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.
Speculation about a crackdown
From the outset, Chairman Kim Pyŏng-so adopted a relatively passive response to the protests. He made no public appearances on Bloody Friday, and after state media confirmed five deaths the following day, he issued a brief statement criticizing the conduct of the Internal Security Forces and urging a peaceful resolution. These remarks, more notable for what was not said, contributed to the surge in protest participation on May 15th. Even as Donggwangsan was surrounded, Chairman Kim insisted on conducting regular government business from within the building, concerned that a high-profile evacuation would embolden the movement to the point of toppling the entire regime. He did, however, relocate from his office facing the square to a secure bomb-proof complex in the center of the building.
Marshal Kang Yong-nam, already chafing with other top officials for his handling of the war and well aware that his removal was first among the protesters' demands, called for a forceful crackdown as early as May 14th. He redoubled these calls after protesters occupied Heroes' Square, insisting that only a show of force would restore order and warning that foreign powers would exploit Menghe's vulnerability if the protests continued. Chairman Kim, already impatient with Kang for his handling of the war, rebuffed Kang's demands, suggesting that the leadership instead wait for the summer monsoon rains to intensify and the protesters to lose interest.
Privately, Kang began moving behind the scenes on his own volition, bypassing Kim's authority as Supreme Commander and recalling four mechanized divisions to the largest protest sites: two to Donggyŏng, and two to Sunju. These orders were classified as top secret, and because the Menghean Army was already withdrawing reservist personnel to their home areas and withdrawing damaged vehicles to military factories, their movements did not initially attract attention. On May 26th, however, multiple trains loaded with tanks and armored fighting vehicles were spotted moving eastward through the northern city of Jinyi, on an oversize freight rail route terminating in Donggyŏng. Speculation about a coup or crackdown was already rife on Menghe's internet, which was now inundated by a flood of independent cellphone photos and videos of these military trains. The official government response was garbled. State media initially denied any government intention of reinforcing Donggyŏng with troops and stated that the vehicles were bound for repair depots in the northwest, despite clear indications that the vehicles were bound for the northeast. One Army officer, speaking off the record, stated that an armed crackdown was a justified way to restore order; it remains unclear whether the anonymous officer in question was part of the dispatched force, or commenting independently. On May 27th, a spokesperson for Kim Pyŏng-so's office explained vaguely that the Army had moved troops toward the capital as a "purely defensive measure," a remark which earned widespread mockery and derision online and in the crowd.
Photos and footage of the military trains in Jinyi intensified foreign pressure against Menghe, which had already increased after Bloody Friday. In private, diplomats and high-level contacts from Dayashina, Hallia, and Banbha demanded answers as to how Menghe intended to respond to the protests, and warned of serious consequences if the Menghean Army attempted to clear Heroes' Square by force. When asked at a public press conference how the government would respond to a massacre in Heroes' Square, a spokesperson for the Banbhan government warned that "crackdowns will be met with repercussions," but did not go into detail as to what said repercussions might be. Adding to the initial confusion, many of Menghe's contacts with Hallia, Dayashina, and Banbha ran through either establishment elites aligned with Kim Pyŏng-so or reformists aligned with Mun Chang-ho; officials in both groups had initially reassured foreign contacts that the leadership had no intention of using the Army, and were caught off guard by the arrival of two mechanized divisions outside Donggyŏng, with one Banbhan diplomat commenting several weeks later that his Menghean contact seemed "genuinely caught off guard by the deployment [of troops to Donggyŏng on 27 May], and even nervous."
In private, Mun Chang-ho and Kim Pyŏng-so were equally concerned. Not only had Marshal Kang apparently prepared a military response to civil matters without either of their approval; the deployment of troops closely resembled the leadup to Choe Sŭng-min's Decembrist Revolution, in which troops sent to quell unrest in the capital instead staged a coup. The Donggyŏng Capital Brigade, established and armed to deter exactly this kind of threat, was occupied by crowd control duties and would be unable to fend off a two-pronged military assault on the capital. Both began frantically reaching out to their own contacts in the military and the security apparatus. Kim summoned Kang to Donggwangsan to explain himself; Kang received the summons, but remained 120 kilometers away at the Army headquarters in Dongrŭng, replying that it would not be safe for him to visit Donggwangsan in light of the crowds assembled around it. Mun Chang-ho, who continued working from the Socialist Party's headquarters in the northeastern corner of the Donggwangsan complex, visited the crowd on May 28th to reassure them that the MSP was ideologically opposed to the use of force and would block any efforts to cause violence.
Privately, however, Kang Yong-nam was growing concerned as well. There were already grumbles of dissent from the Army's other top officers, many of whom already chafed with Kang over his interference in their command decisions and his efforts to take sole credit for the Maverican surrender. Kang had also anticipated, incorrectly, that Kim Pyŏng-so would plead for his help if Donggwangsan were surrounded, allowing him to sweep in with the approval of the central leadership while also humiliating the incumbent Chairman. On May 30th, Kang Yong-nam held a secret meeting with Gun Se-yŏng, the longtime Minister of Internal Security and a member of Kang's security faction. At this meeting, Kang Yong-nam requested that the Ministry of Internal Security arrest Mun Chang-ho and charge him with conspiring with dissidents for his visit with protest leaders two days prior. According to his own testimony, Gun Se-yŏng refused on the grounds that such an operation would trigger a backlash from Kim Pyŏng-so, but did not immediately report the conversation. Gun Se-yŏng also stated, per his own testimony, that in his twelve years spent working under Choe Sŭng-min, the former Chairman had consistently urged him to never clear a protest with lethal force.
Kang's dismissal and Kim's resignation
Maj. Gen. Rim Gwang-hwan, 2022-06-06, 10:03AM
The standoff in and around the capital persisted until June 6th. On that day, Major General Rim Gwang-hwan of the 214th Mechanized Division, stationed north of the capital, published a post on his official social media feed announcing that Kang Yong-nam had ordered him to clear Heroes' Square with lethal force and that he had refused. Though Maj. Gen. Rim had only a small following, news of the message rapidly spread throughout social media, even after the original post was taken down by censors. Kang, still in Dongrŭng, relieved Rim of his command, but the Major General's troops defied Kang's order and took up guard positions around the edges of their encampment. Major General Sŏ Hong-gi of the 134th Mechanized Division, stationed south of the capital, issued no public statement, but ignored subsequent orders from Dongrŭng as well. Now furious, Kim Pyŏng-so issued another directive summoning Kang to the capital to explain his actions. After again receiving no response, Kim departed by helicopter to confront Kang in person, leaving Mun Chang-ho in charge of Donggwangsan. Outside, the ranks of the protesters swelled rapidly, as many civilians anticipated that Kang may be relieved of his command.
In Dongrŭng, Kang Yong-nam at first denied ordering a military crackdown, suggesting instead that Rim Gwang-hwan had fabricated the story in an attempt to seek power. Gun Se-yŏng, who had remained in Dongrŭng for his safety, at first backed Kang's account.