Joseph: Let’s start with the situation today. We’re speaking in early March 2025, so three months after President Yoon tried to declare martial law. What is happening now?

Choi: After the attempted auto-coup, the National Assembly passed a motion to impeach Yoon, but that motion has to be approved by the Constitutional Court. The decision is pending; it’s expected to come maybe next week or the week after. In the meantime, there have been massive rallies, both by the left and the right. There are also far-right mobilisations and counter-mobilisations happening on the university campuses.

It’s uncertain whether the impeachment will go ahead. Most of the reformists have guarded optimism. They are confident that the Constitutional Court will ratify impeachment, because letting Yoon stay in power will plunge society into deep chaos. If the Constitutional Court judges were reasonable, they would not let that happen. That’s their rationale. But I don’t think judges rule purely according to reason. They are bent on protecting their own interests as part of the elite.

Joseph: Going back to early December 2024, when this process began, can you tell me a little about the immediate triggers that led to Yoon trying to declare martial law?

Choi: There were several immediate causes, along with less direct but more fundamental causes. The first immediate issue had to do with corruption. There was public outrage and a row over the death of a marine, for which the higher-ups in the military brass were responsible.2

They tried to cover up their responsibility and Yoon was apparently directly involved. That caused a lot of infighting inside the National Assembly, which coincided with tensions between the ruling party, the People Power Party (PPP), and the opposition Democratic Party (DP). There were numerous dog fights, around many other issues related to corruption.

A second immediate issue was conflict over South Korean foreign policy due to rising geopolitical tensions. Yoon was in favour of going fully on to the side of western imperialism, backing the United States and being on friendly terms with Japan. The DP, although they’re not in favour of siding with China, are keener on trying to strike a balance between the two camps. So, they criticised Yoon for leaning too much toward the US. Of course, there was also the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency in early November, which gave more confidence to Yoon. The current far right tends to take its cue very much from Trump and the US. They also exploit the Protestant Christian right infrastructure to build their support and their movement. That’s a particular feature of the South Korean right.

A third immediate cause was that Yoon was very much into, and accepted, conspiracy theories by far-right YouTubers, claiming that the last general election in South Korea was rigged, and that China and North Korea were behind it.3

The deeper, but less direct, reason had to do with the growing economic crisis. Price inflation had been sharply on the rise, there was high unemployment and interest rates were up. The Yoon government’s responses to the economic problems was austerity, and that led to many young people being unable to find jobs, causing a lot of anger. Also, a lot of small-scale businesses and self-employed people were having a hard time. The biggest bases of support for the far right now are unemployed young people and small businesspeople who went bankrupt.

Joseph: South Korea experienced high growth rates in earlier decades. It seems that growth has been slowing down quite sharply since the 2008-9 economic crisis.

Choi: Yes, that’s correct.

Joseph: You’ve mentioned corruption, which seems to be everywhere in South Korean politics. It’s not just Yoon’s PPP, but there are also allegations against leading figures in the opposition DP. Is this something specific to the way business and politics works together in South Korea, such as the Chaebol system?4

Choi: Until the 2000s, the dominant form of corruption was this tight connection between businesses and politicians. But under Yoon the dominant form of corruption has been more in the form of abuse of power or neglecting duties—like the cover-up over the death of the marine that I mentioned or the lack of safety precautions that allowed the deaths on Halloween 2022 in Itaewon.5

Yoon was a former prosecutor and isn’t that keen on open monetary forms of corruption involving bribery, although the First Lady, Kim Keon-hee, is a bit of an exception. She’s been involved in some pretty dirty deals. She is accused of a stock market manipulation scheme, and the way she built her wealth through such schemes that has caused a lot of anger, which is fodder for the opposition to attack the president.6

Joseph: You mentioned a geopolitical dimension to this conflict, that there was an attempt to pull South Korea more firmly in the US camp. Obviously, the country has been aligned with the West for a long time, but can you tell me more about this developing dynamic? And how does competition between China and the US feature here?

Choi: Examples of a more explicitly pro-Western policy include attempts to let Japan off the hook for crimes during the Pacific War, when, for instance, they kidnapped Korean women as sex slaves. There has been a popular movement to demand the Japanese government’s official apology and official compensation for those past crimes, but Yoon says that dispute has already been settled.

