Public Theology of Media and the Korean Political Impeachment:
A Critique of a New Surge of Fascism
Paul S. Chung is a distinguished full professor in International Public Theology and director of the Forum-Center (Berkeley, CA)
Introduction
In this essay, I will argue for the significance of a public theology of media in the context of the Korean political impeachment of President Yoon in 2024. To build a public theology of media, I draw on risk society theory and combine Habermas’s communicative rationality with Foucault’s genealogy of power to examine mediatization and ideological interpellation in the Korean political scene.
To accomplish this, I first conduct a case study on YouTube, social media, and contradictory discourses in South Korea, critically examining President Yoon’s declaration of martial law and his biopolitical rhetoric and strategy against anti-state forces. In the process, I illuminate how a biopolitical strategy based on power and punishment is crucial in the process of mediatization.
Second, I apply the natural science concept of dissipative structure to the ecology of political behaviors in complexity and feedback loops. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework, I consider the political theory of the ‘Tocqueville effect’ in light of critical theories of historical complexities and social linkages.
Here, I incorporate critical theoretical insights into civil society and critical democracy, addressing the degeneration of democracy into despotism during political changes and societal transitions. Here, public theology and ethics emphasize the public value of accurate discourse, communicative freedom, and reflective reasoning. These also critique fake news, moral relativism, and far-right Christian nationalism within the political framework of binary opposition.
Third, I explore the South Korean Democratic Party’s weakness revealed in its monitoring and punishment policy, which has eroded trust among the younger generation. In the process, Yoon Suk Yeol’s political mimicry may be seen in relation to Trump’s policies and Leviathan. Similarly, I briefly consider the German public broadcaster (ARD) as an example of global mediatization and ideological interpellation as it broadcast far-right-leaning material about the process of impeachment.
Fourth, I investigate a new wave of fascism in Korea by contrasting Max Horkheimer’s critical theory of authority and power with Carl Schmitt’s authoritarian theory of state. Here, I demonstrate that the latter has such an impact on Korean legal society that it seeks to justify President Yoon’s decision to impose martial law.
Finally, as I conclude my discussion on a public theology of media in the context of a new surge of fascism in Korea, I consider the Barmen Declaration (Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) in terms of Church responsibility, civil society democracy, the politics of recognition, and the principle of difference (John Rawls).
Digital Existence: Social Media and Political Discourse
Social media outlets follow a technological paradigm that includes quality, reach, frequency, influence, usability, ubiquity, speed, and communication relevance. Fundamentally, the algorithms governing these factors are geared toward user preferences. As a result, biases in social media may be unavoidable in our digital or online lives. Therefore, digital media, particularly social media, has far-reaching and complex effects on society, education, political polling, commerce, and culture.
In the age of information, digital media has spurred disruptive innovation and created a dominant narrative during periods of political upheaval. It has also decreased critical voices, alternative realities, and emancipators that advocate for common good justice. Viral media infections often exacerbate political polarization and reduce civil social discourse and reflective democracy to populist manipulation or postmodern moral relativism.
Further complicating this, the domain of digital existence unites the online and offline worlds. As a result, it presents a significant challenge to public theology and ethics in understanding discursive practice and power relations in the political environment. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for recognizing the significance of digital existence in relation to the current political crisis and polarization in South Korea.
https://www.bbc.com/korean/articles/c2erypwlm4go
An Overview of South Korean Political Instability Under President Yoon
On the night of Tuesday, December 3, 2024, South Korean President Yoon abruptly declared martial law, vowing to eliminate what he described as anti-state forces. He cited the ruling party’s landslide defeat in the April 2024 legislative elections, in which the opposition secured nearly two-thirds of all parliamentary seats.
In response to this overwhelming outcome, President Yoon accused the National Election Commission (NEC) of electoral fraud. Since that defeat, Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) and the opposition Democratic Party (DP)—which has expressed pro-China and pro-North Korea sentiments—have been locked in a political deadlock over budget legislation, further intensifying the struggle for power. This political standoff forms the backdrop to Yoon’s declaration of martial law.
