Political Correspondence on President Yoon

Journal entries, Substack Notes, text messages, and an email

Yesterday, April 4th, the South Korean president, Suk Yeol Yoon, was removed from office by the Constitutional Court. After years of the conflict with the opposition party holding the majority in the National Assembly, Yoon declared martial law back on December 3rd, claiming that the opposition was “sympathizing with North Korea” and there was a need to “protect the Republic of Korea from anti-state forces”, which led to his impeachment. Though I often send out my newsletter every Tuesday, I concluded that it would be interesting to collect some of my records into a piece from these four months: journal entries, Substack Notes, text messages, and an email. The journal entries were published in my newsletter before, but the rest, excluding the Substack Notes, have not been made public until now. Minor edits have been made to the original, and footnotes have been added.

Substack Note, December 3rd

Okay, I have no idea what’s going on, but my friend texted me that the South Korean president suddenly declared emergency martial law. My friend is telling me that I might have to seek asylum in Russia. Ha, what a time to be alive.

Substack Note, December 3rd

According to the new martial law in South Korea, all media will be censored by the martial law command, and all political activities are banned. My friend says a tank was seen entering Seoul.

Journal entry, December 3rd

St. Petersburg

Had to wait at the Russian border for ten hours. While on the internet it says that the border checkpoint is open 24 hours a day, it doesn’t seem to be so. Everyone slept in the bus until the checkpoint began to operate. They did not ask me much, but some Europeans were taken to a separate room to be further interrogated.

On my way to St. Petersburg, K― texted me. She told me that President Yoon (fuck you, ass-face!¹) declared emergency martial law and maybe I should seek an asylum in Russia. I thought she was joking at first. She wasn’t. All of a sudden, everyone in South Korea was texting each other.

After arriving in St. Petersburg, I met J― at the Korean restaurant where she works. I ordered a kimchi-jjigae. It was the first Korean meal I had after leaving South Korea in October. There was something melodramatic about having a Korean dish in Russia while talking about the current political turmoil in South Korea, kind of like White Russians having a Russian meal in Paris or New York.

J― plans to go to South Korea in January since she has a Korean boyfriend there. The funny thing is, she wants to break up with him. I guess it is better to break up face-to-face than to just tell him via text messages. I hope J― will be able to safely visit South Korea to break up with her boyfriend, and that I won’t have to stay longer in Europe than I thought. The parliament voted against the martial law and Yoon accepted it, but we still don’t know what the army will do.

After parting with J―, I took a short walk. The stolovaya that I frequented ten years ago was still there, and also the Dom knigi. So were Kazan Cathedral and Church of the Savior on Blood. Ten years ago, I was a staunch Leninist, which gave me criminal records in the following years. How funny, that though I am no longer a Leninist, my past still haunts me and makes me worried to go back to South Korea.

Russia has been giving refugee status to those “who want to escape the neoliberal ideas”. President Yoon said that he was declaring emergency martial law to protect “liberal democracy”. It would be ironic if the situation escalates and forces me to seek asylum in Russia. Irony itself is not enjoyable, but life should better be dramatic than dull. Drama does not work without a sense of irony.

Substack Note, December 4th

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has called for a general strike until President Yoon steps down. Fuck you, Yoon!

Substack Note, December 4th

My Russian: explains perfectly that the army tried to arrest the parliamentary deputies, surprising my friend with the vocabularies I know

Also my Russian: does not understand “go to the door at the back”

Journal entry, December 4th

[…] I went to the Dom knigi. Bought four copies of Dostoevsky’s works, including A Writer’s Diary, the complete collection. For some reason, bought a copy of Who Is Happy in Russia? too. I have never read Nekrasov before, though I know a line in Korean: He who lives without sadness and anger does not love his fatherland. It was quoted in a certain piece written by South Korean activists of the eighties who were fighting against the military regime, as far as I remember.

Maybe I do not love Korea.

There were shelves named “otechestvennaya proza” and “otechestvennaya poeziya” in Dom knigi. The prose of the fatherland, and the poetry of the fatherland. I envied every Russian customer in the bookstore, looking at the writers whom they could call their own. On the first floor, a book by Stolypin was on display: I Believe in Russia.

Stop whining, Nekrasov. At least you got to believe in your fatherland, and you also loved it. That’s why you felt sad and angry. Consider yourself happy.

