ROK Drop links to an article saying that impeached conservative South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeol has barricaded himself in his presidential compound and has vowed to fight attempts by an anti-corruption agency to arrest him, arguing that any attempt to arrest Yoon goes beyond the agency's authority, and that Yoon’s own personal security might arrest those attempting to arrest Yoon.
While there's good reason to believe that the Korean left is practicing its own version of US-style leftist lawfare against Yoon, Yoon himself is making it hard to sympathize with him. His abortive power grab in early December, whatever the cause, was a clumsy move on his part to try to get the National Assembly to work in his favor. Yoon doesn't have the finesse (or the legal firepower) of a Donald Trump to be able to pull off a minor coup; his quickly rescinded declaration of martial law ended up looking like nothing so much as a naked power grab. (Trump himself would never have resorted to brute force to get his way, anyway, whatever the left might claim about his supposedly authoritarian nature.)
While I'm convinced a conservative president is at least in principle better for South Korea, Yoon seems to be a throwback to the dictatorships of old. I don't normally dabble in Korean politics, which is too confusing for my tiny brain, but that's how things look from my perch. I'm sure Korean conservatives will argue that Yoon is somehow getting a raw deal. By my lights, he lacks the necessary subtlety to make deals and form coalitions, preferring force to negotiations. And his possible replacement, leftist Lee Jae-myung, doesn't promise to be any better for the country.
I'm curious how you would go about defining leftist. How far left on the political spectrum do you have to be to qualify as a leftist? It's my understanding that most Korean liberal politicians are still fsirly conservative in many ways and maybe even be further right than sime mainstrean European conservative parties on more than a few issues. At best Lee is a centrist, sondescribing him as a leftist strikes me as being inherently misleading.in fact describing anyone as a "leftist" in contrast to a "conservative" doesnt seem appropriate, maybe liberal or progressive is better although i'm not sure he really qualifies as either as we would understand them to be.
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