North Korea Breaks Silence on South Korea’s Martial Law Declaration

In its first statement about the turmoil over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law decree, the North said nothing about how inter-Korean relations might be affected.

North Korea made its first public statement on Wednesday about the short-lived declaration of martial law in South Korea last week, with its state media saying that President Yoon Suk Yeol had plunged his country into “pandemonium.”

The article gave no indication of how the turmoil in the South might affect relations between the Koreas. Since Mr. Yoon, who has a confrontational policy toward North Korea, took office in 2022, the relationship has reached its lowest point in years.

The North’s main government newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, gave the article relatively little prominence, running it on the sixth page of its Wednesday edition. It summarized Mr. Yoon’s failed attempt to seize control of the National Assembly on Dec. 3 by sending in troops, the spread of protests across South Korea and the political uncertainty that has prevailed since then.

“The puppet Yoon Suk Yeol’s shocking decision to level his fascist guns and bayonets at his own people has turned the puppet South into pandemonium,” the article said.

It also said that the failure of opposition lawmakers’ attempt to impeach Mr. Yoon in the National Assembly on Saturday, after Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote, had turned all of South Korea into a “protest scene.”

The political vacuum in the South has raised concerns that its government and military could be ill-prepared for any escalation in tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime in the North.

In recent months, North Korea has sent thousands of balloons laden with trash into the South, while South Korea responded with propaganda broadcast over loudspeakers at the border. Mr. Kim has declared that the North is no longer interested in the reunification of the Korean Peninsula, calling the South an enemy that must be subjugated, with nuclear weapons if necessary.

The South Korean opposition plans to try to impeach Mr. Yoon again on Saturday. If he is impeached, he will be immediately suspended from office until the Constitutional Court decides whether to reinstate or formally oust him. If the court removes him, South Korea will hold a national election to select a new leader.

Mr. Yoon, a conservative, has been unpopular since he took office. His removal would improve progressives’ chances of returning to power in South Korea. The progressives, like Mr. Yoon’s predecessor Moon Jae-in, favor dialogue and reconciliation with the North, while conservatives champion sanctions and pressure. Both camps rely on the United States, the South’s military ally, to help defend their country.

South Korea’s Constitution allows the president to proclaim martial law in times of “war, armed conflict or similar national emergency,” but it also gives the National Assembly the power to override such a decree with a majority vote.

In an interview with The New York Times on Monday, Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said that he and his party had informally discussed what to do if Mr. Yoon were to instigate an armed conflict with North Korea and use it as a pretext to declare martial law. Mr. Lee said that risk would exist as long as Mr. Yoon stayed in power, although Mr. Yoon has said he would never again declare martial law.

The impeachment bill that failed last week, which was hurriedly put together by the opposition parties, accused Mr. Yoon of antagonizing North Korea, China and Russia. It also criticized what it called Mr. Yoon’s “strange” policy on Japan. Mr. Yoon’s critics have accused him of improving ties with Japan, which once ruled Korea as a colony, at the risk of the nation’s pride and its interests.

Mr. Lee, the opposition leader, said that including Mr. Yoon’s external policies in the impeachment bill had been a mistake and was not his party’s idea. He said that in a revised bill, the reference to Mr. Yoon’s foreign policies would be removed.