from. Okay. One guy steps in, and he's in charge of the military, and he's allowed to make these sweeping recommendations about what goes on, and you can't controvert them, and he can arrest people,

kind of just as he, as needed. It's, you know, you're investing all the powers of the government into one person. That's the idea of instituting martial law. Is it meant to be for a specific period of time? Supposed to be for a specific period of time. So in the time of the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic really is the Roman Empire resulted because this happened. The guy never gave the power back. We know him as Julius Caesar.

Perfect. And so typically this was until the conflict was done, right? So you go to war, you win the war, your people are safe and then you step back down. You're a normal citizen again. So that is kind of the historical origins of what we're seeing here. And is this similar to America at all? No, not really. Donald Trump has not tried to take control of the military and like sick him on the people. Let's talk about what President Yun tried to do.

Okay, so he basically this was political suicide. Okay, he was plummeting in popularity. Things were not going well for him politically. And he blames what he calls North Korean dissidents. So basically people in the political populace in the National Assembly, which is like Congress. for South Korea, rather. He blames these people for being like North Korean sympathizers who are trying to push against South Korean democracy and basically compromise the integrity of his regime.

So here's the thing, though, is this is a totally baseless claim. Okay. There's no, like, he didn't present any evidence as to why he thought this was the case. He basically just said, hey, like, these people are trying to destroy Korea and for the sake of freedom and for the sake of democracy. And he said all these things. And I said, I'm instituting martial law. Which sounds more like the opposite.

Communism than democracy, for sure. So it's very reminiscent of what Hitler does, right? Hitler has, there's this like an emergency situation in Germany and Nazi Germany where the National Assembly building, but I don't, I forget the name of it. The Reichstag, that's what it is. It's like, Congress for Nazi Germany gets burned down. And he's like, oh no, it burned down. We're in an emergency. I'm in charge now.

Okay? And that's, you know, we kind of know the rest. Youn tried to do that, basically. And so immediately after he declares this, of course, all the people in the National Assembly are like, well, we have to assemble and vote against this because, you know, we're a democracy and that's not how this works. If a president is to institute martial law, the National Assembly has to agree. They have to say, yes, we need this, which has almost never happened in a democracy. It happens very seldom. And so the National Assembly, all these people start, you know, trying to gather in the National Assembly building.

And President Yun orders the military to surround the building and prevent the meeting. So you get all these videos. There's all this footage of members of the Army climbing in through windows and doing like barricading doors and doing all these crazy things to keep the members of the National Assembly from assembling. I didn't see that at all. Yes. So this is kind of the, I think the main shock of the conflict. It's almost like, okay, this is, I'm going to make an America comparison and then I'm going to disqualify it. Okay. Like, think January 6th, but in reverse, instead of all the people trying to get in, right? The military is like, no, you can't come in. You know, like the people, he's preventing the people from from assembly. Going where they're supposed to be. Yes, is where they're probably not. Assembly, right? And it turns out that it doesn't really seem like the members of the military

really wanted to do this, to prevent this, because they didn't do a very good job. The National Assembly was still able to assemble. They're doing a poor job. Voted within six hours to say, no, you can't institute martial law. Stop doing that. So why do you think it is that, I mean, I'm seeing videos of people holding guns, but not being willing to shoot them, which I think is a good thing that he's not shooting people. And then letting people into this building when their job is not to. Do you think the military is disillusioned with the president? What is the reasoning for that? There's definitely some disillusionment. In fact, some of Yun's own defense advisor people surrounding him have kind of turned on him recently. So the people that are kind of pulling the military strings have sort of

said, why did you do that? You shouldn't have done that. So overall, I listened to an interview from a top military advisor in the Korean military. And what he said was there was so much confusion as to who to listen to, right? Because here you have the president is declaring martial law. And so the soldiers are kind of beholden to that order, but also the National Assembly, of whom the soldiers are kind of representatives in a way, haven't agreed to this. And so that's where you get this confusion of, you know, these soldiers like, do I bar your way? Do I not?

Like, I'm not going to use violent force on you because that's, you know, There's a state of tremendous confusion. But also, I think as, you know, as Americans and as people that are also living in a democracy, it should give us some hope that, like, the turnaround on this was pretty tight. Yeah. Right. Like things went south and then pretty quickly the people rose up and we're like, absolutely not happening. We're not doing that. So, okay, let's talk about what's happened since then.

