South Korean President Yoon.

US Elites Want South Korea
To Be A “Dictatorship For Democracy”
J. Noh / Popular Resistance

(March 25, 2025) — Morse Tan, a high-ranking former US State Dept. official, recently let the cat out of the bag on the US ruling elite position on South Korea’s Martial Law. He declared that “Yoon declared Martial Law to preserve South Korea’s Democracy“. Now Tan is not a current US government official, but he is an indicator of what the US national security state is thinking, in particular, what its neocon wing is thinking. Tan also recently claimed that “the impeachment against Yoon is an insurrection” led by opposition party leader Lee Jae Myung “who wants to turn the country over to the Chinese communists”.

As absurd and conspiratorial as these allegations sound, these are actually finely-tuned and well-honed Washington-CPAC talking points about Chinese threats and interference in Korea, and they are echoed endlessly, if histrionically by US flag-waving foot soldiers at South Korean protests and on YouTube.

These anti-China messages were also repeated in German State TV ARD’s documentary “Staatskrise im Schatten von China und Nordkorea” (State Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea), released to its German public television website on Feb 25.

The documentary claimed that China had hacked South Korea’s legislative election to put the opposition DP party into power, which is now taking orders from North Korea and China to impeach Yoon.  There is clearly a highly convergent and disciplined campaign of anti-China propaganda around the impeachment. ARD has removed its documentary, but the damage has clearly been done.

It’s impossible not to highlight the absurdity of Tan’s statement–“Yoon declared martial law (i.e. military dictatorship) to preserve democracy”. And, as a foreign national, Tan is breaking South Korean law by directly participating in domestic Korean politics. But the free reign he is given, and the lack of disavowal or reprimand from the State Department–if only for his own safety–is very revealing.

Tan’s position in the state department was Ambassador at Large. These are powerful, Viceroy-type postings: they represent US policy and US interests on a (grand) strategic level. Consider other Ambassadors-at-Large: Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge, Paul Nitze, Paul Bremer III, Strobe Talbott, Robert Gallucci.

These are not individuals given to improvising and airing idiosyncratic personal opinions. As a former state Viceroy, with the enduring prestige and power of state connections, the platforms that Tan has been given to expound his views signal that he is expressing the direction of official doctrine, reflected both in Tan’s public statements, state media talking points, and the coordinated erasure of counter viewpoints.

Strategic Unambiguity: What the US Wants
US policy on South Korea’s dictatorship/martial law is analogous to its policy on Taiwan: Strategic “ambiguity” in language, concrete support and escalation in actions. The “ambiguity” serves to pretextually mask war preparations against China. Of course, there is nothing ambiguous about the strategy, other than the desire for a fig leaf of plausible deniability.

What the US wants from Korea is that which is strategically most advantageous for the US: a right-wing Korean client regime to do the bidding of the US: escalate and prepare for war with China. This is a war that it has been envisioning since the early 2000’s and which was institutionalized by Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”. In fact, the reason Yoon was selected, elected, and lionized as South Korea’s president is because he was a walking neocon fulfillment list for this war.

As these war preparations accelerate and intensify, a South Korean military dictatorship with the US in control of the South Korean military is the easiest and most advantageous configuration to enact these plans. The US will settle for a client-plutocratic democratic state, but dictatorship has actually been the historical norm since South Korea was created by the US.

Given the tight timelines involved, it is also possible for this configuration to be instituted again: this project of war is urgent and time-bound–US natsec heavyweights have calendared 2025 and 2027 (“the Minihan” & “Davidson windows”) as the propitious date range to trigger war with China.

Easy-peasy Political Proxy
South Korea offers two key strategic advantages. First, geographically and historically, Korea has always been the on ramp and bridgehead for invasion into China. War with China has always started from the Korean peninsula or Taiwan island, usually as interlinked pairs.

Second, South Korea has the world’s 3rd largest standing army–including reservists, 3.6 Million troops–, larger than the militaries of China and Russia combined. The US gets operational control over these troops immediately if there is war. War with China is thus most compatible and convenient with a South Korean dictatorship.

There is very strong circumstantial evidence that the US knew beforehand about Yoon’s Martial Law declaration, due to the length and intricacy of the preparation and the aggressive military nature of the operation-which would have required coordination and communication with US forces in Korea. At the very least, they would have been aware. And regardless, they would have benefitted, geostrategically.

Sworn testimony shows that Yoon’s gambit was to trigger war with North Korea (through drone attacks, missile attacks, shelling, false flag assassinations of opposition) to justify declaring Martial Law. Only poor execution, North Korean forbearance, and rapid citizen mobilization prevented the seamless rollout of this military coup. Evidence has come out that Yoon was preparing repeated coups. Historically, all military coups on the southern peninsula have been greenlighted by the US.

On that point, Morse Tan is the Nancy Pelosi of Korea: he functions like a Track II US envoy–cheerleading for a rightwing South Korean military coup, with just the slightest hint of plausible deniability.

Note the dead radio silence out of Washington throughout this whole process: silence during the Martial Law declaration, silence after the rejection of Martial Law, silence after the impeachment, and silence throughout. Not a word of critique or condemnation. Note also the deafening hush of the mainstream corporate media.

Meanwhile, the fissures in SK society are approaching civil war…

Note: Click this link to read the complete essay online.