Not Too Unrealistic a Future of Liberal Democracy: A Reflection on the Self-Coup Attempt in South Korea

Over the years, many have warned that liberal democracy is in crisis. While democracy's history has had its ups and downs, a noteworthy characteristic of recent democratic crises is their subtlety, making them difficult to detect. Unlike past instances where democracies were overthrown through violent power seizures, today's crisis of democracy is one of slow crumbling.

Yet the recent political crisis following the president’s declaration of martial law in South Korea deviates from the typical pattern of gradual democratic erosion observed in many liberal democracies. In this article, I investigate the recent South Korean crisis as a case study to demonstrate how liberal democracies can be overturned through violent seizures. While this kind of crisis is not inevitable elsewhere, other events such as the 6 January insurrection show that such incidents are not anomalies. The devastating consequences of such actions make it imperative to analyse this case in detail.

While the insurrection was ultimately suppressed, its aftermath raises serious concerns about the future of liberal democracy. The event is likely to further deepen political polarisation and foster anti-democratic political cultures. The South Korean case serves as a disturbing reminder of the challenges that liberal democracies may face in an increasingly divided political landscape.

Is democracy slowly crumbling?

During recent crises in liberal democracy, elected leaders preserve the outward framework of democracy while systematically corrupting its core principles. A notable factor in this democratic backsliding is the rise of authoritarian populists, who exploit democratic institutions while suppressing independent media and political opposition, consolidating power under the guise representing the ‘real people’.

The recent crisis in South Korea's democracy diverges from the slower patterns of democratic crisis outlined above. On 3 December 2024, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and attempted to dismantle the liberal democratic system through anti-constitutional means. He mobilised the military and police to seize control of the National Assembly and tried to arrest prominent politicians, lawyers, journalists and civil society activists.

The crisis demonstrates that democracy remains vulnerable to sudden collapse through extraordinary anti-constitutional actions. South Korea has suffered from political polarisation and populist politics, which created fertile ground for the self-coup.

South Korea's self-coup underscores the possibility that today's democratic challenges can be not gradual but drastic, a troubling return to the violent, military-driven overthrows of democratic regimes that characterised the twentieth century. If such an event can occur in South Korea, a country widely regarded as one of the most successful liberal democracies outside the Western world, it raises the unsettling possibility that similar scenarios could occur in other states facing democratic crises.

Populism against populism

In recent years, South Korean politics has experienced a surge in populism. This trend began with the rise of President Moon Jae-in of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). The Moon government's approach – demonising opponents and framing political attacks as morally justified – represented a distinctive shift in South Korean politics. Scandals also deepened political polarisation, and the growing divides fuelled a vicious cycle of constitutional hardline tactics where all institutional means were employed to eliminate political adversaries.

Yoon's inauguration as president in 2022 marked the beginning of another cycle of political retaliation. While Moon employed moralistic rhetoric rooted in nationalism and anti-corruption, Yoon relied on traditional anti-communist and exclusivist narratives to advance anti-pluralist populist politics.

In response to Yoon's populist approach, the DPK adopted its own form of populism. Framing their actions as aligned with the will of the people, the opposition majority pushed back by filing a variety of impeachment proceedings. While impeachment and vetoes are constitutionally sanctioned mechanisms, their intensive usage has transformed politics into a zero-sum game of friends and enemies.

A fast track to dictatorship

On 3 December, Yoon took the unequivocally anti-constitutional step of declaring martial law. This marked a shift from populism to an attempt to overturn constitutional democracy through violence.

Yoon justified his declaration of martial law by citing an ongoing conflict with the National Assembly, using anti-communist, populist language and claiming martial law was necessary to ‘safeguard the free constitutional order’.

Following the declaration, the police sealed off the National Assembly while special forces soldiers stormed the building. Prominent political figures, judges, civil society activists and journalists were at risk of being detained. Yoon's ultimate goal was to overthrow the liberal democratic system.

Fortunately, martial law was swiftly lifted. However, what would the future of South Korean politics have looked like if Yoon's self-coup had succeeded? While it is difficult to speculate, it is unlikely that South Korea would have escaped a period of dictatorial politics, and it is likely that violent confrontation between protesters and the military would have been unavoidable.

Martial law and democracy afterward

Although Yoon was removed from the presidency, an emerging strain of anti-constitutional populism in South Korean remains. The ruling party had coalesced around the belief that retaining control of the presidency was imperative and has strongly opposed the opposition's efforts to impeach Yoon. Some hardliners have called martial law a legitimate ‘act of governance’.

Even after the martial law declaration, the approval rating for Yoon remained above 30 per cent and polls indicated that 10–15 per cent of the population agreed with or supported far-right calls for martial law to be reinstated and opposition leaders to be detained. Such voices gaining momentum opens the door to anti-constitutional populist autocrats.

Any tolerance of actions that strike at the heart of constitutional democracy poses severe dangers for multiple reasons. We must make normative judgments about unconstitutional actions like martial law. Reluctance to condemn anti-constitutional conduct creates a permissive ground where further anti-constitutional acts become normalised.

Preventing democratic regression

The South Korean crisis underscores the critical importance of robust institutional checks and balances on institutions with access to coercive power. To prevent the subversion of democratic systems through military force, it is essential to strengthen democratic control over the military and to further depoliticise the armed forces.

Second, South Korea must set an example by formally acknowledging that this incident posed a direct threat to its constitutional democracy. It must prosecute those responsible and install independent oversight mechanisms to prevent it from happening again. This crisis represents an extreme yet not unrealistic scenario for other states suffering from democratic crises: such states must learn from South Korea's example and strengthen their defences against threats to liberal democracy.

Digested read created by Morgan Jones.