r/neoliberal • u/_patterns Hannah Arendt • 2d ago
South Korea Fails to Detain Impeached President in Standoff at His Home News (Asia)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/world/asia/south-korea-president-yoon-arrest-fail.html?smid=nytcore-android-share231
u/dddd0 r/place '22: NCD Battalion 2d ago
But unlike Mr. Yoon, Mr. Chun was out of office when he faced the insurrection charge. Mr. Yoon, though suspended, is still guarded with the full support of his Presidential Security Service, a government agency that hires teams of elite bodyguards and anti-terrorist experts selected from the police, military and other government services.
Why is the security detail assigned by the state to the president loyal to the president and not the state?
You can’t have institutions that just plainly ignore the justice system.
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u/petarpep 2d ago
TBF when you're designing these institutions it's practically impossible to predict which side might try to coup which in the future. In the alternate dimension where the South Korea legislature tried to remove a president for not dismantling democracy we would be cheering the security service.
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u/brinz1 2d ago
Has this ever happened? A legislative body trying to force a dictatorship and the head of state stopping it with his private security force?
Because saying it that way makes it sound like a coup
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u/funnylib Thomas Paine 2d ago
The executive is generally the most dangerous branch of government, for sure. Especially in a presidential system where the president wields a lot of power and independence, and because direct elections can be seen as a second pole of legitimate power, unlike a parliamentary system where supreme governmental power is in the parliament.
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u/BATIRONSHARK WTO 2d ago
well not exactly the same but in Grenada the Royal appointed Governor general called in a foreign army to become sole ruler...after a communist coup against the more reasonable communist variety and then led the country to democracy which is celebrated every year on Thanksgiving
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u/1EnTaroAdun1 Edmund Burke 2d ago
Hasn't there been a standoff between the Georgian Parliament and President, lately?
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u/Sam_the_Samnite Desiderius Erasmus 8h ago
I would say that election fraud is similar to a coup but also different. The end goal is the same, the means differ.
Same same, but different.
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u/McFrankiee NAFTA 2d ago
Didn’t Mossadeq dissolve the Majles because so many of them were in the pocket of domestic and foreign agents who wanted to use a vote of no confidence to install Kashani in a quasi-legal coup? And eventually the actual coup ended with a tank battle outside of Mossadeq’s house?
I’m genuinely asking because my memory is rough, but this sounds like one of the few times I can think of this scenario
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u/Ok-Royal7063 George Soros 2d ago
It's not exactly the same, but Tunisia was basically that. In the end, it was the army vs. the president's guard.
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u/Narrow_Reindeer_2748 Daron Acemoglu 2d ago
This is pretty much a collapse of the rule of law in Korea, no?
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u/ProfessionalCreme119 2d ago
Not so much because when it comes down to it both enforcement agencies have strict adherence to who they protect, who they listen to and who they follow orders from. And until that conflict is resolved you're going to have the president's security forces protect him at all costs. Even from internal South Korean agencies.
If the FBI or Federal Marshals in the United States had tried to arrest Donald Trump for state level crimes as president you would see the exact same standoff with the secret service. Even if the FBI and Federal Marshals had a warrant for his arrest the secret service will still do what they are required to do and protect the president of the United states. Until they can find a way to resolve it.
Yet it cuts both ways
This not only makes it hard to root out presidents who need to be removed but also prevents lower parties from gaining power, manipulating judicial procedure and being able to arrest presidents easily. Without any protection provided to the office. Which is equally as bad as the situation South Korea finds itself in now
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u/Wrong_on_Internet NATO 2d ago
I don’t think this is correct. When the FBI executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in the documents case, the Secret Service did not interfere. Of course as a practical matter the Bureau informed the USSS ahead of time what was coming, to make sure there was no misunderstanding. But the Secret Service has zero authority to prevent the execution of a court order or legal process (whether that’s a search, an arrest, a seizure of property, etc.)
Their (proper) role is to guard protectees from assassination. It’s not to create a “standoff” to shield them from legal accountability.
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u/DexterBotwin 1d ago
Those aren’t the same though. A search warrant isn’t an arrest warrant. The secret service would be derelict letting the president outside their control and wouldn’t allow it without pre-coordinating. Even when Trump was processed in Georgia and NY, secret service stayed with him. Those were preplanned booking. If Fulton County Sheriff showed up unannounced at the White House or Mar a Lago and tried to arrest Trump without notice, secret service would tell them to kick rocks.
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u/Wrong_on_Internet NATO 1d ago
Accompanying him is one thing. But they can’t block legal process. At all. To do so would just be a particularly crude form of executive aggrandizement.
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u/DexterBotwin 1d ago
If some bum fuck Mississippi judge issued an arrest warrant for Biden right now and sheriffs just showed up to arrest him, would you support the secret service telling them to fuck off?
If yes, so some “executive aggrandizement” (not sure what that is) is OK?
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u/Wrong_on_Internet NATO 1d ago edited 1d ago
Sitting presidents are already absolutely immune from criminal process. Former presidents (and civil proceedings) are a different story.
Let’s take a different scenario, from a civil case. Ex-president Jones owes an enormous debt. The creditor sues. The court orders certain of Jones’ property to be seized (maybe a writ of attachment). Does the Secret Service have any right to block the US Marshals Service from enforcing the writ, just by declaring some “conflict”? Not at all. If Jones disagrees with the court’s order, his remedy is to try to win on appeal. Not to have his bodyguards block the court order. Any contrary rule would basically make Jones a king rather than a citizen.
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u/DexterBotwin 1d ago
No and no one is saying that. Im talking about the president being physically removed from secret service protection, the secret service can’t let that happen. You keep bringing up search warrants or property seizures, which doesn’t conflict with the secret services duties
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u/The-Metric-Fan NATO 2d ago
Yeah, what else could it be? A country can’t function if its police follow orders from one political institution and its presidential security forces follow orders from another, conflicting one.
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u/ThatDamnGuyJosh NATO 2d ago
Okay the Presidential system has sufficiently proven itself to be a liability to democracy itself
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u/creepforever NATO 1d ago
Every presidential system except the US and France has become a dictatorship at some point in its history. Parliamentary systems are better for democracy, political scientists already knew this.
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u/The-Metric-Fan NATO 2d ago
Okay… so the police are loyal to one institution (the parliament) but the Presidential Security Service, composed of elite bodyguards and counterterrorism experts are loyal to another (the President) and they’re both in conflict, with contradictory orders?
Wow, sounds like a great time for South Korea. Countries famously work super well when there’s two mutually exclusive, conflicting politically authorities claiming the loyalty of different security forces.
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u/WooStripes 2d ago
Why doesn’t the police force, which is bigger, simply eat the Presidential Security Service? Is it stupid?
I for one welcome Korea’s new Praetorian overlords.
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u/The-Metric-Fan NATO 2d ago
Is there a lore reason the president doesn’t just tell the police to follow him?
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u/Mcfinley The Economist published my shitpost x2 2d ago
Nothing Ever Happens bros, we’re so back!
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u/_patterns Hannah Arendt 2d ago
https://preview.redd.it/2wzsqhsspsae1.jpeg?width=528&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5f299de7fb23522fd77bd98a09de3a1f8cd41cc8