Korean Martial Law Starts (and Ends)

Photo from the protests in Seoul, South Korea during martial law

South Korea caught fire yesterday as President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and deployed the military to shut down parliament. But that didn’t last long…the parliament summarily overturned that decision – unanimously no less. So where does that leave the Koreans?

South Korea has a history of rapid transformation, moving from poverty in the 50s to a major global economy today. Yoon had some foreign policy success with normalizing relations with Japan, but his domestic politics didn’t mirror that…clearly.

After martial law was overturned, Yoon admitted failure, signaling that his personal political collapse is imminent. And as the Koreans have shown, they like to move fast. So, Yoon’s presidency will likely be ended soon, and new elections would happen within the next few months to usher in a government with more stable policies. (Hopefully.)

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from New York’s Central Park. We have to talk about the Koreans today. So on Wednesday, things got a little weird. We had a declaration of martial law by the president, President Yoon, who asserted that North Koreans had infiltrated the country and were trying to trigger a drug induced orgy throughout the entire civilization that is today South Korea. 

Anyway, martial law. He deployed the military to shut down the parliament. We had, what can best be described as drunken protest. The Koreans know how to drink. And within a few hours, 190 of the 300 members of parliament, broke through the barricades, jumped through windows and everything, and had a unanimous vote to rescind the martial law declaration. 

And a couple of hours later, Yoon himself admitted that it had fallen apart. What’s going on here? Was basically, we had a little bit of a coup attempt by the state. Yoon is a bit of a political neophyte. I don’t think I want to say he’s incompetent or anything like that, but, he’s not a career politician by any stretch of the imagination. 

His background is in prosecution. He actually has put two of South Korea’s former leaders, military generals in prison. So he has some idea of what’s going on. But he kind of combines the worst political instincts of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. He expects to be able to say something that just happens, and he hates people and hates having meetings. 

So we basically got this incompetent policymaking going down where, he’s seen his control over domestic politics wither away. In midterm elections, his party got trounced and the opposition nearly has a two thirds majority now. Well, you fast forward this to now and we’re probably going to have impeachment proceedings. Declarations have already been filed in the Parliament, and he’ll probably be gone by the end of the year. 

The Koreans, when they do move, they move fast. And in many ways, the Koreans are a lot like the United States. The United States has, some great land. And the further the pioneers pushed in, the better it got. So for 150 years, everything just got better and better and better. And the United States. And, so when the world reaches out and punches us in the face, we kind of lose our mind. 

And then we use the whole strength of society in economics to reshape our environment, which means we reshape the world. The quintessential example, of course, is Sputnik, the beeping aluminum grapefruit that caused us to think that we had already lost the Cold War, even though we were ahead in rocketry and metallurgy and electronics, all the rest. And that, that overreaction triggered, I basically a scientific revolution at the primary and secondary school level that we’re still coasting on today. 

The Koreans have kind of the first half of that, the panic without the line, goodness, in the meantime, because they’re surrounded by some really huge powers China, Russia, Japan. And then there’s that little thing called North Korea. So when they do move, they move very, very quickly. And it almost always feels like they’re moving. So this is a country that went from one of the poorest countries in the world, back in 1955. 

At the end of the Korean War, when everything was devastated to one of the ten richest countries in the world right now, and very clearly a technocracy. Anyway, the Koreans will get through this, assuming there’s no court challenge, we will have new elections, 60 days after the impeachment is finalized. If there are talk challenges, it might take a couple more months. 

But we’re going to see a new government in South Korea. There’s really not a lot of debate in South Korea over what direction to take the country’s international affairs. There’s a general understanding that now that the Russians are actively helping the North Korean military complex, that the South Koreans have to take a more active stance and not just regional affairs, but global affairs, most notably the Ukraine war. 

And that that has to be done in league with the United States and especially Japan. And that is probably going to be the biggest piece of Yoon’s legacy, because it was Yoon who actually got the Koreans to admit that they have to have a constructive relationship with Japan. Japan was their colonial ruler, brutal occupation in the years leading up to World War two. 

And so by many ways that the two countries, South Korea and Japan, were still in a state of de-facto war, until very recently. And you can credit Yoon for the normalization. So if you’re looking for a legacy, that’s it. But if you’re looking for Yoon to be sticking around. You read that one wrong. Even his own party, voted to rescind his martial law, ruling. 

And the opposition only needs a handful of votes from his party in order to remove him for good.

Photo of protests during martial law from Wikimedia Commons

Demographics Part 7: The Northeast Asian Crash

Today we’re talking about another region of the world competing for the title of “worst demographics” – and that, of course, is none other than Northeast Asia.

China is its own beast, and for those of you that have followed me for a while, you know where they stand…to summarize, yikes.

Japan is one of the few countries that has been able to look at this situation from a long-term view, allowing them to prepare for this (far) better than their neighbors.

