[agentifysh]

He'll be pardoned and released by the next election cycle, remember 2 presidents were even sentenced to death at one point.

I'm reading the comments here and surprised by the lack of depth of assessing Korea's history of prosecuting its presidents and most of you are just regurgitating what's reported in mainstream news that is echoed by Korean mainstream news which cannot give you a neutral impartial view on the situation.

Two Korean presidents were sentenced to death and were pardoned in the 90s. another two Korean presidents were jailed for decades and were released after a few years. All of this is just a quick pandering to voters for whichever side gets hold and I am willing to wager that the current and last President will also see the insides of a jail cell.

I point that democracies like American politics even when it gets ugly to the point do not engage in such tit for tat against the President to the point of sending them to jail, for obvious reasons.

[ehhthing]

Yoon is quite politically toxic at the moment, I don't think he'll be pardoned any time soon. I also think that this would be a good moment for South Korea to reconsider its approach to corruption, especially since Yoon's actions represent a clear escalation in the history of corruption at the highest levels of government.

[kube-system]

Yeah, I don't understand the comments praising Korea for this. A tradition of prosecuting political opponents and then pardoning all of them is a mockery of the rule of law, regardless of what they actually did.

[miyoji]

If he's pardoned and released, sure, it's a mockery, but holding public officials accountable for their abuse of the public trust is necessary to the rule of law and democracy.

[kube-system]

Yeah, but this story is not very indicative of that actually happening in the context of modern Korean history... they have arrested 4 prior presidents, and they've pardoned all of them. It's a pattern at this point.

[tinfoilhatter]

Curious where in the world this happens (holding officials accountable for violating public trust). It certainly doesn't happen in the United States.

[mschuster91]

Israel sent a former prime minister to prison. Ukraine has had many an anti-corruption sweep ever since the Russians invaded. France denied le Pen electability due to misappropriating EU funds.

[tinfoilhatter]

I'm fairly certain that in the cases you mentioned, the people doing the jailing / penalizing are also guilty of crimes and at the very least, violating public trust. Seems to me like more tit for tat politicking.

[gunapologist99]

Prosecuting political opponents is convenient and very effective, especially if friendly parties control most of the media as well.

[kelipso]

Bush is the most obvious example and he never got near a prison.

[httpz]

Not that I agree with the pardons, but former presidents are usually old. Letting your political opponent die in prison can have a massive backlash so most presidents would rather not let that happen.

[yongjik]

> Two Korean presidents were sentenced to death and were pardoned in the 90s.

The important context is that these two presidents were Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Roh Tae-Woo, who led the military coup of December 12th (1979), seizing power, and then sending paratroopers to murder hundreds of civilians to quash public protest in the uprising of Gwangju (1980).

They weren't your garden variety corrupt politicians. They were mass murderers, and by 1995 when they were arrested, they and their military cabals were still posing a credible threat to Korea's democracy. Their arrest and subsequent death sentences, accompanied with a sweeping purge of their military cabal by president Kim Young-Sam, marked an important inflection point in Korea's decades-long struggle toward democracy: before that the threat of a military coup was a constant factor in politics. After that the threat was gone, and since then, the Korean military never even pretended they had any political ambitions.

So mock their later pardons if you want to, but you can't deny it marked an important and necessary step in Korea's history. It also shows sending your ex-presidents to prison only to pardon them later is still better than not bothering with it at all.

* Also, the "obvious reason" that American politics sent zero ex-presidents to prison is that Biden chickened out. So, there's that.

[codys]

> Also, the "obvious reason" that American politics sent zero ex-presidents to prison is that Biden chickened out. So, there's that.

Don't forget Ford deciding to protect his political allies (by pardoning Nixon). And George HW Bush doing similar (preventing Iran-Contra scandal investigation by pardoning participants who could have fingered Bush or Reagan)

[DANmode]

“Chickening out” is a much more complicated issue than you’re making it (especially for that class of people).

[yongjik]

It was also a "complicated issue" for 300 lawmakers of Korea on the night of the martial law declaration, especially since they had so little information and had only hours to act. For all they knew, Yoon could be starting a war, or sending troops to murder everyone in the capitol. Those who jumped the fence on that night did so not knowing when (or whether) they could go home.

Enough of them did, and that's why Yoon's insurrection failed.

Biden had his sweet four years to ponder on the matter, and the worst that could realistically happen to him was that people would say mean things about him. He has no one else to blame for his failure to send Trump to prison.

[PearlRiver]

It is actually wild seeing people defend him.

This insurgency was literally going to suspend democracy and lead to people getting arrested. It is incredibly disturbing so many want a dictator. It disgusts me.

[DANmode]

You don’t think I’m defending, hopefully.

