‘Have you no shame?’: Viral video of fearless South Korean woman has defined an uprising

A young woman facing down advancing South Korean troops seizes the barrel of a soldier’s gun, wrestles with him and shouts “have you no shame?“

In footage that has gone viral, Ahn Gwi-Ryeong, 35, a spokeswoman for the opposition Democratic Party, was confronting soldiers sent to block politicians from entering the South Korea’s National Assembly this week to annul a declaration of martial law made hours earlier by President Yoon Suk Yeol.

For many people around the world, this video has come to define this week’s show of strength by the South Korean people and members of opposition parties that ensured the nation was not dragged back to its authoritarian past. There are other less widely circulated videos which show South Korean troops apologising to protesters. Most soldiers clearly didn’t want to be there and sympathised with the crowds.

The farcical political events that occurred in Seoul provide a timely reminder of the authoritarian tendencies of South Korean political elites and the strong desire of ordinary Koreans for representative government.

Yoon had declared martial law late on December 3 to protect the country, he claimed, from “North Korean communist forces” and to “eliminate anti-state elements”. But within hours, Yoon withdrew the order after the National Assembly voted to block martial law. By December 4, opposition politicians had submitted a motion to impeach Yoon. Most of his party appears to have abandoned him, and it is difficult to see what kind of future he has.

It’s been said that all political lives end in failure because that is the nature of politics. This statement appears truer for South Korean presidents than most other political elites in the democratic world.

Syngman Rhee was thrown out by his own population in the April 1960 Revolution. Park Chung-Hee was assassinated by his chief of security in 1979, and Chun Doo-Hwan and Roh Tae-Woo were both convicted and imprisoned for their part in the 1979 coup and 1980 Gwangju Massacre, in which a student uprising was violently suppressed.

In 1997, Kim Young-Sam was widely criticised for his handling for the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Roh Moo-Hyun killed himself in 2009 after family members became embroiled in bribery allegations, and Park Geun-Hye was impeached and imprisoned in 2017 for her involvement in an influence-peddling scandal. Yoon looks like he will join a long list of offending presidents who left office in a blaze of ignominy.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declares martial law this week.Credit: AP

It is evident that in declaring martial law, Yoon wasn’t attempting to neutralise internal or external North Korean threats but deal with his own political challenges. Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon-Hee, is mired in an ongoing financial corruption scandal. Yoon himself is famously gaffe-prone, having formerly praised the 1980-1987 military dictator Chun Doo-Hwan for good governance. Since opposition parties took control of the National Assembly last April, Yoon has seen his government budget slashed and has effectively become a lame-duck president. Last November, Yoon achieved approval ratings of just 17 per cent.

While observing the current stratospheric K-culture universe with its carefully manicured idols, attractive K-drama stars and popular spicy food, it is easy to forget that until 1987, South Korea was a brutal military dictatorship in which torture, state-sanctioned murder and disappearances were brutal realities of daily life.

What is most worrying and perhaps most comforting about the whole Yoon saga is its connections to a darker, repressive past. Yoon’s introduction of martial law resulted in the suspension of civil authority – the cessation of political activities and protests, state control of the media and military units stationed at strategic positions – including outside the National Assembly. This situation has not been seen since the bad old days of the 1961-1987 military dictatorship.

South Korean soldiers attempt to enter the national assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on December 4. Credit: Getty Images

A sad feature of South Korean politics is the sense of entitlement of leaders who think they have an ordained right to draw from the armoury of political tactics developed during the dictatorship. Yoon’s justifications for his declaration were frighteningly similar to those of military strongman Chun Doo-Hwan when he extended martial law throughout the country on May 17, 1980 – an event that led directly to the Gwangju Massacre.

Yoon is not the only leader to draw from the dictatorship’s bag of dirty tricks. Former presidents Lee Myung-Bak and Park Geun Hye, who ruled from 2008 to 2017, introduced an artists’ blacklist, which put alleged left-wingers or general ne’er-do-wells under surveillance and prevented them from receiving government funding. Essentially, they employed state resources to repress their political opponents.

Another feature of South Korean politics is the tendency for ordinary citizens to demonstrate in the streets. The people’s response to Yoon’s declaration of martial law was immediate. Citizens flocked to the National Assembly to show their opposition. They shouted, they remonstrated. Images of unarmed civilians wrestling with guns or blocking armoured personnel carriers have gone viral.

Troops appeared to sympathise with the sentiments of the people. The response of ordinary Koreans is a reminder that democracy was not achieved top-down in South Korea; it had to be won. Much of this struggle occurred on the streets of cities like Seoul, Pusan and Gwangju, where groups of activists fought for direct presidential elections.

Repression is always the joker in the pack at times of social or political unrest. During the 1970s, repressive measures kept the population down, but during the 1980s, state repression had the opposite effect. Yoon has clearly not studied his country’s history carefully enough. Protest culture has often been criticised as a failure of South Korean democracy, but in the context of the past few days, mass dissent looks more like a vital safety valve that neutralises abuses by political elites.

Over coming days, weeks or even months, Yoon will either resign, be impeached and removed from office, or go the same way as many other South Korean leaders before him and be overthrown by the population. Either way, if there is one lesson to be learnt from this sorry chapter, it is this: South Korean people fought for and achieved democracy, and they have no intention of losing it again.

Andy Jackson is an associate professor of Korean studies and director of the Monash University Korean studies research hub.

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