South Korea is the poster child for all of the issues at hand, but if there’s a country that can somehow find a strategy to get itself out of this situation…it would be them. (and hopefully, they share it with the rest of us)

Taiwan has been able to delay the demographic problems that these other countries are facing, but that doesn’t mean they get off scot-free. They just have some time to think about what’s coming.

I know that was a lot of doom and gloom, but at least you have Southeast Asia to look forward to.

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CRF Files, Part I: The Future of Korea

Read the other installments in this series:
 
The CRF Files, Introduction
The Cutting Room Files, Part 2: The Future of Mexico
The Cutting Room Files, Part 3: The Future of Canada
The Cutting Room Files, Part 4: The Future of Japan
The Cutting Room Files, Part 5: The Future of the United Kingdom
The Cutting Room Files, Part 6: The Future of China
The Cutting Room Files, Part 7: Europe
The Cutting Room Files, Part 8: American Politics

by Peter Zeihan and Melissa Taylor

This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for pre-Order now on Amazon.com, Harper Collins, and IndieBound.

When Donald Trump became president, world leaders fell into two broad buckets. The first thought that if the Americans were going to drop the global mantle of leadership, then perhaps there is some space for us. Russia’s Vladimir Putin became more aggressive throughout the Russian near abroad. France’s Emmanuel Macron tried to become the voice of the West. Canada’s Justin Trudeau became a liberal supermodel.

The second were those leaders who weren’t sure the Americans knew what they were doing in electing an isolationist, and thought the best bet was to not rock the boat. This club included Germany’s Angela Merkel, Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, and Britain’s Theresa May. All and more bet/hoped that Trump would be little more than a hiccup in normal relations. They kept quiet and aimed to not do anything that might annoy the Americans as a whole, so that when Trump left the stage their relations with America could get back to normal.

There was one exception: South Korean President Moon Jae In. Rather than strike out or hunker down, Moon bluntly asked for the terms of a revised trade deal that Trump would approve of.

Moon’s logic was unassailable. Put simply, Moon recognized that he completely lacked leverage, (correctly) calculating that being an eager first volunteer might allow South Korea to walk away without undue sacrifice as the Trump administration looked for an early win. The revised deal’s technical talks took but a few weeks, and the revised KORUS is already implemented.

Good thing too. “Logic” was about all Moon had going for him. Everything about Korea’s success is exclusively because of the Order.

South Korea imports all its oil and natural gas, and its import/export flows are so large that it is the world’s 5th-largest trading power by value despite having a population of only 51 million. As with many of the world’s developed economies, South Korea cannot look internally for greater economic growth; The country’s population has all but peaked and, again like much the rest of the world, faces a rapidly aging demography supported by an ever-smaller working age population.

South Korea’s largest trading partner today is actually China, but that is the beauty of the Order. South Korea can trade with whomever is willing to buy their goods. For now. It all relies on American guarantees that seem to be crumbling.

That’s the numbers and dollars argument. In strategic terms things are far more complicated.

South Korea sits among Japan, China and North Korea and has adversarial relationships with all of them. The only reason South Korea even exists is because American troops ward off the most salient threat to the north, while preventing Japanese and Chinese imperialism. That security guarantee is not easy to maintain:

North Korea believes the best way to beat a Grand Master at chess is to never let them make a first move. Infamously, North Korea has aimed an untold number of pieces of artillery at Seoul, just across the border and home to nearly half the country’s population. In a real war, by the time the first shell lands in Seoul, tens of thousands of others would already be airborne. But this is only one of its many preparations. Turns out that if you dedicate a country’s entire attention span for 70 years to a seething hatred of what’s on the other side, you can accomplish some pretty impressive things, up to and including an effective nuclear deterrent.

South Korea decided to focus instead on ships and trains and petrochemicals and white goods and electronics and computers and cellular tech. South Korea may be able to prevail against North Korea in a knock-down, drag-out fight, but there is no way the South Koreans can K-Pop themselves out of hideous infrastructure damage and mass civilian casualties. Only American forces – massed in and near Seoul and the DMZ – can provide the hitting power to at least partially preempt and mitigate such carnage.

That’s just North Korea. The South Koreans, accurately reading their history and geography, view China and Japan as even more significant security threats. Japan outpopulates South Korea by well over 2:1, China by over 20:1. The navies of either country could wipe the Korean navy from the seas in days. To the south, east, and west, South Korea is surrounded by waters that either Japan or China could dominate given the right push. South Korea’s second city, Busan, is in a particularly vulnerable spot separated from mainland Japan via the Korea Strait, barely more than 100 miles across. Inchon, the western extremity of the Seoul metro region, isn’t much further away from China. And of course, Korean trade links to the wider world are impossible to maintain without both Japanese and Chinese quiescence.