Yoon’s martial law decree lasted approximately six hours: When the National Assembly opted to override, Yoon and his Cabinet lifted it before dawn on Wednesday. Early in the morning, President Yoon rescinded the martial law declaration, with no bloodshed or arrests. During the six-hour period of martial law, armed soldiers—though unarmed with live ammunition—targeted the National Election Commission (NEC) as their primary focus, along with the National Assembly.
Political Rivalry in Risk Society
In the preceding presidential election, the opposition chairman of the DP, Lee Jae-myung, narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022 and is now in legal trouble. Specifically, he was criminally convicted for breaching election laws and now faces other pending rulings that could ban him from office. Consistent with others on the Korean political left, Lee expressed suspicion toward the U.S.–South Korea alliance in the Indo-Pacific, viewing American soldiers in Korea as an occupying force.
After Yoon’s martial law declaration, Lee and his DP accused Yoon of being a ringleader of the insurrection and the ruling party of inciting insurrection. However, the PPP, the ruling party, responded to this rhetorical move by citing President Yoon’s martial law order as a legitimate act of sovereignty under the Constitution. These competing narratives became critical in securing citizen consent and support during political upheaval.
The political risk society parallels Trump’s thesis of a deep state, which includes voting system manipulation and an attack on the United States Capitol (January 6, 2021). This delineates an imitation of Yoon’s political Caesarism, which emulates Trump’s authoritarian position.
It is remarkable that Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale, predicted a possible scenario or some similarities between Yoon and the coming Trump regime to install the politics of military dictatorship, despite Yoon’s failure. For example, Trump openly spoke of invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military inside the United States, using the armed forces to enforce some law in the presence of an insurrection.[1]
Biopolitical Technique and Mediatization
Following his issuance and subsequent rescission of the martial law decree (December 3), President Yoon delivered his second forceful statement to the Korean people on Thursday (December 12), further advancing his process of mediatization.
According to Yoon’s official statement, three Chinese nationals were arrested in June for flying a drone and recording a U.S. aircraft carrier moored in Busan. However, under current legislation, foreign nationals cannot be prosecuted for espionage. Yoon’s rhetoric is inextricably tied to the use of state authority to enforce national and civilian security, particularly in relation to China and North Korea.
Considering Foucault’s genealogy of power, Yoon’s political technique incorporates “the body and its force, their utility and their docility, their distribution and their submission”[2] into the iron cage of national security and anti-communism. Furthermore, he argues that South Korea is currently in a condition of deep pollution (a political slogan of ‘deep state’) caused by anti-state forces.
Yoon’s political technique through mass media has an effect of mediatization by political consolidation. According to a Korean Gallup poll (January 9, 2025), 64% supported impeachment, while 32% opposed it. This rate differs from the same poll (December 14, 2024), in which 75% supported impeachment and 21% opposed it. But 59% stood for impeachment while 35% were against it (February 25, 2025), showing that the younger generation was influenced by Yoon’s rhetoric of patriotism and critique of the DP’s pro-communist politics.[3]
Media Effect and Emergence Perspective
To explain political Caesarism and cultural hegemony in the Korean political crisis, I place a sociological emphasis on the ecological concept of dissipative structure and its formation from chaos or collapse.
In fact, the emergence of a new order is not determined by cause-and-effect reductionism, but rather by several conditions of indeterminacy at the bifurcation and frontline of chaos; it demands the injection of social energy and movement for development or alteration within information technology.
Dissipative structures, along with the system’s flow processes, can evolve into increasingly complex forms far from equilibrium. These forms cannot be inferred from the properties of their components because they are interconnected by multiple feedback loops.[4]
The irreversible arrow of time exposes the dissipative structures within the political system to collapse if they are not linked to the appropriate information processing and communication mechanisms. The political ecology of collective behavior involves a pulse process in the context of homeostasis, displaying a cyclical pattern of activity in which a system fluctuates around a fixed point.
If the political system strikes a balance between the pulsing process and a set point to maintain a stable internal environment, it will attract entropy-defying self-organization in civil society. Such self-organization can be seen in social media, public reason, democratic rationality, and governmental and non-governmental organizations.
This represents the paradox of democracy, as democracy tends to devolve into soft despotism, even risking the emergence of a tyranny of the majority. A democratic society can be organized to respond to risks, hazards, and insecurities during political changes in the structure of power, influence, and societal transition.
