alt Hacker NewsSouth Korean ex president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection
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One 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.
South 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.
Also 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.
Crazy 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.
Last sentence: “Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.”
This is the correct way to handle a former president who tries to mount an anti-democratic insurrection.
Seeing consequences for insurrection (or anything, really) is mind-blowing to me (you can guess where I live)
Sentence not long enough
Continuing the proud trend of 50% of Presidents not properly completing all their terms in Korea.
This is how you do it, America!
Likewise 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.
If only the US had done this.
How did Samsung allow this?
Read to the end:
Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.This 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.
>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.
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One 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.
It's pretty much certain this guy is going to commit suicide within 5 years, right?
He'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.