(MENAFN- Asia Times)
Journalists going after a story traditionally focus on answering the“five Ws” but that has often been difficult in South Korea.
That certainly was the case during a period of martial law in the 1970s and 1980s when the military-backed government had all the tools needed to intimidate Korean journalists. Government agents were known to spy on foreign journalists using wiretaps and even blackmailed some after catching them in honey traps baited with supplied sexual partners.
The country has become more transparent since becoming a democracy in 1987 and a sloppy attempt at a coup d'etat by President Yoon Suk Yeol failed before any censors in the coup plotters' group could keep the world from learning the pretty fully available answers to four of the five W questions regarding the incident: the who, the what, the when and the where.
It looks like Yoon colluded with elements of the military by appointing General Park An-su, the Republic of Korea Army's chief of staff, as martial law commander. But, in the National Assembly in Seoul on Tuesday (December 3), with soldiers in battle gear trying to get in and shut down the country's parliament, Yoon's own civilian party leader turned on the president.
Yoon had stacked the military with loyalists. but he hadn't protected his civilian flank. He had decreed martial law, but his order was rejected in parliament.
As of this writing, we're waiting to see if the general and his immediate boss, Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun , reportedly blamed by the president for bad advice, step down and how the whole mess ends up affecting the worse-than-awkward standing of a president who's highly unpopular halfway through a five-year elected term.
From answers to those four Ws, much of the news-consuming world knows enough that many people will feel justified in dismissively describing the affair as a farcical return to 1980s politics. As Karl Marx said: First time tragedy, second time farce.
But in truth we don't know quite enough to be sure that's a fair judgment. What's in short supply with this story so far is the fifth W, the why. Why did Yoon do it?
Start with the explanation he gave in his televised address announcing martial law Tuesday night Seoul time:
Let's give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume, for the moment, for purposes of figuring things out, that he was advised to do so by his warriors.
Listening to Yoon's reference to“threats posed by North Korea's communist forces,” retired US Marine Colonel Grant Newsham , who often writes for Asia Times about military matters, says in an email that he is“curious to know why he did it and why the military went along. Something specific? If not, not a good move.”
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