Update: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol lifted the emergency martial law declaration at 4:30 a.m. local time in accordance with the majority vote in the National Assembly.
Many of us woke up this morning to the shocking news that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol had declared martial law in South Korea. While many of us know that North Korea is a brutal totalitarian dictatorship given to gross human rights violations, we didn’t expect that its southern neighbor, a stalwart liberal democracy and key American ally, would suddenly clamp down on political association and free press.
The George W. Bush Institute’s Senior Fellow, Victor Cha, along with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Andy Lim and Seiyeon Ji, broke down the situation and answered key questions as to what happened and why martial law was declared. You can find those answers here on the CSIS website: https://www.csis.org/analysis/yoon-declares-martial-law-south-korea.
