Friday, 6th of Dec, Seoul, a gelid & crisp early evening, close to South Korea’s Parliament complex.
The despised Yoon Suk Yeol is on his way down the lavatory of history after growing public protests demanding his removal & impeachment.
I turn up to the protests a day too early, finding the main road still bustling with traffic instead of jammed with anti-Yeol agitators.
But wandering further down the street, a small counter protest has been concocted – trying it’s utmost to create a convincing spectacle – with the meagre scrapings of support that have been mustered for an intensely unpopular fraudster/imposter president absolutely enwrapped in scandal & disgrace.
On an expensively illuminated stage, through an incredible sound system, & with a giant high-res digitised screen behind inflating the speakers (to compensate for the obvious deficiencies), the stooges on stage bark out political platitudes, building up to episodes of hysterical shrieking & incitement.
Among the fits of untoward shouty histrionics and combative fist-pumping, theology is constantly evoked …. “God will bless you if you come to counter protest tomorrow” (a humongous public protest against the detested lame-duck-president was scheduled for the following day).
Very visible among the counter conjecture was a ginormous U$A flag.
I thought I was in South Korea???
how inculpating, among the baying congregation of a mook president that operates on behalf of foreign interests and bad actors, that the flag of a foreign power flies, literally, larger and bolder than it’s national counterparts.
A fleet of smaller “dual flag” ensigns were also visible, as if the South Korean flag could only be flown accompanied by a U$ flag.
Again, this is telling.
The latest offence in a long line of intense scandal, ignominy & corruption clag, came in Yoon invoking martial law to prevent/obstruct members of parliament from commencing an impeachment process against him (all in the wake of his new & fatally inescapable corruption scandal involving taped audio).
In a farce of great national shame, military troops were rushed in under “emergency powers” to preclude or “neutralise” the countries own political proceedings, attempting to obstruct politicians from executing an impeachment vote against the beleaguered Yoon in parliament.
Note closely, that the worse they perform & betray, the more extreme the counter measures become.
Instead of digging their own grave – they dig everybody else’s.
Hopefully there will be severe consequences for the military executives that cooperated with this indecent & insulting farce on behalf of a desperate & cornered politician drowning in his own corruption scandals.
Attempting to use the military on your own populace to escape the consequences from your own crimes & corruption is about as capital as it can get.
Misrule & mockery.
The subject or application of martial law in South Korea, beside the given extremes, is a very sensitive issue. As with Taiwan, these now “thriving democracies” underwent a dark & bloody spate of murderous & brutal government crackdowns & military suppressions during the 80s, with the infamous Gwangju Uprising being perhaps the most memorable (previously blacklisted author – Han Kang – revived the atrocity & brought it to international attention with her acclaimed novel Human Acts).
Given the extremities active in the crop of global authoritarian far-right political efforts – who are seeded, financed & orchestrated most vehemently by psychotic techno-fascist neo-fuedalist billionaires & their malign “think tanks” in the U$A – these actions (invoking martial law) cannot be seen in isolation & have serious ramifications beyond the borders of the country that commits them.
They are a threat to us all.
They arouse, rile & normalise the application of such violative extremes and crimes against the people, democracy & freedom.
That is also why the harshest penalties and punishments must be enacted against the offenders & their enablers – without delay, dilution or substitution.
In the escalation of extremes, misrule & abuse of power by shill-charlatan populist political actors (Bolsonaro, $ump, Netanyahu, Orban, Modi, Milei etc) operating on behalf of the “private interests” of corporatist billionaire wealth negators (Peter Thiel, Charles Koch, Robert & Rebekah Mercer, Miriam Adelson etc), Yoon’s martial law folly follows the likes of the U$A’s Jan 6th Capital siege & Brazil’s 2023 Congress attack.
Unfathomably, both $ump & Bolsonaro remain out of jail/the ground, & politically active (with $ump – unimaginably – due to resume office in the Blight House).
The harshest example needs to be made of Yoon Suk Yeoul & his corrupt & criminal coterie.