Of course, the US always wanted South Korea and Japan to become closer allies so that they could cooperate with the US. Similarly, there’s also pressure to let Japan get away with throwing nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima disaster into the ocean, which would pollute the seas immediately surrounding South Korea.7 And then there was a drive to gain support for the recent US effort to back Ukraine, for instance by exporting South Korean arms.

Joseph: Are there open tensions in the capitalist class? There are connections between South Korean and Chinese industries. To what extent are the capitalists united in support of Yoon’s policies?

Choi: So far, such splits don’t appear to be happening. The capitalists themselves are keeping their mouths shut. But within the state apparatus, between different state agencies and politicians representing different capitals, there are fierce arguments and bickering.

Joseph: I’d like to know a bit more about the far right in Korean politics. We’re seeing lots of new forms of far-right politics globally. In the reporting we see from South Korea, there’s lots of talk about an “old right” and a “new right”, with Yoon representing the latter. I wonder how different the forces around Yoon are from those surrounding the president in 2013-17, Park Geun-hye, who was the daughter of the former military dictator Park Chung Hee.

Choi: I don’t think there’s really a clean-cut or fundamental distinction between the old and new right. If there is a difference, it has to do with the new right being more openly apologetic about Japanese colonialism. Now South Korea has developed industrially, it is more openly in favour of imperialism. That seems to be the main difference. The people currently in power are recruited from both the old and new right and both are opposing Yoon’s impeachment.

The far right existed for quite a long time, but they became much better organised after the ouster of Park Geun-hye.8 After that, the far right was determined to have their revenge, and they started organising from the grassroots—that’s been going on for nearly eight years now. During Moon Jae-in’s term in office, his betrayal of the desire for reforms and the widespread disillusionment and alienation from politics fuelled their growth.9 The far right sought to exploit that feeling of betrayal. Even so, they didn’t explode on to the scene until Yoon’s auto-coup, which went beyond what even figures such as Trump had attempted. That was their first big breakthrough. The second was with the storming of the court that issued the arrest warrant for Yoon. They just laid waste to the building.

The far right has really surged forward. Before Yoon’s auto-coup, his approval rating was below 20 percent. Now it’s nearing 40 percent.

Joseph: Is there a significant fascist element or wing to the far right that you’re talking about?

Choi: You can’t characterise it as fascist at the moment, but it has the embryo of fascism within it, and the environment is favourable for the formation of fascism. The main current, if not all the far right, could have the potential to evolve in the direction of fascism.

Joseph: Beyond defending Yoon, what are the main policies of the far right?

Choi: There are six key elements in the far-right programme. The first, which we’ve discussed, is being firmly pro-US and pro-Japan. The second is hatred toward North Korea and their sympathisers. The third element is hatred toward China and the Chinese people in general. The fourth element is hatred of LGBT+ people. Fifth, opposition to migrants and refugees. Sixth, you have anti-Muslim sentiment.

Joseph: South Korea has a long history of dictatorship and authoritarian rule. There was a huge strike in 1987 that began the transition to democracy and, from about 1993, you get proper civilian governments beginning to emerge. What role do those previous regimes play in shaping the thinking of the current far right in South Korea? Does it look back nostalgically to these regimes?

Choi: The current ruling party is in fact a direct heir to the dictatorship that came to power in 1980, so there is a direct historical continuity between the dictatorship in the 1980s and the current ruling party.10 In historical materialist terms and subjective consciousness, there is continuity. There’s also sympathy on the part of the right for the Park dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s.

Joseph: Let’s talk about the left and resistance to the attempted auto-coup. On the day of the attempted coup in early December 2024, Workers Solidarity members were among the first to join the protests outside parliament. What role did mass resistance play in stopping the coup?

Choi: The people who rushed to parliament on the night of the coup were mostly ordinary people. Not just us, but also DP supporters, workers and young people, or members of the Progressive Party, a Stalinist party. So those are the kinds of ordinary people who stopped the coup, and afterwards, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) held street rallies for a few days.11 The KCTU also announced they were going to organise a general strike, but this turned out to be just a bluff.