This perspective becomes crucial for public theology with engaged realism in addressing forms of political repression, participation, and resistance within the social scientific understanding of technological rationality, as it plays a role in popular discourses. To mitigate these risks, critical reflective thinking is essential in navigating the complexity of problems through civil society and critical democracy.
According to Axel Honneth, civil society is a sphere of both private and civilian affairs. Here, the sociological idea of organic solidarity and the common good grows in accordance with the rational division of labor (fairness and transparency against mechanistic pathology). Meanwhile, it features civilian morals such as reciprocal recognition and interconnection, as well as a communitarian ethos (or habit of mind).[5]
Honnex’s creative perspective allows us to consider the so-called Tocqueville effect, which states that “social frustration increases as social conditions improve.”[6] As social conditions improve, the growing disdain for social privilege will lead to the state concentrating more control over itself.
Given this, I believe it is possible to incorporate the Tocqueville effect into a critical theory of historical complexes, as well as the interaction of all of its subordinate components and sections to contextualize dissipative structure in social and political realms. The intricate social system of episteme is characterized by constant interaction and mutual determination. This sustains cultural arrangements and processes that impact all facets of life and human behavior in a dynamic society.[7]
In fact, social and political activity and response are unpredictable. The concept of emergence aids public theology in delineating and comprehending the arrival of unparalleled orderliness in both nature and society. This suggests a multivariate method of challenging political positions based on binary opposition. This is accomplished by reducing reality to causal chains or by excessively emphasizing martial law decrees as crimes of insurrection. This is often seen in the mainstream media.
In the mainstream media, the broadcast system is centralized, oligopolistic, and characterized by one-way communication with mass distribution. This structure, which submits all branches to a central power, is opposed to the non-hierarchical and decentralized operation of social media networks.
The media’s impact is seen as a two-pronged process of highly developed technical modernity, developing into a unique institution with its own logic of material interests, privilege, social status, and power relations. As a vital component of politics, the media has a significant impact on how society and governmental power are formed when their own depiction is unstable.[8]
Postmodern Relativism and Fake News
According to Jűrgen Habermas, the media—which is rooted in the system of power and money—serves as a language substitute and makes it possible to distinguish between distinct subsystems of purpose-rational behavior and its instrumental functionality. Steering media, like money and power, are used to coordinate linguistic communication in the increasingly complex subsystems. The lifeworld is being penetrated and colonized by a dual feature of societal rationalization and reification (communicatively distorted language).[9]
Illustrating this, counter-argument or fake testimony arose during these shifting power dynamics in Korea. For example, Kim Ou-joon, who is a DP-linked political influencer rather than a journalist, leveraged fake testimony to attempt to alter the political power dynamics during Yoon’s political maneuvering.
Kim informed the Ministry of Science and Technology that he had obtained information that special operations men were on standby to make an assassination attempt against him. He claimed that the martial law command intended to employ evidence tampering to blame North Korean forces for the attacks. To substantiate this, he stated that the information came from a friendly country with an embassy in South Korea.[10]
By implication, he accused the U.S. Embassy of this attempt, which rejected his claim as unfounded. Why would the US Embassy refer to such an assassination plot in a secretive manner? Nevertheless, the official testimony had a significant impact on political discourse during the martial law decree.
Thus, fake news and untrustworthy testimony in South Korea aided ochlocracy by changing democratic rationality and popular common sense into mob rule motivated by an overemotional fury against the martial law conspiracy. Thus, fake news promulgators infiltrated civil society, immobilized critical and logical thought, and split people into extreme opposition (in the Manichean sense).
YouTube and Far Right Christian Nationalism
In South Korea, YouTube is the most popular platform for daily live programs, offering a space for political discussion, debate, and controversy. However, fake news, conspiracy theories, and deliberate misinformation propagated on YouTube undermine the credibility of events and news because they were not evaluated according to proper fact-checking.
