Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
IN a shocking move late Tuesday night (Dec. 3), President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea declared "emergency martial law" in a televised address to the nation in response to what he called an "insurgency" by the opposition that was "trying to overthrow the free democracy," and suggesting that opposition politicians were working on behalf of North Korea. It turned out to be a weak political stunt on Yoon's part, but it took a few hours for everything to shake out and return the country to something resembling normalcy.
Under "emergency" martial law, the president has the power to ban all political activities, which includes suspending the National Assembly and placing the news media under government control. There are apparently two levels of martial law that can be declared by the president; this is the more serious. If it seems a bit harsh that something like this would formally be a part of South Korean law, remember that this is a country that is technically still at war with North Korea, so it keeps the legal frameworks in place to allow the leadership to put the country on a war footing at a moment's notice.
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