While the United States reminds us every day of the consequences of failure to deal firmly enough with insurrection, South Korea for one seems to have learnt the lesson. Former president Yoon Suk Yeol, impeached and removed from office last year after a failed coup attempt, was yesterday convicted of insurrection and sentenced to life imprisonment.
It’s not likely that Yoon will actually spend the rest of his life in jail. It’s normal for political offenders to be released early; one of Yoon’s recent predecessors, Park Geun-hye, was impeached in 2017 and subsequently jailed for corruption, but in 2021 she was pardoned and released on compassionate grounds. Yoon, who then worked in the public prosecutor’s office, actually led the team that brought charges against Park.
Prosecutors had sought the death sentence for Yoon, but the court wisely decided that that would be going too far. It’s not a good idea for countries to get into the habit of killing for political reasons, even if only symbolically (no executions have been carried out in South Korea since 1997). Remarkably enough, Yoon would not have been the first president in that position: Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death for corruption, mutiny and treason, although he was later reprieved.
Another president, Kim Dae-jung, had survived a death sentence – imposed by Chun’s regime – prior to becoming president; it was Kim who instituted the moratorium on executions. But the moral is that South Koreans are used to playing for high stakes, and its leaders often see one another as mortal enemies rather than mere rivals. It was that atmosphere that led to Yoon’s attempted coup.
It’s easy to say, in that sort of situation, that it’s necessary to turn down the temperature of political conflict, but it’s not obvious how to go about it. Joe Biden, facing a similar situation when he took office in 2021, urged that “We can treat each other with dignity and respect. We can join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature. For without unity there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.” But he was not heeded, any more than a similar plea from Abraham Lincoln had been heeded in 1861.
With hindsight, it seems to me that Biden took his own advice too seriously: that he could and should have moved more quickly and more resolutely to expose the misdeeds of his predecessor. The world is paying the price, and may yet pay a much greater one, for that failure. But whether that was reasonably foreseeable at the time is another question.
Politics is hard. Sometimes the precepts of “no peace without unity” and “no peace without justice” are going to clash, and choices have to be made. South Korea has chosen to pursue justice; let’s hope it works.
The World is Not Enough 