With Russian books in my bag, I took a walk and entered the stolovaya, open 24/7. It was the same stolovaya that I frequented ten years ago, often late at night. Back then in Russia, it was still allowed to smoke inside. I would order just a cup of black tea, which cost only five rubles, and kept on smoking. I spent many nights in St. Petersburg like that.

The place had become much brighter than I remembered, and a cup of black tea cost twenty rubles. There was no ashtray on the table.

Having a late meal, I skimmed through the news from Korea. The situation in Seoul seemed to be cooling down. I felt bitter and cynical.

Substack Note, December 9th

Yoon, the South Korean president who tried a self-coup last week, has just been forbidden to leave the country. His party is affiliated with past military dictatorships in South Korea. Meanwhile, he claimed the opposition was under the influence of North Korea and the martial law was needed so as to protect “liberal democracy”.

Yoon and his party have been mostly pro-US, pro-Japan, anti-China, and anti-Russia, their predecessors having long justified the military regimes in South Korea with anti-communist rhetoric. What made me laugh so hard the day after the failed coup in Seoul was some American guy writing that the same would happen in the US with Trump. Dear Western liberals, our political frontlines are not necessarily the same as yours. Or do you already understand it very well but pretend to be ignorant, as long as someone is “your son of a bitch”, following the example of Roosevelt?

Assembled text messages to H―², December 12th

[…] Oh, if you want to, you might want to start with The Vegetarian and Human Acts to see my point. (Still, I believe there are many more good things you can do instead.) The Vegetarian is about a woman who refuses all "violence" and starts to consume water only. It sounds like a good comedy, though it is not. Meanwhile, Human Acts deals with the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. She describes how the military regime massacred the people of Gwangju. Yes, sure, it was brutal and tragic, but maybe Han Kang should remember it was an "uprising" where the people armed against the military regime. Shooting at the dogs of dictatorship is violence, too. What should they have done, then? If they had stayed home as the army told them to, the brutality wouldn't have taken place. I just can't stand her fucked up, suffocating naivety. I'd rather live in this violent world. God, arresting President Yoon and putting him in jail is a wielding of power too…🤦‍♂And what I hate more than Han Kang's works is this world that praises the literature that refuses everything but whines.

Substack Note, January 3rd

The warrant for Yoon's arrest was issued, the South Korean president whose impeachment trial is in process after his failed self-coup in December. He has not been arrested yet since his hiding place is currently guarded by the security service and soldiers. I understand that the investigators could not simply walk in past the armed men; what I do not understand is that they act as if they had not known this was going to happen.

Last year, North Korean authorities announced that South Korea had flown drones to Pyongyang and they were ready to strike back if such hostile acts should continue. Not many people believed their claim, regarding it as their usual propaganda. As the investigation on Yoon continues, however, it seems he did in fact order to create military tensions in the Korean Peninsular so as to declare martial law.

The US is a military ally of South Korea, and American forces are stationed here. Meanwhile, North Korea and Russia have recently signed a treaty mandating that immediate military assistance should be provided if the other is attacked, and the security treaty between North Korea and China is also in effect. In short, Yoon was willing to risk starting World War III in East Asia so as to stay in power.

To all appearances, South Korea has had a madman as its president, fraught with more lunacy than its notorious military dictators from the past. Yoon is facing a charge of treason, which can be punished by death penalty in South Korea. Was it Caiphas who said it is expedient that one man should die for the people?

Substack Note³, January 6th

Wouldn’t say it’s completely untrue. Though not really sure if Yoon had been good at being “Washington’s man” in Seoul, ha!

Assembled text messages to Do―⁴, January 9th

[…] Chung Hee Park and Doo Hwan Chun⁵ were very competent [compared to Yoon]. A mere major general⁶ succeeded [in overthrowing the state], but a president in office couldn’t make it after months of preparation? […] The partial reason why President Park’s coup succeeded, I believe, can be found in German Romanticism imported via the Empire of Japan.

Koreans are often not conscious that its origin is from Germany, but such trends like admiring [Meiji] Restoration Shishi⁷, are the [result of] sentiments from the early 19th century, when Fichte used to take tobacco⁸. Taking this as their ground, the Japanese far right [of the 20th century] talked of things like “overcoming modernity” and gave the Pacific War its significance: the élan vital which transcends West/modernity, and so on.