According to Kim Ou-joon, the difference between him and the mainstream conservative press is that people opposing him have the same right to speak. Kim’s tagline is “Modesty is nothing.” He told CNN that “Conservative media are actively making biased reports, and I think they can do that based on their political stance.” Furthermore, he argues that “They’re pretending to be fair, hiding behind the mask of fairness.”[11]
His position indicates an approach to YouTube that exhibits a postmodern pluralism in which a personal political perspective can proceed without opposition. Effectively, his position expresses the sentiment I am fine with your truth, so you should be fine with my truth.
This moral relativism is also linked to market pluralism, which generates imagined, curiosity-provoking viewpoints through biases, false data, and conspiracy theories.
Biases possess a significant impact, influencing assessments in both commonplace actions and technological frameworks. The digital mechanism encourages the human agent to take part in actual civil protests, whether ultra-leftist or far-right.
For example, the influence of biases was clearly seen in the mobilization of far-right Christian nationalism during Yoon’s martial law decree and its fallout. This materialized as the ultra-conservative Protestant evangelical movement was dissatisfied with the result of the impeachment vote.
The far-right Christian nationalism in Korea demonstrates a hyper-Calvinist, fundamentalist approach to Korean politics. This movement equates liberal democracy with the authoritarian rule of South Korea’s first Christian president, Rhee Syng-man, and military strongman Park Chung-hee, who was later assassinated by the director of the Korean CIA, his political rival.
Trustful Communication in the Age of Digitalization
We live in a risk society characterized by a digital culture of communication. A critical form of reflexivity contrasts with the postmodern wholesale abandonment of scientific-instrumental modes of thought, addressing the essential tension between human indeterminacy and cultural-technological production.[12]
Thus, reflexivity and critical analysis are necessary to establish trust and credibility in the field of communication risk. It becomes a necessary societal framework to build around the ubiquitous use of digital technology.
For example, Facebook’s algorithm, which is a mechanically programmed evaluation of many data points, assesses and analyzes people’s personalities and preferences. Without our full knowledge, we are scrutinized and classed, followed by tailored advertising and targeted political initiatives. We are exposed to the loss of privacy in all aspects of our lives, and our human dignity in both private and political life is jeopardized.
However, according to Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, a renowned scholar of ecumenical public theology in Germany, digital technology neither constitutes a promise of salvation nor foretells disaster. Rather, digital media platforms can and should be held accountable.[13]
Social media has significantly altered the media environment for forming political opinion. The more we rely on Google for answers, the less capable we are of doing our own searches for information. The top Google search results define our concept of ‘truth.’
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The era of digitalization signifies a transition from the dual concepts of use value and exchange value (as articulated by Karl Marx) to data value and its powerful influence inside the technological mode of information. It relies on networked production for cultural products, knowledge, or communication in the phase of late capitalism that culminates in the technological mode of production.
Since data value underlies the appearance of late capitalist social interaction and exchange, it becomes instrumental to the dominant system of power, material interests, and the information mode of production. Existing in a digitalized world, our bodies and minds have been altered in cyberspace by interactive and cybernetic technology and the digital environment created by the internet.
Scientific-algorithmic anthropology, which acknowledges the new human condition in terms of social, epistemological, and ontological considerations, is the field of cyberspace. We are essentially controlled by algorithmic processes in the era of digital culture of communication—in opposition to our free will and thoughtful reasoning. In the cybernetic world, we are imprisoned in the technological cage of digital space.
Pitfall: Surveillance and Punishment
Lee Jae-myung’s opposition to Yoon provides another avenue for critical reflection concerning media surveillance and government punishment for dissidents. It is unfortunate that the Democratic Party of South Korea has failed to acknowledge civil society legitimacy, which encompasses the significance of cultural hegemony, communicative freedom and reason, civil consent, morality, and cultural habitus. These domains are under threat from the DP’s surveillance and control (in the case of a KakaoTalk user accused of rebellion), and they are easily susceptible to the implementation of a Chinese-style national social credit system.
Meanwhile, a bogus report on the online media outlet SkyeDaily emerged, fueling Sinophobia. The report claimed that United States Forces Korea (USFK) had apprehended Chinese operatives involved in election manipulation during martial law and had captured 99 Chinese spies, who were reportedly sent to Okinawa. However, USFK denied the reports, calling them entirely false.[14] Despite being inaccurate, this story mirrors the severely polarized information ecosystem that exacerbates public discourse through a Manichean feeling of hostility.
