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South Korean ex president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection
- seattle_spring 8mo agoEveryone else thinking what I'm thinking?
- trueismywork 8mo agoYes. I am surprised too
- steveBK123 8mo agoYes seems like a good precedent for democracies globally
- epistasis 8mo agoI notice a reticence for people to speak plainly about things these days, because certain topics must be danced around at the edges in order for there to be any productive conversation. Canada's PM Carney spoke recently about the Power of the Powerless essay and the shared lie, when the Green Grocer puts up the "Workers of the world unite" sign. And I kind of fear that shared reticence to speak plainly is causing an even larger inability to talk about the matter at hand than trying to approach it delicately around the edges to convince those who are so hard to communicate with.
- popalchemist 8mo agoIt's because there has been a chilling effect because of the stochastic (and literal) terrorism of the state - YC's own Peter Theil uses Palantir services to pinpoint "domestic terrorists" (read: anyone who exercises their rights to protest or speaks dissent in real life or online) to ICE, who then extrajudicially disappear people.
- Herring 8mo agoIt's been ~10 years. Everything has been hashed and rehashed to death. America knew exactly who he was on day 1. He came down the stairs calling Mexicans rapists.
- elsonrodriguez 8mo agoHe also came down the stairs calling Obama a secret Muslim Kenyan.
- hax0ron3 8mo agoNo, he called some Mexican migrants into the US rapists. Trump has done plenty of real things that are worthy of criticism. Calling Mexicans in general rapists is not something he did.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- GrinningFool 8mo ago> No, he called some Mexican migrants into the US rapists. It was more than that. In his own words, 'some' of those migrants[1] are good people (/maybe/ - he's apparently never met one), but everyone else... "They're not sending their best. They're sending people with lots of problems. And they're bringing those problems with us[sic]. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some - I assume - are good people." [1] being 'sent' here, apparently?
- anigbrowl 8mo agoNo. His full quote: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." This statement first asserted that mexico was deliberately exporting its people to the US (as opposed to people deciding to come of their own accord) and then generalized that they were importing social problems, before making a concession that some of them might not be. This would be like if I said your HN posts consisted of lies, propaganda, and invective but that I assume some of them were worth reading. I doubt you'd feel the little conciliatory bit at the end balanced out the unfair allegations that preceded it.
- auggierose 8mo agoAiming for the bushes?
- andrewinardeer 8mo agoThat it was a dodgy vindaloo that is causing these cramps?
- loudmax 8mo agoThis is the correct way to handle a former president who tries to mount an anti-democratic insurrection.
- petre 8mo agoHe'll eventually get pardoned like presideng Park and the Samsung crown prince, Lee Jae-yong. But he'll probably do 10 or 15 years anyway.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoHe's 65, so that might be long enough to be for life (based on life expectancy).
- PearlRiver 8mo agoThere is a difference between corruption and treason. I am against the death penalty but in this case the man should have been shot. Just like the Netherlands and Norway did away with their traitors after WW2. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
- somenameforme 8mo agoIt also illustrates what a real insurrection attempt looks like. [1] He declared martial law, suspended and prevented their Congress equivalent from meeting (and directed the military to enforce such), ordered the immediate arrest of numerous high level politicians with a goal of arresting hundreds, issued a declaration that all media and publications had to be approved before publication, ordered the power+water for a news broadcaster be cut, and much more. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...
- ThrowawayTestr 8mo ago[flagged]
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- epistasis 8mo agoOne of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful. We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law. I applaud South Korea for pursuing this conviction and achieving a suitable penalty for the breakdown of law at the highest levels. It's quite admirable, as admirable as the UK charging the King's own brother with crimes this morning. When law breaks down against the powerul, billionaires turn into oligarchs, and all those startups that would have created the next big creative disruption in the economy get squashed, and we all lose out. Inequality of power is a massive risk for any economy.
- adev_ 8mo ago> One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful. That has nothing to do with startup and economy. Equality in front of the law is one of the most basic property of any decent democracy. It is even the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- dotcoma 8mo agoNot to mention that these former startups are now the Navy, and they are almost all squarely on the side of the person who tried to overthrow democracy.
- epistasis 8mo agoIt has a lot to do with both! HN is largely interested in startup economies, so I focussed on that in my comment. I would contend that a startup economy can not exist without decent democracy. It's not an either/or as you frame it.
- dotcoma 8mo agoI disagree: TikTok, Alibaba, Deepseek, WeChat...
