Many reading about the news of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s unexpected declaration of martial law on Tuesday night would have been struck by parallels with the situation in Taiwan; not because of Taiwan’s own experience of martial law, but because some of the reasons Yoon provided for his decision.
Yoon justified the declaration by accusing the opposition in South Korea of being “anti-state forces” intent on overthrowing the government and of working to benefit North Korea. Lawyer Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) was certainly quick to notice the similarities, writing in a Facebook post that the opposition parties in Taiwan — the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) — are also engaged in blocking the national budget and generally causing legislative chaos, adding that people have accused these bad faith actors of disrupting Taiwan on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Published on today’s page is an article titled “Opposition obstruction of national defense” by former Mainland Affairs Council secretary Jethro Wang (王濬), who criticizes the two opposition parties for doing their level best to stymie the government’s national defense budget.
Wang identifies by name KMT legislators Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) and Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) — when she was a Taipei City councilor — as having allegedly leaked confidential information, which, if true, would have jeopardized national security.
He also wrote that Hsu has proposed cutting the budget of the nation’s first indigenous submarine program — regarded as crucial by the government in protecting Taiwan against a potential invasion attempt or military blockade by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army — by 90 percent, while Ma and KMT Legislator Huang Jen (黃仁) have proposed cutting the submarine program’s budget entirely.
Nobody is suggesting anything quite as dramatic as a return to martial law in Taiwan. This would be a grievous mistake, and Huang Di-ying in his Facebook post clarified the differences between the legal systems in South Korea and Taiwan that would make it impossible for a Taiwanese president to unilaterally declare martial law, even if one wanted to.
Yoon was forced to rescind his order after South Korea’s own legislative safeguards stopped him.
The martial law question is a side issue. The more pertinent question is the one of where loyalties lie in the legislature — to Taiwan or to the People’s Republic of China. If bad faith actors are conspiring to frustrate the government in safeguarding Taiwan’s sovereignty by slashing the national defense budget or by leaking confidential information and therefore jeopardizing national security, the government does need to act, and safeguards need to be in place.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), who sits on the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee, and Gahon Chiang (江佳紘) argue in an article also published today, titled “Security clearance system needed,” the need for a systematic and robust security clearance mechanism in Taiwan to prevent the kind of leaks that Ma and Hsu have been suspected of.
At present, the “need-to-know” criteria are governed by the Enforcement Rules of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法施行細則), but there is no unified security clearance system as in other countries to ensure that classified information is kept safe from foreign governments or bad faith actors. South Korea is still technically at war with its neighbor to the north. Taiwan has unresolved issues with China dating back to World War II. Yoon’s martial law declaration looked desperate and born of paranoia, but who knows to what degree his concerns were justified.
Taiwan, too, suffers from suspicions of national loyalties. Martial law is not an answer, but tightening access to classified information and more vigilance are required.
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