Chun Ha Chang⁹ could comment that he welcomed the revolution of Chung Hee Park [in 1960] despite their divided opinions in Realpolitik since the intelligentsia who had grown up under the colonial rule of Japan had such shared senses. Jung Geun An¹⁰ was admired by his Japanese jailer. The jailer kept the spirit tablet¹¹ of An. It seems it is usually thought in Korea that he was inspired by [An’s] personality, but precisely speaking, [the jailer’s ground for admiring An was the idea that] ‘if a man has a grand aspiration, he may pick up a gun’. This was common for Korea, China, and Japan during the Meiji era: a German seed sown by Japan. Back then, Yakuza Oyabuns¹² would meet Ok Gyun Kim¹³ and Sun Yat-sen. This was not a flaw [for revolutionaries] either.

This [Romanticism] began to stop working during Doo Hwan Chun’s times. Why? The youth, who had been educated in the Japanese colonial era, were now old men… This [fall of Romanticism] is also related to the ‘scientific movement’ discourse of [leftist] movement groups [of the 80s]. [They claimed the movements] until the 70s had been romantic movements, [and] now was the time to struggle for scientific, Marxist movements. Generational change took place in both camps. […]

When Chung Hee Park died, the Japanese media reported that the last samurai had died. […] Even from the Japanese perspective, he was a samurai Shishi. […] Do you think Chung Hee Park chose the wording “Restoration” from Zhou¹⁴? He was thinking of Meiji Restoration. […] Jae Gyu Kim talked of “the sentiments of a beast”, and it was not a mere excuse¹⁵. The men of those times lived the age with such senses… They thought of themselves as sincere, [and their deeds as] the decision to save the nation…

Suk Yeol Yoon must have felt danger for sure, but I think it is better to say that he has merely appropriated the rhetoric [of the past Shishi]. If it truly were [meant to be] the decision to save the nation, would he have stepped back just because the National Assembly voted [against the martial law]? […] Why was Suk Yeol Yoon defeated? He lacked the romanticism.

Assembled text messages to a group chat¹⁶, March 20th

Personally, I want [Yoon’s] impeachment to be dismissed, and a death sentence in [his] criminal trial. […] Well, seriously speaking, judging what counts as an emergency and determining and executing the response to it is an act of governance by the sovereign, rightfully so. If Cheolsu thinks it’s an emergency, but Younghui thinks it’s not¹⁷, and they start arguing, nothing will get done. We elect a president to decide it, and the president will be held politically accountable afterward. Yet, this son of a bitch [Yoon] who says the country is in crisis which made the martial law necessary, backed up without arresting the [National Assembly] deputies, babbling that [the martial law] was a warning¹⁸, which means: he was not serious in his judgments and did not have the capacity to deal with the crisis that he defined.

Then what can we do to prevent stupid fuckers like this from causing troubles without any thinking? No matter whether [they claim] it’s someone else’s fault or their own fault, there is a need to make a historical precedent [showing] that their necks will get chopped if the result turns out to be a sakura¹⁹. In other words, Suk Yeol Yoon should snuff it, not because he declared martial law, but because he declared martial law and then chickened out and backed up. If one fails [in a coup], then he is a traitor. Cutting some slack for a traitor? That’s treating nation and politics as a joke.

Email to Da―, April 4th

Dear Da―,

[…]

I agree that liberalism is a political program "for a fallen world". After reading this phrase of yours, I thought of St. Augustine's The City of God. Though often neglected, its full title is in fact On the City of God Against the Pagans. While St. Augustine acknowledges some virtues and functions of the worldly powers, he still points out their shortcomings. In a sense, St. Augustine's socio-political crtique may be reevaluated as a comparison between maximalism and minimalism, from a secular point of view: do we want our politics to be about reaching the ultimate good, or avoiding the worst? I think I can express my discontent against liberalism also thus: it is innately impotent.

These days, I have been reading a novel by Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate. It is a novel set during WWII. Grossman, being a Soviet Jew, considered that there is no difference between Hitler and Stalin in the end. That's how his novel reads, at least for me. He asserts that all historical evil has originated from the pursuits of the great good. This inevitably ends up in crushing what is personal or individual. For Grossman, personal acts of kindness carry much more weight than the mass struggle for the classless society, for instance.

