My Take | A most severe national security law you will have never heard of

Tens of thousands protest in the streets, calling on their leader to resign and clashing with riot police. The government denounces them as stooges and spies; and promises to strengthen police, draw up tougher laws, restrict protests and crack down on the opposition and labour unions. Hundreds have been questioned, detained, charged or jailed for various opposition activities. A dictatorial national security law has been resorted to.

No, I am not talking about Hong Kong but South Korea ever since President Yoon Suk-yeol took office last May by winning an election with the flimsiest of margins. But you won’t hear about any of that from the Western media because the country is “a model democracy”. More specifically, South Korea has become what Yoon calls a “pivot state” in Asia against China.

A former chief prosecutor, he has been called “Korea’s J. Edgar Hoover”, the notorious first and longest-serving director of America’s FBI. During campaigning, he promised to create “a republic of prosecutors”.

Now, he has outdone himself by deploying not just card-carrying prosecutors, but state auditors, taxmen and yes, secret service agents against those perceived to be hostile to the state.

As reported by The Hankyoreh newspaper, “It is becoming routine for the Yoon Suk-yeol administration … to marshal prosecutors, the Board of Audit and Inspection, the National Tax Service, and the National Intelligence Service to act as spearheads of state operations.

“Yoon and his administration have branded the previous administration, the main opposition party, labour unions, civic and social organisations, and the private education system as immoral and anathemas needing to be expelled, demonstrating the administration’s reliance on inspection agencies. It has reached the point that Yoon has attacked the administration of his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, an ‘anti-state force’ while criticising its policy on North Korea.”