What Just Happened in South Korea?

Happy Thursday! We’re hosting our first Dispatch Premium Town Hall with Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg on Tuesday, December 10 at 8 p.m. ET, providing members with an opportunity to interact directly with The Dispatch’s co-founders in an ask-us-anything Zoom call. What do they think of Trump’s Cabinet nominations so far? What’s on the horizon for the 119th Congress? How are they sourcing up for a very different Washington?

We’ll send out more details in the coming days, including an RSVP link exclusively for Dispatch Premium members. If you’d like to attend this special live town hall, be sure to join Dispatch Premium before next Tuesday!

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• French Prime Minister Michel Barnier was ejected from office on Wednesday after losing a no-confidence vote in the French National Assembly, making his tenure as prime minister the shortest in French history. The far-right National Rally party and the far-left New Popular Front group joined forces to oust Barnier’s centrist coalition, allied with French President Emmanuel Macron, over their opposition to austerity measures in the prime minister’s proposed budget. Macron must now name a new prime minister, who will be tasked with passing a new budget by a December 21 deadline. Macron had told reporters on Tuesday that he did not believe the government would fall, adding that he would not resign and planned to serve until “the very last second of my term.” As a separately elected president, Macron’s term is not dependent on the status of the governing coalition.
• The South Korean Democratic Party, the main opposition to the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol, began impeachment proceedings against Yoon on Wednesday after a brief period of martial law ended in the early hours of Wednesday morning. On Tuesday, Yoon declared the country to be in a state of martial law after saying that “anti-state” opposition forces sympathized with North Korea, creating dramatic scenes around South Korea’s Parliament building as protesters and lawmakers faced off with security services.
• Nika Gvaramia—the leader of the Georgian opposition party, Coalition for Change—was knocked unconscious on Wednesday in a scuffle with police and detained, according to his party. The arrest comes after a recent decision by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze—whose Georgian Dream party’s success in October elections was decried as rigged by opponents—to withdraw the nation’s bid for European Union membership sparked protests in the capital of Tbilisi. Opposition leaders say that police raided party offices and activists’ homes on Wednesday as part of a government crackdown on protests.
• The surprise offensive launched by Syrian rebels last week reached the western Syrian city of Hama on Wednesday, as the coalition opposing dictator Bashar al-Assad fought pro-government troops for control of the city, which lies on a major supply route linking Iran and Hezbollah. The rebels are led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly affiliated with al-Qaeda, and the coalition includes other Islamist and more moderate factions. On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesman said that U.S. forces in Syria conducted an attack in “self-defense” on unknown assailants—operating in an area used by Iranian-backed militias and government forces—who fired rockets and mortars at U.S. and coalition positions.
• The chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was reportedly in Washington on Wednesday to build contacts with officials from the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump. According to Reuters, the official, Andriy Yermak, met with Trump’s presumptive national security adviser, Mike Waltz, as well as his Ukraine envoy, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. 
• President-elect Trump announced on Wednesday that he had picked economist Peter Navarro to serve as the White House’s Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Navarro, a committed protectionist who served as a top trade adviser in the first Trump administration, would have a mission “to help successfully advance and communicate the Trump Manufacturing, Tariff, and Trade Agendas.” Navarro served a four-month federal prison sentence earlier this year for defying a congressional subpoena to testify in front of the House committee investigating the January 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
• Trump also announced on Wednesday that he had picked Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Atkins, who has served before as SEC commissioner under President George W. Bush, is known as a strong advocate of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of the payment processing company Shift4 Payments, has helped finance and lead two private SpaceX missions.
• The Associated Press on Wednesday called the final outstanding U.S. House race in the 2024 elections, projecting Democratic challenger ​​Adam Gray as the victor in California’s 13th Congressional District, ousting Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte. The outcome brings the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to an incredibly narrow 220-215, set to at least temporarily shrink further as GOP Reps. Mike Waltz, Elise Stefanik, and Matt Gaetz depart the chamber for spots in the Trump administration or on Cameo.
• Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, was fatally shot on Wednesday morning in New York City. Thompson was murdered by a waiting gunman in what police are calling a “brazen, targeted attack” while he was walking outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan. A manhunt has been launched for the killer, who was captured on video by surveillance cameras fleeing on a Citi Bike into Central Park.

