Last week I wrote a brief column about the abortive auto-coup in South Korea by President Yoon Suk Yeol, the main thrust of which was, “I have no idea what the hell just happened here and nobody else seems to either.” I remember getting some criticism from readers for having written a piece that “didn’t add to our knowledge of breaking events,” which is exactly why professional opinion writers quickly learn to ignore the desires of their readership. Because as it turns out, nobody could have known just how convoluted and outright insane this story was going to get, or how close we all came to World War III over the past several months. I was well within my rights to write with complete mystification last week, because a failed coup in an important allied nation isn’t the sort of thing that should go without comment.
But now, in the aftermath of the coup’s failure, we know much more, and the details will genuinely shock you. This might be the most insane story of 2024 — a year in which, just to remind people, America’s incumbent president suddenly dropped out of his reelection race because of his revealed senility, while his opponent got shot in the head by an attempted assassin, and the Middle East collapsed into regional chaos.
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