- RankingMember 8mo agoSeeing consequences for insurrection (or anything, really) is mind-blowing to me (you can guess where I live)
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoIt is mind blowing. I guess he didn't have enough allies in power? All the corrupt politicians around the world must be laughing at him right now.
- steveBK123 8mo agoLikewise fascinating seeing UK treat its royalty like regular people (Andrew arrested) while the US treats our oligarchs like royalty. Royalty in name vs royalty in practice.
- misnome 8mo agoI mean Andrew is an extreme case. If he weren’t as out-of-favour I imagine nothing would have happened, and this has been _entirely_ forced by external information. I assume that otherwise they would have less of an issue. It’s not like he married someone slight off-white, that would be real grounds for excommunication.
- mcphage 8mo ago> If he weren’t as out-of-favour I imagine nothing would have happened But the trickling of Epstein news is why he's out-of-favor, isn't it?
- Fnoord 8mo agoAndrew lost his title 'Prince' a while ago. At that point he wasn't a royalty in name anymore. Took a long time though.
- dotcoma 8mo agoThis is how you do it, America!
- OutOfHere 8mo agoThis is how justice actually works. Meanwhile, the US is comparable to a banana republic where you can count on lying and injustice, also a mockery of real justice, being the things that work.
- epistasis 8mo agoDepends on what you mean by justice. In the US, the law is now merely a tool used to give privileges to the in-group at the cost of the out-group. For the in-group it protects them from harm but never constrains their actions. For the out-group the law never protects them from harm, but constrains them. In the US, federal prosecutions are ordered by the in-group via public social media posts, rather than by professionals dedicated to the law deciding if there's enough evidence to support a case. Currently, federal prosecutions will never be pursued against the in-group, no matter the evidence. I'd like the US to return to it's prior stance on what the law means and how it can be used.
- jalapenoj 8mo ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 8mo agoIt depends whether the jailing and imprisonment is arbitrary or for cause. Any attempt of mounting an insurrection, however harebrained, 100% qualifies as valid reason for a lifetime sentence.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- choilive 8mo agoSouth Korea is a very young democracy with fresh memories of what it was like under dictatorships. The people very much understand the price it took to get to that point and is not complacent in stomping out wannabe autocrats.
- tyre 8mo agoOkay at the same time they had the daughter of one of those autocrats fairly recently as PM, who then resigned due to influence peddling by a religious advisor (and did crazy things like her daughter didn’t go to class yet got amazing grades because her teachers were made to do her work, which she posted about on social media.) They’re very much not over those players.
- krona 8mo agoWhy is his favorability rating so high?
- carabiner 8mo agoIt's pretty much certain this guy is going to commit suicide within 5 years, right?
- yorwba 8mo agoIt's more likely that he gets pardoned after a few years. President Park Geun-Hye only served less than 4 years of her combined 32-year prison sentence.
- lazide 8mo agoThe reality is that presidents (in almost every system), like MPs, are representatives of some faction of entrenched interests somewhere or another, or they wouldn’t get to be president. It’s the same for dictators, and well pretty much any singular leader. The factions may fight back and forth, and counting coup by imprisoning the figurehead for one of them certainly has some attraction - but the pendulum swings, and nobody wants to end up really getting punished at the end of the day when it swings away from them. That’s how you get murderous resistance instead of (relatively) sane transfers of power.
- tpm 8mo agoWell Park Geun-hye is still alive.
- honeycrispy 8mo ago[flagged]
- user982 8mo agoRead to the end: Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.
- renewiltord 8mo agoContinuing the proud trend of 50% of Presidents not properly completing all their terms in Korea.
- gmuslera 8mo agoThe last 10 years in Peru were a bit extreme in that category.
- hypeatei 8mo ago[flagged]
- casenmgreen 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(essay) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(essay) "In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should prioritize their conscience over compliance with unjust laws, asserting that passive submission to government authority enables injustice."
- Waterluvian 8mo agoAlso the King stepping aside as the commoners come to for his brother. Lots of recent examples demonstrating that none of these unprecedented moments are untouchable if you actually are a people who believe in the rule of law.
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoIt's not the King, it's the government, really. In any case, one of the reasons, if not the main reason, is that the scandal has unfolded very publicly so that covering it up is not an option as it might have been otherwise or previously.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoHow amateurish! Officials should have just deflected to talking about the stock market.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- multjoy 8mo agoThe King has made it very clear that he was entirely unhappy with Andrew's involvement for years, but had Andrew done the right thing and entirely disappeared from public life he might have retained a degree of protection. He didn't and so he had everything stripped away which sent a very clear message to Government and the police that he was there for the taking.
