Guest Columnist, Korea Military Academy Class of 1980 Martial law (戒嚴) is the last bastion of democratic constitutional order, invoked during national emergencies. However, when martial law transforms from overt military force to the guise of laws, police, and special prosecutors, we confront a more sinister and insidious form of 'terror martial law,' all the while failing to see the entity orchestrating it. We feel the stifling, foul wind tightening its grip, yet we do not know its source.

'Terror martial law' is not a legal term but a neologism. It can be categorized as 'empty proclamation martial law' (空布 계엄) which restricts freedoms without public announcement, 'terror martial law' (恐怖 계엄) that instills boundless fear in political opponents and anti-government forces through actions like sending death threats to National Assembly members, and 'blank firing martial law' (空砲 계엄) that unnerves and disheartens patriotic forces with notifications of 'provision of subscriber information for investigation purposes' on the eve of the Chuseok holiday, resembling the sound of gunshots without any real action. 

1. Constitutional Martial Law vs. Unconstitutional 'Terror Martial Law'

  The current government's 'terror martial law' is an illegal civil war, deep and cruelly protracted, incomparable to former President Yoon Suk-yeol's legal '3-hour martial law.' While former President Yoon Suk-yeol's emergency martial law was an incident where 'the Constitution acted as a brake on the Constitution, and institutions on institutions,' Lee Jae-myung's 'terror martial law' is an unrestricted war that paralyzes governance and human conscience by abusing the law. If Yoon Suk-yeol's martial law was based on the Constitution, Lee Jae-myung's terror martial law is based on China's covert "Chōhan-jeon" (short, surprise attack) strategy. 

Constitutional martial law is a state action based on Article 77 of the Constitution, encompassing the conditions and types of martial law declaration (emergency and security martial law) by the president, as well as parliamentary notification and demands for its lifting. However, 'terror martial law' based on Chōhan-jeon mobilizes all non-military means, including laws, media, and psychological warfare, to suppress and dismantle opponents, critical voices, and the free camp through legal means, constituting an 'unrestricted war'.

2. 'Terror Martial Law' Kills Justice Through Vile Tricks Masquerading as Legality.

   While traditional emergency martial law temporarily suspends the constitution and implements military rule in times of national crisis, 'terror martial law,' employing China's Chōhan-jeon tactics, perversely utilizes the constitution and laws. It leverages a majority in the National Assembly to churn out laws targeting the dissolution of opposition parties and critics from the right, or uses special prosecutors as political tools to exert unlimited political assault, allowing for the arbitrary abuse of specific authorities. 

The forms of terror politics are diverse. The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which conducted investigations without investigative authority, sounded the alarm for terror politics. Special prosecutors, while appearing to implement passed special prosecutor laws, destroy the spirit of the law—freedom, equality, and fairness. 'Terror martial law,' employing Chōhan-jeon techniques such as embarrassing individuals through excessive arrests and framing normal military operations as foreign exchange manipulation, uses laws that should protect the rule of law as potent weapons of attack. 

It becomes difficult to find grounds for resistance when even soldiers who followed lawful orders are accused of rebellion under martial law and arbitrarily framed. The appearance of being tried is broadcast live to showcase a pathetic image. Through the frame of rebellion and legal procedures, they are reduced to 'lawful victims.' This dismantles liberal democracy more basely than martial law enforced by guns and swords. 

3. 'Terror Martial Law' Creates Fear and Incites Endless Conflict Through Psychological Warfare.

    The method by which terror martial law instills fear in the populace without resorting to arms closely resembles the psychological and media warfare of Chōhan-jeon. By mobilizing police and prosecutorial power to suppress opposition forces, and by publicly disclosing suspicious suicides around certain individuals, or the arrest of Lee Jin-suk—actions that are clearly political retaliation—it instills in the public a learned fear of 'if you resist, you're next'. 

The act of labeling criticism of the current government's failures and the undeniable subversion of liberal democracy through election rigging as 'mental illness' or 'conspiracy theories,' and forcefully suppressing such discussions even within the National Assembly, is a typical example of public opinion manipulation and psychological warfare. This obstructs democratic discourse and blocks rational public debate by stigmatizing it. 

These control mechanisms stigmatize public doubt and criticism of the government and ruling party, thereby blocking rational discourse itself. They pre-emptively label actions as rebellion before any trial, deepening social distrust and division, and induce involuntary silence from the public, undermining the foundation of democracy. 

4. The Dangerous Paradox of 'Terror Martial Law': Inducing 'Foreign Exchange' Through 'Real Rebellion'.

    The reason why 'terror martial law,' employing Chōhan-jeon techniques, is dangerous lies in the paradox that 'real rebellion' opens pathways for external threats and the infiltration of 'foreign exchange.' Despite the National Information Resources Management Service fire causing the computer network to cease normal operations, visa-free entry is pushed forward. The authorities paralyze the judicial system through tactics such as legal warfare and psychological operations, while simultaneously shackling and prosecuting the political statements and security pronouncements of the opposition party leader. 

Right-wing figures, who lack defensive capabilities beyond lawyers, are emotionally devastated, and the Republic of Korea has reached a precarious state, being eroded bit by bit by external forces conducting Chōhan-jeon. Those executing the orders of enemies and external powers are blatantly pursuing a strategy of subjugation to China by abusing current laws to dismantle their political rivals. 

5. 'Terror Martial Law' Must Be Met with United National Resistance.

    In a state where the rule of law and fair exercise of sovereignty are broken, we must fight against true martial law dictatorship with the spirit of 'I am the Republic of Korea.' We must be wary of 'terror martial law,' which practices terror politics without public proclamation, and engage in intellectual resistance. 

The entire nation must realize that all these ruinous atrocities are being perpetrated through rigged elections and accurately understand the nature of 'terror martial law' employing Chōhan-jeon techniques to confront this terror dictatorship. The free right should form communication networks in various fields to boost fighting spirit and establish 'pro bono legal teams,' and wage an unlimited war to defend the system, encompassing all domains from the streets to 'digital resistance'. 

Using the Kim Hyun-ji gate as an opportunity, we must expose the suspicions and reality of a 'spy regime' and, as individual citizens, become the last shield of liberal democracy against deceptive and insidious, unlimited terror tactics. Security organizations must raise a torch of national salvation, different in scale from existing activities, for the survival of all.