2022 Menghean democratic reforms
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In the summer of 2022, the Socialist Republic of Menghe implemented a series of democratic reforms which were intended to increase the level of political competition in the country's government. The full chain of events comprising these reforms included the arrest and dismissal of Kang Yong-nam as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, the resignation of Kim Pyŏng-so as Chairman of the Supreme Council, the drafting of a provisional election law, the holding of snap multiparty elections to the National Assembly, and the passage of a sweeping package of constitutional amendments which formally shifted Menghe from a de jure one-party system to a parliamentary system.
These reforms were successful at reducing the concentration of power at the top of Menghe's political pyramid, and they did allow the formation of genuine opposition political parties for the first time since the 1920s. Nevertheless, though they removed legal barriers to democratic competition, the 2022 reforms still left the playing field skewed in favor of the Menghean Socialist Party, which emerged from the 2022 snap elections with a commanding supermajority in the National Assembly.
Background
By the spring of 2022, Menghe had endured more than 95 years of continuous undemocratic government, starting from Kwon Chong-hoon's military coup in 1927. Following the Decembrist Revolution, the Interim Council for National Restoration had made some promises of democratic reform, and the 1990 Constitution included clauses promising free democratic competition, but by 1994 it was clear that the Socialist Republic of Menghe had become a one-party state under the leadership of the Menghean Socialist Party.
Choe Sŭng-min's legacy
From his leading role in the Decembrist Revolution in 1987 up to his death in February 2021, Choe Sŭng-min had served as dictator of Menghe for a total of 33 years. This period was, and remains, controversial and contested. On the one hand, Choe played a central role in rolling back civil and political rights and removing checks and balances on the country's core leadership, even building a personality cult that included mandatory reading of the Collected Quotations from Choe Sŭng-min in public schools and the enshrinement of Choe Sŭng-min Thought in the Constitution. On the other hand, Choe Sŭng-min also presided over a series of economic reforms which contributed to a period of rapid growth, with average incomes rising more than tenfold between 1988 and 2021 even after adjusting for inflation.
Among Choe Sŭng-min's dictatorial tendencies was his refusal to share power with a successor-in-waiting. After eliminating a number of potential rivals, including military officers of higher rank, between 1987 and 1994, Choe Sŭng-min was determined to avoid sharing power. This determination continued after a group of higher officials collectively urged him to end the Disciplined Society Campaign in 2003, under the implicit threat that they would attempt to remove him otherwise. Choe appointed Kim Pyŏng-so as First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council in 2009, and renewed his appointment in 2014 and 2019, which many observers saw as a signal that Kim was being groomed as a possible successor. Yet Kim Pyŏng-so was only a few years younger than Choe Sŭng-min, and he rose through the ranks mainly due to his lack of ambition: Choe saw him as a loyal and unthreatening confidant rather than a promising leader. In keeping with this style, Choe also sternly forbade any other officials from attempting to build a cult of personality, even through routine campaigning and publicity work.
Adding to the succession dilemma, the five successive elections of the Chairman of the Supreme Council between 1999 and 2019 were conducted by a simple voice vote in which the members of the National Assembly shouted their assent for the incumbent Chairman to remain in office, meaning that the Menghean government had not even ceremonially run through the full procedure of selecting a new leader. The selection of the Chairman of the Supreme Council was also widely regarded within Menghe as the most undemocratic component of the political system.
Succession disputes
Choe Sŭng-min's death ushered in a period of profound instability for the system he had built. First, partly due to Choe's efforts to restrict rival personality cults, none of Choe's successors-in-waiting enjoyed the same level of popular appeal. Mun Chang-ho was generally regarded as the most popular, especially among younger, more educated, and more urban citizens, but even he lacked the same breadth of appeal as the former Chairman. Without Choe Sŭng-min's personal halo effect spilling over onto the rest of the Socialist Party, criticism of the regime grew more widespread.
Second, none of Choe's successors enjoyed the same unanimity of elite support. As First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council and the eldest of the three, Kim Pyŏng-so had the support of many senior bureaucrats and Party conservatives, but due to the same unambitious nature that had endeared him to Choe Sŭng-min, he had not actively worked to broaden his political support. Mun Chang-ho, the First Deputy Secretary of the Menghean Socialist Party, had built up a large following among younger and more liberal-minded officials during his rise through the ranks, particularly during periods when Choe Sŭng-min was hospitalized and unable to rule the country directly. Yet Mun's political ambition and known liberal tendencies did not sit well with members of the conservative old guard and the security apparatus. This created an opening for Marshal Kang Yong-nam, the Supreme Commander of the Menghean Army, to build a secret alliance of allies in the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Internal Security. Kang enjoyed some public support due to his role in the Innominadan Crisis, but liberal-minded officials mostly regarded him as a dangerous reactionary, and his legal position to inherit the country's political leadership was weakest.
