By Eva Fu and Catherine Yang via The Epoch Times (emphasis on us),
The martial law of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeoli has once again put communist influence in the country in the spotlight.
For the first time in nearly four decades, the South Korean leader relied on power to accuse the opposing Democratic Party of aligning with communist North Korea. He lifted martial law hours later after parliament voted to overturn the order.
“I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korea’s communist forces, to eradicate the despicable anti-state forces in North Korea that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our nation, and to defend the free constitutional order,” Yoon said in a late-night speech on December 3.
He said the political opposition that dominates the National Assembly “paralyzes the judiciary by intimidating judges and blaming a large number of prosecutors” and causing disruption in other sectors of government as well.
North Korea is far from the only country to exert communist influence on the peninsula.
China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, has considerable influence.
Opposition ties with China
Lee Jae-myung, who has compared himself to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and leads an opposition party, has taken a more friendly stance toward the Chinese regime, even as Yoon has tried to steer his country closer to the United States and reverse the country’s years-long trend of pacifying Beijing.
During the campaign in March, Lee criticized Yoon’s approach to China and his comments on the regime’s military invasion of Taiwan, which the Chinese regime has tried to consider its own.
“Why are you provoking China?” said Lee. “What does the Taiwanese question have to do with South Korea?”
Lee, a former presidential candidate, was convicted two weeks ago of violating electoral law and sentenced to one year in prison.
Lee lost the 2022 election to Yoon by less than 1 percentage point, making them the closest election in South Korean presidential history.
“This is a very serious problem that we need to be aware of,” Suzanne Scholte, president of the Virginia-based Defense Forum Foundation, previously told The Epoch Times. “Liberal democracy like South Korea chose an almost pro-communist candidate in the last election.”
The concern can be urgent if Yoon’s popularity falls as a result of his declaration of emergency. His own party has renounced martial law and said they would “end up with this nation.”
“Yoon’s political days are likely to be numbered as the population is united in its criticism and the majority of the opposition party is seeking Yoon’s accusation,” Bruce Klingner, a CIA and defense intelligence agency veteran specializing in Korean affairs, told The Epoch Times.
During the brief declaration of martial law, Lee called on the people of South Korea to descend to the National Assembly to protest against this order.
Lee’s party won a major legislative victory in April’s general election, winning 175 of the 300 seats of the ruling People’s Party’s 108 seats.
The wide reach of the Chinese regime
South Korea is heavily dependent on China for trade and investment, which has allowed the Chinese authorities to further influence its other sectors, including politics.
“The economy, the culture, the universities, there’s no place that hasn’t been invaded,” a former counterintelligence official who wished to remain anonymous previously told The Epoch Times.
Cities in the two countries have signed nearly 700 friendship or sister agreements.
Hundreds of Chinese civil servants were sent to South Korea to work and train through a state-sponsored civil servant exchange program. The Chinese embassy pays South Korean youth to spend a week in China; he hands them the books of speeches by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to read before he leaves and expresses hope that they will become leaders in future bilateral relations.
The mayor of the South Korean city of Gwangju tried to build a park in 2023 to honor the composer of the National Liberation Army anthem and a North Korean marching song to attract tourists from China.
The undermining of the Chinese Communist Party in Korea is not as well known compared to the North Korean threats, but “it is extensive and it is quite deep,” Tara O, author of The Collapse of North Korea, previously told Epoch Times sister media outlet NTD. He said the efforts to build the park were “very ironic.”
“This is just one of China’s culture wars,” he said.
Dozens of South Korean media outlets carry articles from the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of Chinese regime propaganda.
South Korea also has the largest number of Confucius institutes, China’s state-funded language learning program to advance the Beijing Agenda.
In a previous interview with The Epoch Times newspaper, Choi So Yong, a retired case official for the National Intelligence Service, noted that Seoul State University has a space dedicated to collections of works on the subject of X.
In contrast, the university has no memorial to South Korean forefathers.
