[The Editors' Verdict] To End the Cycle of Repeated Sadness

Amid Citizens’ Resistance Leading to Impeachment
The Emergence of the ‘Active MZ Generation’ Offers Great Solace
Changing the Power Structure Is Key to Ending the Vicious Cycle

The clear resistance of citizens during the impeachment process of the president who declared an anachronistic ‘martial law’ was the emergence of the ‘active MZ generation (Millennials + Generation Z).’ The young generation filling the area in front of the National Assembly in Yeouido held colorful ‘cheering sticks’ that replaced the candlelight, a symbol of nonviolence and solidarity, turning the heavy protest scene into a festival. The K-pop group chants, danced and mingled with hundreds of thousands of citizens, were a desperate cry for the future they will create. "Goodbye to the repeated sadness in this world (Girls’ Generation ‘Into the New World’)."

If the light of this martial law incident was calling young people, accustomed to immediate and clear self-expression while living in an era of survival of the fittest, to the square, behind it lies the shadow of an old political system that can destroy our daily lives at any time. The ‘December 3 Martial Law’ revealed how fragile the pride of South Korea?a country ranked in the world’s top 10 economies and democracies, and home to K-pop, K-drama, and other K-cultures?was built on a shaky foundation.

After President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law, two questions lingered in my mind. The first was the question, ‘Why did the president do that?’ and the second was a reflection, ‘The country is advanced, so why is the president so backward?’ What makes this martial law so fatal and serious is that, regardless of whether it was a grave constitutional violation, the entire constitutional and democratic system that protects the people’s freedom and daily life could have collapsed due to the arbitrary decision of a single president.

The prevailing political analysis that this incident cannot be explained without considering "the president’s confirmation bias believing in the far-right YouTuber’s claims of election fraud" and "the president’s emotional, impulsive nature and unwillingness to listen to others" shows how backward our power structure is. Therefore, what we should truly focus on goes beyond the president’s personal traits that triggered this incident: the current power structure allows the nation’s security and the lives of its people to be threatened in an instant by the president’s personality or temperament.

A president must be fully prepared before the term begins. The presidency is a position of immense responsibility with no probation period and none should exist. If a president, after being elected and becoming the national ruler, asks for a ‘grace period’ saying, “Please overlook these mistakes,” it is an act of ruining the country and a path to killing the people. Kim Jong-in stated in his book, Why Presidents Fail, that “a president’s ignorance becomes a sin.” If a person lacking expertise or experience in governance becomes president, they will inevitably make mistakes, which become sins against the country and its people. Power is temporarily entrusted, not eternal. Yet, the history of South Korean presidents is marked by repeatedly arrogantly acting as if power is eternal, only to be judged by the people and fade into the shadows of history.

It has been sufficiently proven that this system, where the personal faults of one president can overturn the entire country, is a failed system. Since the 1987 constitutional amendment introducing direct presidential elections, three presidents have gone to prison, one has taken extreme measures, and three have faced impeachment trials. Without fundamental reform of the political system, incidents like this will recur in the next and subsequent administrations.

The 5-year single-term, imperial presidential power structure must be changed to elect proper politicians and establish mechanisms for checks and balances. We must break the vicious cycle of politics dominated by extremes between conservative and progressive camps, where people choose the lesser evil because they dislike the other side, resulting in presidents lacking democratic literacy. This is the new republic, the world the future generation must meet, breaking the repeated sadness under the shadow of the old political system.

Jo Young-chul, Opinion Team Leader