K-Bubbles

The Seoul Detention Center usually holds murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and even former high-ranking government officials and captains of industry in its small cells, laden with a thick blanket for the floor and a toilet in open view.

Now it holds its first sitting president.

“We have a diverse crowd of people,” Lim Wanseob, spokesman for the prison, told the Washington Post.

How it came to add to that diversity was a moment worthy of a K-drama.

Last week, the country saw a dramatic standoff with more than 3,700 officers surrounding the presidential residence and scaling the walls to detain President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of insurrection, stemming from his attempt to impose martial law in December. Yoon’s gambit failed after opposition lawmakers defied the military, blocking parliament and entering the chamber to vote it down a few hours later.

Since that attempted coup, he has been impeached – but defied being questioned or detained, calling those moves “illegal.” He has taken refuge in the presidential residence in the capital, now reinforced with barbed wire, buses, and hundreds of his supporters to block police.

On Jan. 3, he failed to appear for questioning by the investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), which had obtained a warrant for his arrest. That led to an hours-long standoff between police and the president’s guard.

He also failed to appear at the Constitutional Court last week, which is conducting hearings on his appeal of the impeachment charges. The proceedings are continuing without him.

Then last week, he backed down and allowed himself to be detained, saying he wanted to prevent any violence between his supporters and the presidential guard and police.

After his arrest, he refused to cooperate with investigators attempting to question him late last week, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency. Instead, his defense team filed a complaint against the police investigation chief, the head of the CIO, and others. He is accusing them of illegally entering the presidential residence and illegally detaining the president, arguing that this constitutes insurrection and other charges.

In this political and legal tangle, some wonder what could possibly come next.

In the short term, if an indictment is upheld against Yoon, a former prosecutor himself, South Korea will see a criminal trial that could lead to life in prison – or even the death penalty – for Yoon.

In the medium term, the constitutional court will decide by mid-June if the impeachment is valid. If it does, South Korea will have to hold new elections within two months.

Meanwhile, no one wants to consider a scenario in which Yoon is convicted of insurrection but not impeached, analysts say.

Regardless, all this means that South Korea, the fourth-largest economy in Asia and a key strategic ally of the West, could be in limbo for the next six months.

Already, the impact is being felt in the country.

The standoff between Yoon and the opposition has further polarized the country, wrote Le Monde. His supporters now say he’s right to be defiant and protest with signs saying “stop the steal,” referring to the country’s 2024 parliamentary election, which gave the opposition a majority. His opponents want him arrested. For weeks, both have taken to the streets in protests.

Though a majority of South Koreans still support Yoon’s impeachment, their numbers have declined by 11 percent to 64 percent in a month, the Strait Times wrote. About one-third of the polled respondents said he should be reinstated.

Meanwhile, the turmoil is impacting the country’s sluggish economy, too. The South Korean won has plunged to its lowest level against the US dollar in almost 16 years and the stock market has tumbled. The depreciation of the won is expected to push inflation higher, and weaken consumer confidence – which already dipped in December – and potentially discourage foreign investment.

As the Economist noted, following the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2017, foreign direct investment fell by nearly 40 percent immediately afterward.

Now, even if the courts convict Yoon, that won’t stop the devastating polarization of one of Asia’s most model democracies that is causing so much turmoil on the streets and a threat to its hard-won democracy, analysts say.

“In recent political cycles, revenge against opponents has become a major feature of South Korean politics,” wrote Sun Ryung-park and Yves Tiberghien of the University of British Columbia, adding that part of the problem is an overly strong executive. “This phenomenon, combined with the discontent that followed the Covid-19 pandemic and rising inequality, has made political polarization particularly toxic. Each side is locked in a bubble on social media and sees the other as an existential threat.”