SEOUL, Dec 4 (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Wednesday he would move to lift a martial law declaration he had imposed just hours before, honoring a parliamentary vote against the measure. Yoon declared martial law on Tuesday to thwart “anti-state forces” among his opponents. But outraged lawmakers rejected the decree, as protesters gathered outside parliament in the country’s biggest political crisis in decades. Yoon’s surprise declaration, which he cast as aimed at his political foes, was unanimously voted down by 190 lawmakers in the parliament. Under South Korean law, the president must immediately lift martial law if parliament demands it by a majority vote. His own party urged him to lift the decree. The crisis in a country that has been a democracy since the 1980s, and is a U.S. ally and major Asian economy, caused international alarm.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.worldOP
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    4 hours ago

    Honestly, I think part of the rot that is happening is precisely because the modern nation state model seems to be causing mass misery, resignation, and wealth concentration at a cartoonish scale.

    I think Jefferson had a point in that admittedly metal quote that many miss in appreciating it.

    In our pursuit of perpetual stability, mostly for the sake of large scale long distance commerce which has been elevated to the point that even incentivizing families and children has become a distant secondary priority, we’ve lost something that is absolutely essential for civilization to progress rather than stagnate and regress:

    The renewal of societies that can only come from painful but necessary collapse of the old systems that no longer serve the interests of those that support them.

    People can’t afford small homes NOW anymore. If this system remains stable does that mean, as wealth continues to concentrate, that most will be unable to afford so much as a sleep crate from Bezos’s grandchild after a 14 hour workday?

    I argue that, painful for the generation(s) that bear it as it is, sometimes the score needs to be reset, or the misery will be perpetual and multigenerational.