By Jim Hoft
The Republic of Korea is now caught in hybrid warfare. This is a conflict waged not only with force, but also through cyberattacks, legal manipulation, foreign interference, and political suppression.
The international discussion about former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law on December 3, 2024, largely echoed Western media reports, labeling it an “authoritarian overreach” or an “unconstitutional power grab.” While such criticisms deserve attention, what many reports overlooked is that evidence of coordinated cyber offensives by North Korea and China had already been confirmed. This omission removes the essential security context necessary to understand Korea’s crisis.
In August 2025, two American hackers infiltrated North Korea’s hacking organization Kimsuky and released 8.9GB of internal data. The leaked records included targeted attacks against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Kebi mail system, the Defense Counterintelligence Command, and critical defense infrastructure in South Korea. Even more shocking, the files showed that Kimsuky conducted joint operations with Chinese state-backed hackers, sharing tools and infrastructure. This directly confirmed former President Yoon’s statement in December of last year that “the Republic of Korea is under hybrid warfare.”
China’s interference has also been overt. On August 19, 2025, China’s state-run Global Times warned that “Korea–U.S. shipbuilding cooperation, if linked to military operations, could pose a potential threat.” On July 31, former Chinese Ambassador Xing Haiming publicly demanded in Seoul that the government “crack down on far-right youth groups.” Shortly thereafter, Liberty University — a domestic group with no citizen complaints filed against it — became the subject of a police investigation. This marked a precedent where the demands of a foreign government directly dictated domestic law enforcement, a grave violation of sovereignty.
However, when martial law was declared, most foreign press reduced it to a simple domestic power struggle. While the National Assembly’s swift decision to revoke martial law carries legal significance, ignoring the simultaneous external security threats distorts reality. For an allied nation facing joint North Korea–China cyber and political offensives, this is a matter that goes far beyond partisan conflict.
The impeachment of former President Yoon on April 4, 2025, was also carried out in haste. Critics argue that the Democratic Party has since weaponized legislative and judicial powers to dismantle Yoon’s influence. This undermines constitutional order and threatens the rule of law in one of Washington’s key Indo-Pacific allies.
The pattern of systematically suppressing political opposition is also seen in the police raid against the Committee for Preventing Election Corruption, led by former Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn. Although it was a lawfully registered election-monitoring group, police fabricated allegations of “election interference” to justify the raid. This mirrors the same nature of persecution directed at Yoon himself, ultimately destroying electoral transparency and public trust.
Read the rest of the article at The Gateway Pundit