It is long since time to stop playing with these people.
Yoon came to power under the worst, most divisive, unsavoury & dishonest political campaign in the countries history. Massive micro targeting, sophisticated online disinformation, hyper polarization, psychographic manipulation & intensely inflamed “culture wars” & over-antagonised “wedge issue” dishonesty.
South Korea’s piss-poor & disproportionately corporatist/right-leaning media environs also helped the scammer defraud enough of the public for him to take the vote by the most measly of margins (less than one point).
Deplorably, a successful con established by the digital campaign & pshychographics/behavioural targeting technicians assisting Yoon’s campaign had zeroed-in on “young disaffected men” in a portent of what would become the blight that is now recognized as “the manosphere”.
On this occasion, women & attempts at equality for women in the workplace were being blamed for all the ravages of capitalism/inequality that young men (& young women also) were experiencing.
Yoon Suk Yeol, a man that represented the culprits inflicting the grievance, & would further their agenda, was installed to power via blaming (women/equality in work for women) those that were also being afflicted.
That’s some serious cynicism, steroidically enhanced by the black magic horror of psychographic/micro targeting, online misinformation & falsification.
After Yoon’s unlikely & fractious micro-win, there was apparently a swift flux of “buyers regret” in many of his duped voters.
Unfortunately, this recognition, by then, came too late (sound familiar?).
They had been conned.
It did not help that many South Korean’s spend a fantastical amount of time online & on social media, with smart phone use at epidemic proportions (easy pickings).
Once installed in office, the morass of ineptitude, corruption, malfeasance, bribery, treason, duplicity, scandal & misrule came thick & fast, & have engirdled Yoon ever since.
Even with the right wing media & the captured cyber sphere working on overdrive, he rapidly became massively unpopular & loathed.
Perhaps the most marked “betrayal” & naked treasonous prostitution came with Yoon’s unexplainable & indefensible support for Japan to dump more than 1m tonnes of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the surrounding ocean.
Beyond belief, Yoon has actively supported the unilateral dumping of Japan’s radioactive waste water into the shared sea (the Pacific ocean), without even conditions or compensation.
This is of course totally against public opinion/approval & is also uniquely at odds with other countries in the region who are firmly opposed (Korea being the closest in proximity to the contamination that will occur).
Could you possibly ask for a more emphatic display of betrayal?
Is this bizarre & disturbed support not in itself a bona-fide treasonous act?
Thankfully, due to massive & sustained protesting & disapproval from the Korean public, Yoon has now just been successfully impeached, with 204 in favour of impeachment & 85 against.
The bastard has agreed to step down.
It is to the credit of the Korean people for once again taking to the streets, & maintaining the pressure & demands until their will was accepted.
They now need to punish him & his co-offenders with the strongest consequences.
In the dismal crisis of modern politics & the emboldened neo-feudal, corporatist/libertarian right, South Korea has, yet again, set an astonishing example.
They had previously, after massive & sustained peaceful protests, lasting literally months, forced the impeachment & removal of corrupt Conservative president Park Geun Hye.
She was then imprisoned, as was her advisor.
Incredibly, they then went on to jail the despicable Lee Myung Bak, the prior Conservative president to Park, who had so controversially forced open the countries market to cheap U$ meat.
Admirably, coming out onto the street in unity when “the ruling party” is seriously taking the piss with the people/country seems to be something that the South Korean’s refuse to relinquish to apathy or futility.
It’s alive & well, & the rest of the world might do well to take notice & inspiration.
During Yoon Suk Yeol’s tenure of corrupt misrule, he released the convicted Lee Myung Bak & Park Gyeon Hye from prison, praising Lee as the best politician the country had ever had (for letting the Amerikkkan’s subordinate the Republic’s sovereignty & flood the country with cheap meat etc).
The fuckers need to go straight back in.
& the excessively slanted right-wing, pro-establishment corporatist media eco-system needs to be dismantled permanently.