South Korea hit the global headlines on Thursday after its parliament announced that it would vote on the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol for imposing martial law over a tense night, in which military units surrounded parliament and lawmakers voted to reject military rule.
“The world talks about China’s economic miracle. Despite its much smaller size, the miracle of economic transformation in South Korea is equally exciting,” says Prof Swaran Singh, “ who teaches international relations at JNU with a special focus on Asian Affairs.
South Korea’s size belies its economic muscle. As a major chip-maker, it is a critical part of the global tech. supply chain.
“Major tech industries like Mahindra Tech, TCS, Tata Consultancy and so on, have their own presence in South Korea. And India is full of products produced by South Korean companies, particularly in the consumer sector in India,” adds Dr Singh, who was in Seoul in November at the invitation of the Northeast Asia History Foundation of South Korea.
“India has also been a votary of, what we call Quad Plus,’ notes Prof, Singh. This involves adding South Korea, Japan, New Zealand to the current Quad (comprising Japan, Australia, U.S and India) as Quad plus,” he says.
After Taiwan, South Korea almost a superpower in production of semiconductor chips, “which run much of the modern production across the world. So economic disruption or political instability in South Korea definitely will have impact, way beyond what happens within, South Korea,” he warns.
So how will the events unfolding in South Korea impact India?
President Yoon Suk Yeol had based his foreign policy around being tougher on North Korea, a tighter embrace of the United States and pushing for closer defence relations with Japan. The last is a sore point with many Koreans who remember how the Japanese inducted as many 7.8 million Koreans into forced labour, including military service and “comfort women.”
What happens to the “strong relationship” forged between President Yoon Suk Yeol and outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden, who had met at least a dozen times over the past two years? What does a Trump White House mean for S.Korea?
“When President Trump was in the White House in 2017-18, in a short period of two years, he held three summit meetings with Kim Jong un, who is still the leader of North Korea,” explains Dr Singh.
“And there were reports that he had considered offering concessions to Pyongyang by not just reducing, but even removing American forces from South Korea,” he said. This can create enormous disruption and instability in the region, particularly Japan and South Korea, which see North Korea as their adversary, as a security challenge .”
So what happens next? How does this unfolding political drama impact South Korea’s relations with Japan, the region, the U.S.? The world?
In this edition of The Gist, watch Dr Singh, one of India’s top authorities on Asia and the world, put the whole event into context, and explain why an impeachment will not be an easy task. And why the country matters.