The Nuclear Option

When South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the White House on a state visit in the spring of 2023, he broke into song during dinner, offering his rendition of Don McLean’s famous 1971 song, “American Pie.” 

That song was apparently not the only thing from the 1970s for which he was feeling some nostalgia.

On Tuesday, Yoon declared martial law in South Korea in a surprise decision that recalled the last time that happened: 1979, in South Korea’s military dictatorship days. Tuesday’s measure was short-lived—the National Assembly swiftly rejected it—but it still threw the country into chaos. South Korean lawmakers are now looking to impeach Yoon, whose approval rating dropped below 20 percent in recent weeks, with lots of questions remaining about what the episode means for the future of South Korean democracy and its international alliances in the shadow of a belligerent North Korea and China. 

Late on Tuesday evening in South Korea, Yoon took to the TV to make his stunning declaration. And he didn’t mince words, even in the first line of his speech: “Honorable citizens, as President, I appeal to you with a feeling of spitting blood,” the English translation of his televised address reads. 

He went on to accuse members of the National Assembly of obstructing …

As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. Our 1,490-word item on South Korea’s political crisis is available in the members-only version of TMD.

Worth Your Time

• You’ve heard of petrostates—countries where most economic growth is driven by sales of oil—but how about weight-loss states? In his Substack, Apricitas Economics, economist Joey Napolitano explores how almost all of Denmark’s economic growth is now driven by sales of the popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, both made by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. “Rising drug exports are currently driving the majority of Denmark’s GDP growth—since late 2021, Danish GDP has increased by 3.6%, but economic growth would have been 0% without the contribution of rapid increases in pharmaceutical manufacturing output,” he wrote. “The pharmaceutical boom has been so strong that it has almost singlehandedly made Denmark one of the fastest-growing economies in the European Union.”
• Left-wing writer Freddie DeBoer took to the pages of the conservative City Journal to write about one of the most overlooked factors driving America’s homelessness crisis: the deep commitment to personal autonomy on the part of homeless activists. The result, he argues, is human misery, not freedom. “If you found a friend sleeping in filth under a bridge, and you knew him to be under the influence of a powerful drug, would you just walk away and leave him there, under the logic that he was simply expressing his freedom? You wouldn’t,” he argued. “You would intuitively recognize that the influence of the drug makes genuine freedom impossible. And yet every day, we walk by people who have been crushed by schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other mental illnesses and live in squalid, dangerous conditions on the streets. Those claiming to be their advocates forbid doing what’s necessary to ensure effective treatment of those conditions.”

Presented Without Comment

Mediaite: Kash Patel Threatens to Sue Ex-Pence Aide For Saying On MSNBC He’s Unfit to Lead the FBI

Also Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: Police Recover a Stolen Van With 2,500 Pies After a Chef’s Appeal, but They Are Too Damaged To Eat

In the Zeitgeist

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is known (Editor’s Note: was known) for his stellar play on the field, but he’s always had some … strange … opinions off of it. If you ever wanted to learn how ayahuasca can be an integral part of a top athlete’s training regimen, Netflix’s upcoming documentary, Enigma, is for you:

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Scott beefed with an anti-globalization economist, Nick argued (🔒) that Trump nominating Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to lead the Pentagon would make sense for both men, and Jonah wrote about (🔒) the Hunter Biden pardon and the new theory of moral relativity.
• On the podcasts: Jonah is joined by Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume on The Remnant to discuss what he learned on his recent trip to India, and on Advisory Opinions, Sarah and David break down the recent case before the Supreme Court about flavored vapes before digging into birthright citizenship. 
• On the site: Charles Hilu reports on the bind in which Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI will put vulnerable Republican senators, Brian Albrecht argues overzealous antitrust enforcement can stifle innovation and harm consumers, and Kevin Williamson draws an extended parallel between Vikings and the Deep State as only he can.