However, China constructed a large structure in a disputed area of the Yellow Sea during this period of political uncertainty in South Korea. This move appears to be part of China’s broader strategy to solidify its territorial claims in the region alongside its actions in the South China Sea. As a result, it poses a potential threat to South Korea’s sovereignty. The structure represents both infrastructure development and a possible Chinese military presence—activities that South Korea has explicitly opposed. However, China has dismissed South Korea’s diplomatic protests as unfounded.[15]
Meanwhile, the Court dismissed the Democratic Party’s (DP) attempt to impeach the top state auditor and three prosecutors involved in efforts to establish martial law in December 2024. This decision dealt a significant blow to the DP’s hardline stance, highlighting its failure to assert cultural hegemony within the political networks shaping the experiences of the younger generation.
The younger generation is frustrated—and even angered—by strategies of surveillance and punishment used to suppress freedom of expression and communication. I interpret this political backlash through the lens of the Tocqueville effect and the dynamics of complex political collective behavior. The ideological consolidation—characterized by anti-China sentiment—resonates with the younger generation through its alignment with liberal democratic values, cultural influence, and a sense of patriotism.
Political Legal Mimicry and ARD
A legal expert, Professor Lee Ho-Sun, attempted to justify Yoon’s sovereign political authority in a state of emergency using martial law. He appears to be in league with Carl Schmitt, the leading jurist during German National Socialism.
In the emphasis on Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, Schmitt affirms that the one who has legally constituted authority can demand obedience (autoritas, non veritas facit legem: authority, not truth, makes law). It implies the authoritarian theory of the state. As Schmitt states, “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”[16]
German public television (ARD) aired a report on political conflict and national crisis titled Südkorea – Staatskrise im Schatten von China und Nordkorea (South Korea – National Crisis in the Shadow of China and North Korea) on February 24, 2025. The report placed special emphasis on the significant influence of far-right social media and YouTuber influencers on the younger generation. It also raised concerns about the potential for electoral fraud involving interference from North Korea and China. In its coverage of the growing far-right movement and the Democratic Party’s perceived pro-China and pro-North Korea stance, ARD posed a critical question: Can democracy survive?[17]
Subsequently, ARD’s reporting was used to rally far-right support in Korea, despite ARD being banned later. Against this, a DP congressman challenged the minister of foreign affairs in a special session, who tolerated ARD. ARD’s accusation of Lee and the DP associated with anti-state forces is one of the most significant cases of mediatization and ideological interpellation, as seen in the international network of global politics.[18]
I am personally suspicious of the ARD document that includes legal expert Professor Lee Ho-Sun without qualification, because Professor Lee frequently argues that Trump is the same as President Yoon.
In my assessment, Trump is different from Yoon because Trump was not impeached in the Senate for attacking the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. However, Professor Lee invokes the Trump case as a tool of ideological interpellation to justify Yoon’s sovereign act of martial law as a state of exception.
On March 7, the Seoul Central Court ordered the impeached Yoon’s release from detention. The Court ruled that the investigation agency of corruption that held Yoon lacked legal power to investigate the criminal rebellion claims.
Legal specialists in the constitutional society played an important role in this direction, and the court judge interpreted the law in a casuistic manner, charging procedural illegalities against the investigation agency with high-level corruption.
Given the dominance of legal bureaucracy, a sociological inquiry into law reveals that political organization can be studied through public law. The law—functioning as a morphological system—shapes what is considered political through its own communication network. As a system of communication, the law is self-referential in its terms and distinctive practices: it is cognitively open but operationally (or normatively) closed.
Nonetheless, the law’s autonomy is relative because it exists in such close proximity to politics and the state.[19] The constellation between the judiciary system, the society of legal professionals, and the powerful law firms forms a bureaucratic-authoritative order that dominates the process of impeachment in the Korean political turmoil.
Given this complexity between legal theory and social factors, there is no source for the normative character of laws outside of law itself: “Everything, which is available using the title of legal theory, has been produced in conjunction with self-descriptions of the legal system.”[20]
In fact, the Constitutional Court, with a unanimous verdict, removed the impeached President Yoon from office (April 3, 2025). Similarly, on May 1, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court overturned the Seoul High Court’s March ruling, which had determined that the evidence against Lee Jae-myung’s alleged false statements is met “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
However, in a televised proceeding, the Chief Justice stated that the lower court’s decision was flawed due to a misinterpretation of legal principles and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court. As a result, Lee’s participation in the upcoming presidential race remains at risk.