[agentifysh]

> The important context is that these two presidents were Chun Doo-hwan and his successor Roh Tae-Woo, who led the military coup of December 12th (1979), seizing power, and then sending paratroopers to murder hundreds of civilians to quash public protest in the uprising of Gwangju (1980).

I think your comment here is very emotionally charged here but to clarify to outsiders reading, those protestors also broke into an military armory, armed themselves to the teeth, and an armed conflict broke out. It's still not clear as to who fired the first shot and by all definitions can be viewed as armed insurrection not a mere "public protest".

Also during this time protests were spreading not just in Gwangju but in other large cities. The Gwangju incident is still a very contested and heavily debated historical event one that has been constantly politically weaponized to silence opposition.

> So mock their later pardons if you want to, but you can't deny it marked an important and necessary step in Korea's history. It also shows sending your ex-presidents to prison only to pardon them later is still better than not bothering with it at all.

I am mocking South Korea's political arena because pardoning Presidents after charging them with treason/corruption/insurrection only reinforces that laws are selectively applied and some are still above its law and constitution. Better would've been to refrain from the tit for tat kangaroo courts altogether to placate whatever direction the country's leaning towards in that election cycle.

> Also, the "obvious reason" that American politics sent zero ex-presidents to prison is that Biden chickened out. So, there's that.

Post-watergate scandal, it was President Ford that stated going after Nixon would bottleneck national interest decision making with partisan legal/political factionalism , something that South Korea has become today and it will not stop.

[yongjik]

> those protestors also broke into an military armory, armed themselves to the teeth, and an armed conflict broke out

Oh you are one of those people.

So when you said you were "surprised by the lack of depth of assessing Korea's history of prosecuting its presidents" you were complaining that people didn't follow your far-right revisionist history of Korea?

Talking with the likes of you is waste of my time, but just to clear the matter for others interested:

On May 18th, 1980, paratroopers were beating and arresting residents of Gwangju, not just protestors but random civilians, going into people's homes to beat up everyone and arrest anyone they didn't like. By 20th, multiple people were beaten to death, and as people got angry protests became larger and larger.

On 21st, the street of Geumnam-ro was packed with tens of thousands of protestors. On 1 pm, soldiers opened fire on protestors, with more than 50 dying. That afternoon, people started organizing armed militia.

These are all very well known and publicly available information, a google search away for anyone who can read Korean.

English summary is also available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising

[agentifysh]

You are purposely taking words out of context.

I'm not disagreeing with the timeline here, but the moment of breaking into an armory, handing out thousands of military grade weapons to civilians and engaging in active organized firefights fundamentally transforms a situation from a "protest" into a full-scale armed conflict.

To pretend otherwise ignores the exceptionally detailed historical record regarding the sheer level of armed action that took place. This wasn't just a crowd shouting and throwing molotov cocktails.

The citizen militia systematically raided police stations, military reserve armories in surrounding towns. They commandeered hundreds of armored personel carriers, military trucks, and jeeps to use in combat.

The citizen militia armed themselves with several thousands of M1 Garands, carbines, M16s and light machine guns with thousands of rounds of live ammunition and gernades. They even secured somewhere around like 8 tons of TNT and dynamite from local coal mines, which explosives experts among the citizens used to rig the basement of the provincial capital building which served as the headquarter for the militia.

This resulted in intense, organized urban warfare. The militia was heavily armed enough to engage in massive gun battles and physically drive the martial law troops out of downtown Gwangju for several days. In the ensuing combat, official records show 22 soldiers and 4 police officers were killed, alongside over 250 state forces wounded. Even accounting for the soldiers killed by friendly fire in the chaos, the armed citizens actively engaged, shot, and killed military personnel.

We can acknowledge that the Korean military committed atrocities AND that what followed was a highly organized, massive urban warfare between a heavily armed well organized citizens militia and the army. The two facts need not be mutually exclusive. Pointing out the severe reality of the heavy weapons used, the scale of the combat, and the casualties inflicted on both sides is what makes this complex. I'm shining a light on the complicated historical reality of how massive and violent this conflict was as an outsider looking in. I understand you are Korean and I understand this might invoke an emotionally charged take from your part.

[cookiengineer]

For more details on this, there's some really interesting documentaries on how the Chaebol system works.

In my personal opinion that's what the US is heading towards to right now, so might give you a hint on how to prevent it.

[zipping1549]

I think it’s unlikely he’ll be pardoned, at least for quite a long time. Lawmakers are actively concerned about this and will soon ban pardons for insurrection charges.

It’s also a heavy burden to let a political figure die in a cell, but given how things are going, I’m fairly sure he’s going to spend a long time there.

[rambojohnson]

in America, he would have been given a second term.