I began visiting South Korea just before the country hosted its first Olympic Games in 1988. There were already signs of building and renewal projects underway across the capital, Seoul, a practice that has exploded in the decades since.
Since the successful export of South Korea’s globally successful pop music industry, the country now has a, surprisingly, wide recognition factor amongst non-Asian music fans.
Public demonstrations
Back in the 1980s, I filed my news reports through an international news agency. At the time, I was struck by a lingering waft of teargas that clung to the media ID clothing reporters wore to cover potentially dangerous public demonstrations.
These eventually evolved into a less fractious, more occasional, but still powerful form of standoff. Indeed, the so called ‘candlelight’ public demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of protestors, led to the ousting of Park Geun-hye, then president of South Korea, in 2017 – she was impeached following a political scandal.
Park was the daughter of Park Chung Hee, who served as president from 1962 until his assassination in 1979. Authoritarian rule had prevailed in the country for all but one year since its founding in 1948, but public outcry and widely supported demonstrations saw an end to authoritarian rule and the formation of the Sixth Republic in the late 1980s.
Since its early days, South Korea emerged as one of the strongest Asian tigers and as a leading trading and manufacturing country. It is currently considered a regional power in East Asia and a developed country with an economy ranked as one of the world’s largest by nominal GDP. Its trade and political relations with New Zealand are considered excellent.
So, what did South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, expect to gain by his recent and abrupt announcement of martial law and equally abrupt removal just a few hours later? It was clear there was no support for the move even by the majority of his own party. Yoon has cited opposition obstructionism over government budgets as one justification for his brief martial law decree, but his explanation seems unconvincing.
In everything from trade to budgets, South Korea is now struggling to contain the fallout from president Yoon’s shocking martial law stumble. The USA is a long-time ally and supporter, but the political explosion has created problems just as the government was readying to manoeuvre its way through to a new future working with president-elect, Donald Trump.
As this issue of Bay of Plenty Business News went to press, South Korea’s presidential administration was facing criminal investigation and the final outcome of Yoon’s saga remained unclear.
This all impacts us as South Korea is currently New Zealand’s sixth largest trading partner, according to 2023 figures, with major exports to South Korea including dairy, aluminium, wood, fruit and meat.
Former South Korean trade minister, Yeo Han-koo, previously worked with the Trump and Biden administrations. He said he was worried about a power vacuum, most problematic when his government should be working with industries to prepare responses to Trump’s plans, which could directly impact South Korea’s export-reliant economy.
“Considering the tariff disruption expected under the Trump administration, strong government leadership and bold policy action are needed,” he said. “But [South] Korea is in turmoil.”