Meanwhile, Acting President and Prime Minister Han resigned from his position to run in the June presidential election. He is widely regarded as the representative of the conservative party.
The process of the impeachment is among the most unpredictable and elusive phenomena in the ecology of collective behavior. I believe the integrity and justice of constitutional democracy become questionable—even to the point of influencing or controlling the presidential election. Although law operates as a self-referential communication system, in practice, it is cognitively exposed to political influence and the state, while remaining normatively closed.
The president’s removal does not signal the end of the impeachment narrative, but rather a more sophisticated biopolitical alliance with Trump, MAGA, and Leviathan. The political situation in the post-impeachment context has intensified due to the U.S. tariff war with China. This will likely impact the presidential election process in June 2025.
An Authoritarian Order of Things: US and South Korean Discourse
In the US, Trump’s social media is an efficient device to demonstrate an organized, central, and authoritarian biopolitics for the strongman Trump. In his social media discourse, Trump values making propaganda of the personal cult, purging people by firing, and loyalty as the primary qualifier for his associates.
In fact, Trump’s bureaucratic “army” (his cadre of politicized civil servants) is deployed to dismantle the administrative state under the state of emergency. Thus, his discourse destroys America’s liberal democratic institutions of governance with unrestrained oligarchical plunder of public resources, soaring economic inequality, and political violence.[21]
Given this, I find it significant to cite Max Horkheimer’s prophetic analysis of the authoritarian order during Hitler’s regime in Germany. According to Horkheimer, the order of things under the guidance of authorities is to utilize “the system of technological rationality as the foundation of law and legal practice.” Thus, it “has definitely made law and legal practice an instrument of ruthless domination and oppression in the interest of those who control the main economic and political levers of social power. Never has the process of alienation between law and morality gone so far as in the society which allegedly has perfected the integration of those very conceptions.”[22]
Under the guise of authority, power dynamics are ingrained in social life processes through technological rationality underlying law and legal practice. The authoritarian perspective of the state places people in the position of disciplined labor and obedience. Due to blind economic necessity and the reified authority of the economy, a new and powerful authority has emerged to decide people’s fates.[23]
In Korea, the politics of authority can be seen in the DP leadership. During the impeachment, Seoul favored a more conciliatory approach toward Beijing, addressing issues that concerned China’s core interests. Thus, Beijing may perceive greater opportunities for cooperation with—and even influence over—Seoul under Lee’s style of leadership, which appears to favor a more China-aligned, authoritative order.
Under the authoritative order, a criminal forfeits his right to freedom. Likewise, every citizen forfeits his right to pursue liberty, human rights, and happiness during a state emergency. Thus, governmental protection that deprives a person of their political community is a biopolitical tactic that violates a fundamental human right.[24]
In Jason Stanley’s account, the United States has a legacy of the best of liberal democracy (drawing on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights), but it is also vulnerable to the roots of fascist thought. This is reinforced through the Confederacy and Jim Crow laws that provided inspiration for Hitler.
Fascist politics undermines a shared understanding of history by creating a fictional, mythic past to support the nationalist ideal for the present. It aims to redefine our shared view of reality, culture, and history by distorting the language of shared principles through propaganda, fostering anti-intellectualism, and instilling a false sense of reality through conspiracy theories and fake news. These approaches have replaced reasoned debate and reflective democracy, leading to victimhood.[25]
This politics of Manichaeism within the fascist myth limits our ability to empathize with people of different ethnicities, and even erases our common history. Thus, it justifies brutal treatment, mass imprisonment, and deportation, or, in extreme situations, biopolitical mass extermination. Indeed, it rewrites and commercializes the past to control the present and future, for the fictional ideological interpellation.
Public Theology and The Barmen Declaration Redivivus
Amidst the political unrest in South Korea, public theology seeks to bear the co-responsibility of the Christian Church to the state. If the state serves as an instrument of divine grace, it ought to fulfill divine service (Rom 13:4, 6), safeguarding freedom and peace in alignment with human understanding and capability.