For decades this has all been moot. South Korea, Japan and China were all members of the U.S.-led global Order. The U.S. Navy has ensured peaceful seas and ample trade. Oil, LNG and raw materials flow in, finished goods flow out, and Korea is one of the world’s largest transshipment and manufacturing nodes. So long as the Americans remain involved, Korea’s economic and security problems remain purely theoretical.

But the Americans – left, right and center – want to slim down America’s global position. The Korean deployment is America’s third-largest (after Japan and Germany), and the one that is by far in the trickiest and riskiest strategic position. And that is what keeps Moon’s administration up at night. The Americans are losing interest, and there is no version of a post-Order world where South Korea continues to survive at all – much less as a wealthy, trading nation – unless Seoul can obtain a powerful, dedicated ally.

So it was all Moon could to do cave in trade talks with the American administration on everything. And not just in trade negotiations. The Trump administration is insisting that South Korea compensate the United States for ongoing troop commitments to the tune of at least $5 billion annually. That’s a lot for a country Korea’s size, but honestly it’s a bargain considering what 26,000 American troops can do when they are suitably motivated.

Is caving to the U.S. on trade and defense reimbursement enough to keep the American troops in-country in this post-Order world? No clue. But Moon, correctly, concluded that without conceding to American terms there was no chance whatsoever. 

That’s hardly the end of the story.

First, in the post-Order world, getting a deal with the Americans on trade or troops or whatever is not the end of the negotiations. It is the beginning. Because the Americans no longer have a global strategy or see a national interest in play aside from getting some better market access, keeping the Americans interested requires giving in not once, but every single time they ask for anything.

If the Yanks are displeased with the Koreans’ response, they will leave and there is no guarantee they can be induced to come back. It’s bad business to allow a homeowner that refused to pay for fire insurance to do so after the house catches fire. The Americans can – and will – watch the neighborhood burn. They won’t feel good about it, but they won’t feel all that bad about it either.

Second, the one item in the neighborhood the Americans really do care about – the North Korean nuclear program – is one that they may have found a way to muddle through. The handshake deal Donald Trump appears to have reached with North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un is that the reclusive country can keep their nuclear program so long as they abandon their ICBM program. The Trump administration seems to think it can live with a localized NorK nuclear threat so long as Pyongyang cannot nuke Seattle and beyond. What North Korea “projectiles” that have been launched since the first Trump-Kim summit are of the decidedly short-range sort, and there are at least some indications that North Korea dismantled a significant portion of their long-range missile testing facilities.

In a world where the Americans are blasé about South Korean issues, in a world where Americans no longer consider North Korea a direct threat, the Americans need a lot fewer forces in-theater. That’s great for the Americans…and the ultimate statement of no-interest in South Korea. The Trump administration appears to have handed off the entire North Korean issue to the local powers. And since North Korea already has the capacity to drop a nuke anywhere in South Korea or Japan or in the parts of China that are home to over 80% of the population, the entire region now has to deal with something that has stymied ten American administrations.

Finally, the Koreans have a hideously distasteful choice to make. They must prepare for a world without the Americans and that means they must find a new security guarantor. The menu of options are not encouraging.

While China is currently Korea’s largest trading partner, China is just as dependent upon the Americans as the Koreans for maintaining its economy and security. With the Americans checked out, China’s future will likely mirror its past; that of a broken, impoverished nation completely unable to maintain its own security or even feed its own people. Culturally, China might be Korea’s closest relation, but a long-term partnership will only bring Korea destitution.

In comparison, the future of Japan is bright. It already maintains the world’s second-most-powerful expeditionary navy and is one of the very few countries that has a chance to maintain its supply lines without active American assistance. The “smart” play for the Koreans would be to find a means of inserting themselves into the Japanese sphere of influence. Unfortunately, the politics of such insertion are wretched. The Koreans charge the Japanese with carrying out a cultural genocide during Japan’s 1905-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula and, so far, have been unwilling to let the past go. Even then, letting that past go would only be the first step to entering Tokyo’s world. Much kowtowing by the proud Koreans would be required.

The third option is for South Korea to become its own defender. That is impossible with conventional weapons, but it just might work if the Koreans build a few dozen nukes to hold everyone at bay. Technically, the obstacles to South Korea becoming a nuclear power are minimal; it could be done in a few months at most. Operationally, however, it would turn South Korea into a regional pariah of the North Korean type and cut the country off from not just global trade, but regional trade (although post-Order that is unlikely to cause the same problems, as much as it is frowned upon today).

Partnership with China might be somewhat comfortable, but it would end with a starvation diet. Partnership with Japan might preserve the Koreans’ standard of living, but it would be politically toxic. Going nuclear might preserve independence, but it would force mass deindustrialization.

For the South Koreans, the future is a land of fear and want.

But that’s not the case for everyone…