On June 3, 2025, Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party won the South Korean presidential elections by a landslide. He swept the governing People’s Power Party out of office—the same party whose leader, then-president Yoon Suk-yeol—had declared martial law six months earlier. With this defeat, the months of political turmoil ended, appearing to have banished the specter of authoritarian backsliding and military rule. However, fault lines persist, and the events of the 2024 martial law crisis provide lessons for the relationship between the military and a democratic state, which South Korea—and other democracies—should heed, even as the events surrounding Seoul’s crisis fade into the past.
Posted by Freewhale98