No, President Yoon’s attempted coup was not a desperate act of nostalgia

As always, the conventional wisdom is wrong.

In the aftermath of the jarring events that rattled South Korea earlier this week, the instant consensus among the instant “experts” who rushed to explain why South Korea’s besieged president, Yoon Suk-yeol, declared martial law, was that the failed gambit amounted to, in effect, a desperate act of nostalgia.

Yoon made his surprising and authoritarian-steeped move for narrow and broad reasons with the apparent support of the country’s historically democracy-allergic military.

Clearly, the primary motivation was to stave off the legal and parliamentary wolves nipping at his vulnerable heels and to return to those bucolic, not-so-distant days when South Korea was ruled with a ruthless and uncompromising fist.

That is why Yoon’s botched “tactical manoeuvre” took South Koreans and the commentariat off guard – martial law was considered a passe relic; a blunt, autocratic instrument more in keeping with yesterday than today.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Authoritarianism is in vogue. The gravitational pull of the mythic “strongman” who knows how to fix complex problems with simple, easy-to-absorb rhetoric designed to convince the gullible that relief and the answers are readily at hand, is as irresistible today as it was yesterday.

The rule of law, opposition parties, a “free press,” and the courts are irritating nuisances that prevent the “dear leader” from defeating the conniving “communist” enemies who are intent on destroying the nation’s “fabric” and soul from within.

Plucked from Chapter 1 of the authoritarian playbook, Yoon parroted that predictable line during his late evening address on Tuesday in defence of his draconian decision to send in the troops.