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoThe 'firm' protects itself ruthlessly. Andrew was too exposed in a too public scandal, they had not alternative but to cut him loose to protect themselves and the monarchy. Governor of the Bahamas was not an option...
- IncreasePosts 8mo ago
- layer8 8mo agoLast sentence: “Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.”
- jjk166 8mo agoFor context, Yoon is the 5th south korean president to serve a prison sentence; and a 6th committed suicide while under investigation, which is 42% of all korean presidents.
- tyre 8mo agoOne interesting firestorm that he started was over doctors. Yoon Suk Yeol did the basic math of “if our population isn’t having babies and people are getting older, how much medical capacity will we need?” The results—due to artificial caps on medical students (like the AMA does in the US)—mathed out to: “oh, shit.” He decided to raise the caps by a lot. The medical establishment freaked out, since that would lower salaries, and went on strike. Doctors, residents, and medical students didn’t show up for months. He had to call in doctors from the army to fill in. Was a hostile takeover and subversion the right response to frustration over political obstacles? No. But he ran into some very real and frustrating realities (or collective refusal to admit to them.) Not sure he needed to table-flip into full autocrat, though.
- deepsun 8mo agoYep, and similar thing went in Philippines. The craziest part is that public in general sided with doctors, and against their president on that issue. Even though public would certainly benefit from having more doctors.
- nickff 8mo agoThe public does not act in its self interest; Bryan Caplan explained this clearly in "The Myth of the Rational Voter": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter
- yongjik 8mo agoI can't believe I'm defending Yoon, but this was one issue where Yoon identified the correct problem, and all those doctors were clearly in the wrong. But because there are so few doctors, things like emergency rooms were always overfull, and doctors who worked there were always overworked, and when they said no there was nothing the rest of the country could do. So the doctors basically had the rest of the country by its balls, so to speak. It will forever grate me that those assholes of Korean Medical Association could say "You see how hard we're working for all of you guys? That's why there should be no more doctors!" with a straight face and will never face any consequences for that. (Of course, it didn't help Yoon that he attacked this problem with the finesse of a bulldozer, with disastrous consequences. But still.)
- skrtskrt 8mo agoCrazy how it was clearly orchestrated by his wife whose family has had dreams of forcing war with North Korea for some time, but he's the fall guy.
- b00ty4breakfast 8mo agoIf you play quarterback, you take the blame when things go south even if the coach is the one scheming.
- skrtskrt 8mo agoOh yeah, I mean by all means he should receive consequences. But he's not the chaebol, he's just a tool for people walking away unscathed to try again at a more opportune time.
- hnnp0329 8mo agoSilly nitpick but I think a better analogy would be the coach takes the blame for bad ownership decisions. In my years watching sports coaches are almost always the first one to be made the fall guy and I've witnessed plenty of situations where I can't really say they're the one at fault. There are two simple reasons in my opinion. Teams invest WAY more money in players so they have to try to commit to them even if the player is potentially not good enough and owners are never going to go "wow I made some bad decisions I should sell the team". All of this is to say coaches are the cheapest and easiest ones to pin the problems on.
- brcmthrowaway 8mo agoHow did Samsung allow this?
- agentifysh 8mo agoHe'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.
- kube-system 8mo agoYeah, 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 8mo agoIf 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.
- tinfoilhatter 8mo agoCurious where in the world this happens (holding officials accountable for violating public trust). It certainly doesn't happen in the United States.
- mschuster91 8mo agoIsrael 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.
- josefritzishere 8mo agoIf only the US had done this.
- incomingpain 8mo ago>National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik announced he would convene a plenary session immediately to revoke the martial law order and called for all lawmakers to gather at the National Assembly.[11] All main parties, including the ruling People Power Party, opposed Yoon's martial law declaration. Obviously this guy went off his rocker. His own party had to step in and oppose him. I do wonder, it doesnt seem like he was trying to install himself as dictator; it seems to me like he may have just had a mental health break. Being a major world leader has to be immense stress. We really just need to get humans out of the loop. Direct democracy where you vote on everything, or assign your vote to a trusted representative.
- kingkawn 8mo agoSentence not long enough
- John23832 8mo agoIt's hard not to be jealous when God blesses others.
- vx_r 8mo agoClearly a lot of people doesn't get the multi-layered political play that is going on. I am not going to say much because people sometimes do not want to know the truth. Simply look at how North Korea and China friendly current government is. The both political parties are a joke at the moment. Do you guys know that North Korea's actual name includes 'Democratic' in it? That is what is going on.