Table of Contents
The abortive coup of South Korean President Yun Seok-yuet has not only made him and his crony, Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyeon, rats in the street, but it is also likely to bring about the “crying wolf” effect mentioned yesterday, and we will continue to talk about the horrific aftermath of this effect today.
The right-wing dictators in South Korea used “anti-communism” as a slogan to suppress all kinds of civil liberties, and dissidents were labeled as “communist spies” even if they simply pursued democracy. Therefore, even though South Koreans generally lack goodwill towards North Korea and the Chinese Communist Party, they also do not trust the right-wing politicians' “sense of loss of country” propaganda, after all, everything has been the same for decades, and they have long since seen it as strange. Now that Yoon Seok-yeol is “breaking the right” by creating a crisis of his own, there is a risk that public opinion will relax significantly on the necessity of anti-Communism, and will instead consider right-wing quasi-dictators to be the country's greatest enemy.
If the next government is to be anti-American and anti-Japanese, and pro-China and pro-North Korea, it can easily be said that it is “following public opinion”.
However, Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition party with the highest popularity rating in South Korea, is already very anti-American, anti-Japanese and pro-China and pro-North Korea. These postures may not necessarily be the main focus of election campaigns in times of peace, but they are sufficiently strong at this particular time and place. Although Lee Jae-myung is from the same political party as former president Moon Jae-in, Moon's foreign policy is still appropriately balanced, while Lee's is much more blatant. For example, he said that the war in Ukraine was a “self-inflicted disaster” of Ukraine, and he is opposed to providing assistance to Ukraine; he is also opposed to intervening in the Taiwan Straits War, which is “unrelated” to him, so as to avoid provoking China, and he is even opposed to the deployment of SAD missiles by the U.S. in South Korea.
As analyzed over the past few days, despite his poor diplomatic skills, Yoon Seok-yuet is really a determined anti-communist and pro-US person. During his term of office, he has made South Korea gradually become a major arms exporter, and provided various kinds of strategic support to the European and Asia-Pacific countries that are in the front line of defense against China and Russia. Now, the opposition can argue that not only the national defense crisis of South Korea is groundless, but also the national defense needs of these allied countries are exaggerated, not only affecting their own nationals.
Elections in any country are mainly dominated by internal affairs. Even if the South Korean voters elect a left-wing government to power, it does not mean that they support these foreign policies, and it is more likely that it is just a pendulum swing in internal affairs. However, with Yoon Seok-yul's previous record of coup d'état, it would be a great opportunity for the new president to drastically change his foreign policy line, taking public opinion into account.
If there is such a change in South Korea's public sentiment, China's major foreign propaganda tools will not only be optimistic, but will naturally push the issue forward, and the first target will not be South Korea, but Taiwan. Public opinion in Taiwan has long been impatient and cynical about the Democratic Progressive Party's reliance on “dried mangoes” to canvass for votes in every election, and this is the main background for the rise of Ko Wen-je. The blue camp also propagates a similar “skepticism” theory every day, arguing that Ukraine is to blame, and that increasing its own armaments will only provoke the other side of the Taiwan Strait, and that the most sincere way to promote peace is to be undefended and tolerant all day long. Yin Seo-Yeol's negative example will cause the anti-communist diplomacy of other countries around the world to be affected, and the casualty rate will depend on how many other dramatic insider stories are yet to be revealed.
What can Yin Seo-Yeol do to stop the loss? If Lai Ching-te is also sacked, his farce of martial law will really make him the biggest suspect of “communist spying”.
