Episode 3

South Korea: Successfully Opposing Presidential Overreach

Published on: 18th March, 2025

Sustaining a democracy often looks mundane. It includes managing different stakeholders, crafting policy, debating nuances and compromising. Ending a democracy can be dramatic: and it almost happened on December 3, 2024 when the president of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol, attempted to declare martial law during a televised address. 

In this episode, we’ll hear a first-hand account of what happened on the ground that night, and discuss how a political opposition can successfully overturn a president’s power grab.   

Jiho Cha is a member of the South Korean Parliament, in the opposition, Democratic Party. By training he is a physician, and has worked in global health and humanitarian affairs. Follow Jiho on Instagram @chajiho_oh and on Linkedin. 

 Myunghee Lee is an expert on authoritarian politics, democratization, protest and foreign policy in East Asia. She is an Assistant Professor of political science at Michigan State University. Find out more about her work at https://jmc.msu.edu/faculty-staff/directory/Lee.html 

Disrupting Peace is a production of The World Peace Foundation. The show is produced by Bridget Conley and Emily Shaw. Engineering by Jacob Winik and Aja Simpson. Marketing and Social media by Emily Ruhm. Show artwork by Simon Fung.   

Special thanks to Jeremy Helton, Lisa Avery, B. Arneson, and Alex de Waal, and the team from the Tufts Digital Design Studio, including Kimberly Lynn Forero-Arnias, and Miles Donovan. 

Find out more about the World Peace Foundation at worldpeacefoundation.org. Follow us on Bluesky at worldpeacefdtn.bsky.social, and on Instagram @worldpeacefdtn. 

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About the Podcast

Disrupting Peace
Disrupting Peace explores why peace hasn’t worked, and how it still could. In each episode, Bridget Conley, research director at the World Peace Foundation, speaks with a researcher specializing in one obstacle to peace, and an activist who’s changing systems from the ground up. Together they explore what worked, what didn’t, and why we shouldn’t give up.

About your host

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Bridget Conley

Bridget Conley is Research Director at the World Peace Foundation (WPF) and an Associate Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She leads WPF’s research programs on atrocity response and incarceration. She works closely with the Executive Director on project development, fundraising and strategic vision for WPF. Currently, her primary research focus concerns the implications of American mass incarceration for local, national and international policies.