At a closed-door meeting during the official mourning period, Mun Chang-ho agreed to endorse Kim Pyŏng-so's full succession to the triple posts of Chairman of the Supreme Council, General-Secretary of the Menghean Socialist Party, and Supreme Commander of the Menghean Armed Forces. This avoided a possible triumvirate scenario in which each of the three rivals would have ascended to the highest posts in their respective factions.
Causes
Timeline of events
Second Pan-Septentrion War
The Second Pan-Septentrion War broke out on 10 April 2022, when Menghean forces launched a series of coordinated surprise attacks on Entente land and naval assets in and around the South Menghe Sea. Initially, the conflict was overwhelmingly popular with the Menghean public; patriotism was already widespread, the first strike was generally seen as justified, and state propaganda immediately rallied support for the cause.
The war came to an end on May 11th, when Maverica proposed a ceasefire which would restore land borders to the status quo ante bellum. The Menghean government approved the ceasefire deal on the same day, eager to settle the issue before the conflict could drag on beyond the first month. The other Entente member states concluded ceasefires with the Namhae Front in the days that followed, accepting Menghean control over Altagracia and Isla Diamante. Menghe's government was quick to claim victory, and the Namhae Front did exit the war with modest territorial gains. Yet the war's cost in lives, materiel, and damaged civilian infrastructure seemed far out of proportion to the gains, which were negligible on the war's costliest fronts.
2022 Heroes' Square protests
On 13 May 2022, two days after the ceasefire deal, crowds of protesters began moving toward Heroes' Square, the historically important plaza east of the Donggwangsan Palace. Soldiers from the Donggyŏng Capital Brigade, assembled around the square as a pre-emptive measure, responded with force. These troops, part of Menghe's Internal Security Forces, were under strict orders to use non-lethal force only, and did not fire live ammunition, though subsequent investigations revealed that they carried loaded weapons with live ammunition in their vehicles. The violent response did, however, kill at least five protesters: one was struck in the head by a heavy tear gas canister, one was caught under the wheels of an armored personnel carrier, and three were crushed by a stampede in a narrow side street west of the square after mistaking a barrage of rubber bullets for actual gunfire. Many more were injured, some of them seriously, by batons, rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, and the aforementioned stampede.
Cellphone footage of the event was widely shared online, as were text messages detailing the protest events. Censors initially responded by rushing to take down videos of the crackdown and block searches relating to it, but many netizens responded by reuploading footage on sites hosted outside of Menghe, and the sheer volume of posts overwhelmed the authorities. The state's hasty attempt at censorship also intensified public outrage, and on the afternoon of May 14th, state media reversed course by acknowledging five deaths and criticizing the Rapid Response Brigades for their irresponsible behavior.
The incident, which took place on Friday the 13th, soon became known as Bloody Friday, and it became a rallying cry for the protest movement. Protesters returned to the streets of Donggyŏng on the evening of May 14th, but stopped short of the shield walls and barricades set up by police, still wary of the risk of a crackdown.
On May 15th, two days after Bloody Friday, much larger crowds made their way toward Heroes' Square in Donggyŏng. The Donggyŏng Capital Brigade once again resorted to rubber bullets and tear gas, but failed to disperse the protesters, many of whom wore bandanas to protect against tear gas and carried umbrellas to protect against falling projectiles. Overwhelmed by the size and motivation of the crowd, the Internal Security troops pulled back or were overrun, and at around 2:10PM protesters broke into Heroes' Square for the first time. By the end of the day, well over 10,000 protesters had assembled in and around the square, where they set up camp to occupy it for the night.
Over the course of the following week, the protests steadily escalated. Encouraged by the absence of a crackdown, more people joined the demonstration in central Donggyŏng, which fluctuated in size between 8,000 and 60,000 protesters. Smaller protests broke out in other cities around Menghe, where many were met by violence but some succeeded in occupying public spaces. The southern city of Sunju, beset by economic difficulties ever since the closure of the border with Altagracia in 2014, staged especially large demonstrations which moved throughout the city's central neighborhoods. Over the weekend of 21-22 May, Donggyŏng's crowd swelled to over 200,000 protesters, who temporarily succeeded in surrounding the Donggwangsan complex and the National Assembly building; fearing that this was an overly bold measure, protest leaders eventually agreed to leave space for leaders' motorcades to enter and exit.
Though united in their outrage against the government, the protesters were deeply divided ideologically. Young liberals, especially college students at Donggyŏng's top universities, used the protest to air longstanding desires for freedom and democracy. Hardcore nationalists sought to air their more recent anger over the government's acceptance of a less-than-optimal peace deal, with some calling for an immediate resumption of hostilities. Many protest members and supportive bystanders were politically neutral, but had been angered by reports of police brutality and censorship on Bloody Friday. By 22 May, at least seven distinct leadership cells had emerged and were in dialogue with one another, though consensus remained distant.