Joseph: I suppose that’s not an abstract threat, given the role that trade unionists played in overthrowing authoritarian regimes in the past or fighting neoliberal reforms in the late 1990s. But it sounds like, from what you’re saying, there hasn’t really been an organised response from workers yet.

Choi: Over the past five years, the Stalinists have taken over the leadership of the KCTU, and their strategy is economistic or sectionalist on the one hand, populist on the other. So, they might fight over purely economic or sectional issues. When they fight politically, it’s on issues where they feel like it’s a really popular issue—where they can win the support of people.

They protested for a few days after the coup attempt, but they’re not serious enough about a struggle with the state. The KCTU hasn’t been really doing that since the fall of Park Geun-hye and the rise of the DP and electoral reformism.

Joseph: How has the opposition to Yoon evolved since the early days of struggle in December 2024?

Choi: What’s happening is that a coalition of sorts has formed around the DP involving the Progressive Party and other small left parties. It’s a Popular Front.12 These forces are optimistic that Yoon will be impeached, so they’re looking ahead to what comes next—a new presidential election that they hope to win. They’re placing their hopes on a DP president coming to office and passing a package of social reforms.

Compared to past Popular Fronts in Korea, the current one is more explicit and visible. The parties involved have been making this more formal ever since the last general election. Before, it was more of an informal populist strategy pursued by the Stalinist parties.

Joseph: Could you tell me a bit more about the state of the Stalinist left forces?

Choi: Over the past decade or so, the Stalinists have been divided into roughly two camps, aside from other really small factions. The mainstream faction is so opportunistic as to be indistinguishable from non-Stalinists in many ways. They try to hide their sympathies toward North Korea in public, and they are obsessively tail the DP. Even during the counter-mobilisation against the far right, they would admonish people not to clash with the far right, telling people to let the police and courts do their job, and so on.

The members of the minority group are on average around ten years younger. They’re more militant and more openly pro-North Korea. Despite being ostracised and excluded by the mainstream elements, this smaller section of the Stalinists, in their way, also pursue a Popular Front with the DP. However, this smaller faction has been more keen on confronting the far right, so we had a good working relationship in the counter-mobilisations recently.

Formally, both factions are inside the Progressive Party, but in practice its leadership is firmly in the hands of the Stalinist mainstream. So, the minority only hold party membership cards and they cannot really act in the name of the party.

Joseph: It’s obviously a complicated situation but there are also opportunities, I imagine, for revolutionaries to try to shape things and take the movement forward. What is Workers Solidarity’s strategy amid this deep crisis in South Korean politics?

Choi: We’re working under the assumption that it is not guaranteed that Yoon will be removed by the Constitutional Court. It’s highly uncertain and, regardless of what the outcome is, political confrontation and tension will continue. Even if a Popular Front president is elected, it will only be a matter of time before the far right and the PPP will try to undermine that government.

Our response going forward will be shaped by three guiding focuses. One is building a united front against the far right. We’re sure that the Popular Front will betray its supporters, so a united front has to be assembled. The second is connecting the struggle against the far right with workers’ struggles. The third is to connect this with the anti-imperialist struggle.

Joseph: Do you find revolutionary socialist organisation can gain an audience and grow or is it difficult?

Choi: We publish our weekly paper and also, in between issues of our paper, we publish leaflets which we distribute at rallies. Both of these are very well received, and we have gained a lot of interest and people following us. So, through our efforts at counter-mobilisation, we have created a growing periphery, with which we can engage politically and who are favourably disposed towards us. But this is not yet leading to a new surge in membership.

Joseph: But it’s a fast-changing situation.

Choi: The speed of developments in South Korea seems to be amazingly fast. It took only a heartbeat from the auto-coup to the storming of the courtroom building, and it’s difficult to predict what will come next, given the speed of developments and the highly charged geopolitical situation. You could see things explode in the near future, and you cannot rule out open military conflict. Yoon planned, not once but several times, to provoke a conflict with North Korea.

Just yesterday, a fighter bomber mistakenly bombed a civilian building in Pocheon, which is only 30 kilometres south of the border with North Korea, due, apparently, to a mistake in inputting the coordinates. What if bombs had been dropped just 30 kilometres further north? Even the US is concerned with this incident!