That was in December, early December when he said, all right, it's time to, you know, I'm an institute martial law. Oh, also, side note. did he want to do with his ability to have martial law, he was going to start, like, basically arresting his political opponents. Yeah, I saw that. Just opposition in the opposite party. Yep. Interesting.

Yeah. And I don't know. It seems like whenever political opponents start getting arrested, that's always arrested. It's a weird. It's a weird sign. Historically, that hasn't gone super well. Okay. So not a lot happens until kind of early January.

And then in early January, you start having people investigating President Yun's house. his place of residence and his office these things and there's some like his security is kind of pushing back and that the reason why this investigation has to take place of eun's person, you know, his house and things like that is they're worried that he might tamper with any kind of evidence or legal documents or things like that. You know, he's the president. He's access to a tremendous amount of legal documents of great importance. And so there was some fear that, A, he was going to flee the country.

And, you know, who knows? Sell out to somebody else, some state secrets or something. You know, we don't know what the possibility was there. And then the other possibility is him destroying any damning evidence against him about his intentions, about, you know, maybe, you know, you can speculate. Maybe phone calls, emails, files that express what exactly his intentions were by declaring martial law. Because there's the act that he did it, which is impeachable. and the impeachment trial is ongoing and it looks like it's pretty much unanimously, you know, he's going to get kicked out. But then there's what kind of crimes might he be guilty of on top of that.

And the only way of knowing what those would be is this investigation. So what kind of documents can they find of any plans laid out toward this end? A lot of commentators right now think this essentially was like a last ditch stunt and that it maybe wasn't super well fought through. So in terms of, you know, grand plans for taking over the country, they're not super confident that they're going to find any evidence of that. So in the stuff that I was seeing, they were calling him the impeached president as if it had already been done. What is the like, I mean, I remember when we talked about the Trump impeachment stuff, people were calling him the impeached president as well. So I'm not sure if this is just a difference in terminology, if people are just assuming because it looks a certain way they're calling him that or if that is something is something that is already. been decided.

Yeah, so good question. Part of that comes down to how the South Korean law system works, right? It's a little bit different than ours. But in summation, yes, he's been impeached. And I guess the what are we waiting for question is a full investigation as to his crimes. Right. So he's not going to be president anymore. Bottom line is he's out of office.

But the trial is still going to figure out the investigation? Yes. And the reason why there's going to be an investigation in a trial is that he contests his impeachment, right? And so he has essentially said, all right, I'm going to fight this. He calls it, I believe he used the words unconstitutional and illegal, the investigation into him because he's saying, no, I should not have been impeached. And here's the thing. He still has support. Right. There's still a whole political party in the National Assembly that's behind him. And they actually need the full support of that party in order to fully impeach him. So the investigation that's taking place is essentially just his pushback prolonging the process that basically every source I could find said it is inevitable. He's not going to be president. But as sort of a political stunt, he's able to draw it out by leaning on the fact that he still has some vestige of political support that it's pretty fast dwindling because all of his top people are resigning. Do we know who's coming after him? Not a clue.

They haven't picked anybody? No, there will actually have to be an election. I believe the provision is in 60 days. They'll have to hold a national election. Woo-hoo! So, hey, that's a pretty fast turnaround. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins. And maybe it'll be him again.

Maybe they'll just vote him right back in, right? He's probably going to go to prison for a long time. Well, they also said death penalty on TikTok. So is that a real thing? I didn't see anything about that being in the cards. But, you know, it's possible. I think if maybe it had lasted a little bit long, and like kind of more bad things had happened.

I mean, this was not a good thing. But in terms of damage done, the damage was controlled pretty well. So chances of death coming to seem pretty low. Of equipped or at least impassioned citizens, disillusioned military, and it being more contained than it would be in America. It makes sense to me. Are we ready to give it a quick grade? I think so. Okay.

Three, two, one. You kind of maybe past-ish had some of the details. I had the info, but I didn't have it. I didn't know about them not letting the National Assembly meet, which I wish I would have heard about that at all. There's just not a lot of information either about like South Korea as an entity. The information that I have is, this is America. This is just like America, guys. No, it's not like America at all.

Which is really strange. Okay. It's important, though, because they provide stability to. to the Korean Peninsula. We need them to be stable because North Korea is their neighbor. And yeah. And if they go, if they go, we all go. That's exactly right.

Yikes. Maybe. Mutual destruction. We'll see what happens. Hopefully not that, right? Well, on that note. On that note, thank you so much to everybody who tuned in on to the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.1.7 FM. I'm Jeline Parks.

And I'm Gary Coolsby. And we'll talk to you next week.