While I understand where Grossman is coming from, especially considering what he had to go through in the USSR, I cannot in good conscience accept his position. I am not necessarily saying that I am right. I am just saying that it seems I am incapable of agreeing with his view from the heart. In the novel, there is a scene where the narrator enters the mind of each soldier, most of whom will not survive the war. They are not thinking about something particularly virtuous or serious, and one of them is thinking about woman's breasts. I admire Grossman that he does not shy away from maintaining that it is better for a young man to idly think about breasts than to sacrifice himself in an uncritical manner to crush Nazism. Again, I don't know. It seems to me, a political zealot is more beautiful than a guy daydreaming about boobs. Yes, beautiful. My judgment is first and foremost an aesthetic one.

Indeed, a man can both be a zealot and a boob-daydreamer, but if we presuppose the dichotomy presented by Grossman, I will still have to choose the former. I am a maximalist. In the first book of the Kings, Elijah the prophet says: “With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of Hosts.”(19:10)²⁰ He says it after leading the massacre of the prophets of Baal. Should Elijah have kept his cool? Should he have tried to build a public sphere where he and Baal's prophets could exchange their theological opinions in peace? Considering that the Bible is saying no to these questions, maybe the Abrahamic God is inherently flawed. I can see why many people think so. However, if not, then I should maintain that Elijah was not wrong in his zeal against the pagans.

At this moment, as I am writing this email, the South Korean Constitutional Court has just removed President Yoon from office. I am happy with the result, but the judges' rhetoric, which included phrases like "democratic republicanism", "rule of the law", "social integration", and so on, sounded rather patronizing. They may talk about democracy, for sure, and I do not doubt that they want to protect democratic values. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that a leader elected by a direct election was ousted by some nobles of the robe.

[…] as of now, my focus is on my novel. I was talking with a friend last night, who happens to have majored in German literature. (This kind of sounds like a walks-into-a-bar joke. In fact, we were at a Russian place, and when the cook heard about my friend's academic background, she began to imitate a Nazi soldier, not forgetting to mention that her father fought against Nazis in WWII...) During our conversation, I said that I wish my novel won't be misunderstood as a satire to totalitarianism (not really a fan of the term, but couldn't think of a better umbrella term). I would rather accept, to some extent, that my novel is glamorizing it.

Thank you for your encouraging words, as always. I really hope that my novel will make a breakthrough.

Merry impeachment day,

Hyun Woo

If you enjoyed my work, you can buy me a cup of tea. I am not a coffee person, by the way.

1. The appearance of President Yoon has been memeified since it resembles that of Butt Detective, a Japanese children’s book character who has a face that looks like butts.

2. H― had asked my opinions on Han Kang.

3. A comment to a Korean-American analyst’s remark that South Korea is a neo-colony of the US and Yoon is Washington’s man in Seoul.

4. Translated from Korean.

5. Former South Korean presidents and dictators, who came to power via military coups.

6. Park was a major general when he led the coup.

7. Political activists of 19th-century Japan that overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate, thus westernizing/modernizing Japan and “restoring” the emperor’s authority. The Emperor of Japan, however, could not wield real power in practice. The socio-political program of Meiji Restoration Shishi was regarded as a model for westernization/modernization in Asia, and much of their rhetoric was adopted by President Park, such as “Restoration” (維新). The term “Shishi” (志士) litrally means ‘gentlemen of will’.

8. The Korean colloquial way of saying ‘a long time ago’ is ‘when tigers used to smoke’.

9. A Korean thinker, activist, and journalist, who opposed Chung Hee Park. However, he welcomed Park at first, calling his coup a “revolution”.

10. A Korean independence activist, who assassinated Hirobumi Ito, the Japanese Resident-General to Korea.

11. A tablet with the name of a deity or an ancestor. Keeping a spirit table with someone’s name is an act of venerating the person.

12. bosses.

13. A 19th-century Korean revolutionary, who pursued a regime change for westernization/modernization.

14. An ancient Chinese dynasty. The term “Restoration” (維新) originated from it.

15. Jae Gyu Kim was the director of the Korean CIA when he assassinated President Chung Hee Park. His statement that he, “with the sentiments of a beast, shot the heart of the Restoration” is very well known to this day.

16. Translated from Korean.

17. Cheolsu and Younghui are old common names, like Jack and Jill.

18. Yoon claimed that his declaration of martial law was a “warning”.

19. A reference to a line from the movie Tazza. In the movie that deals with gambling, a character claims that a card will be a danpung, which turns out to be a sakura. His wrist gets hammered for the wrong betting.

20. In the preceding email, Da― wrote: “Liberalism can only be defended by first recognizing the dangers of zeal. That does not make zeal wrong, but it tends to make it inhumane.”