In the fifth thesis of The Barmen Declaration, the state, according to divine arrangement, is responsible for providing for justice and peace in the yet unredeemed world. “We repudiate the false teaching that the state can and should expand beyond its special responsibility to become the single and total order of human life.”[26]
This statement is strengthened by the first thesis, which repudiates this false doctrine, as though the Church allows itself to be given to special leaders with ruling powers. However, Jesus Christ is the Lord who both transcends and judges all human lords, leaders, and powers and principalities (the complex reality of lordless powers).
This public confession opposes Carl Schmitt’s notion of the state of emergency, which is the defense of sovereign authority in the face of a severe crisis, such as a serious economic crisis or political unrest that calls for the use of extraordinary measures.
On the contrary, the Church needs to align itself with God’s kingdom. The Church's dedication to helping the underprivileged and economically disadvantaged in society and promoting the common good in the fight for significant social justice is based on the active grace of God made apparent in Jesus Christ.[27]
This position has its actuality in the American Barmen redivivus titled “We belong, Not to Ourselves, but to Christ: A Theological Declaration in North America, 2025.” Here, Ted Peters, a leading public theologian in science-religion dialogue, presents a sharp argument against Caesar in the form of the Oval Office Fűhrer.[28]
In response to troubling realities in both South Korea and the United States—such as immigration enforcement—public theology of media seeks to resist the erosion of academic and moral integrity in public life and democratic civil society. It aims to embody a commitment to justice, solidarity, and prophetic engagement, which is central to the mission of public theology.
I integrate this approach to public theology with John Rawls’s political theory of constitutional democracy as political legitimacy. Political power should, therefore, only be used in accordance with a constitution, which states that all citizens are equal and free based on their common human reason and the reciprocity criteria for accepting fundamental laws and regulations.
The original position of equality in a veil of ignorance encompasses social and economic equality as well as two principles of justice, such as freedom of speech and religion. It is how a constitutional democracy defines a community of free citizens. The latter explains the difference principle, which holds that everyone benefits when innate skills are distributed as a shared resource. When addressing the discrepancy between the original circumstance and the appropriate allocation of money and power, it integrates a reflective equilibrium into the present judgment.[29]
Because human law distributes what is due to each person (suum cuique, to each his or her own) in terms of fairness, consent, logic, and reciprocity, I argue that it is the highest form of justice and legal dominance in the debate over the constitution and laws in South Korea’s political unrest.
Learning from Bonhoeffer
In the political risk society threatened by Neo-Fascist strategy, I share Bonhoeffer’s concern as he considered the Roman legal system and its suum cuique (to each his or her own) law. He criticized eudemonism and social utilitarianism, which limit or even eradicate individual rights, resulting in anarchy or despotism.[30]
Bonhoeffer's notion of suum cuique is obviously connected with the Barmen Declaration, which questions the reification of the human being under the capitalist order with its fascist face. In the world that has not yet been redeemed and is subject to the threat and application of power, this suggests defending freedom and participation while establishing justice and peace.
It strengthens reparative and distributive justice. God’s reconciliation with the world is strengthened through an immanent critique for emancipation and solidarity in favor of people on the margins.
Constitutions of democratic republics specify each person’s rights to shared accountability and involvement in societal decision-making. It is opposed to the “democrazy,” which is a fascist-leaning authoritarian view of government. To preserve civic sovereignty and unity in communal life, the state is obligated by the constitution to maintain law, order, and restorative justice.
Despotism is significantly restrained—and even counterbalanced—by an enlightened public education that is grounded in the principles of human rights, justice, and the common good. These values serve as a vital undercurrent in democratic civil society, helping to mitigate the harms caused by the government’s abuse of power, fake news, and ideological interpellation—whether arising from far-right Christian movements or far-left authoritarian strategies.
As the basis for discourse ethics and its conceptual clarity in the public and digital sphere, Bonhoeffer’s reflection on telling the truth (parrhesia) must now be considered. Since God is neither a philosophical idol nor a generic concept, God places us in a living reality. In front of God, our speaking activity must be truthful in real, tangible life situations.[31]
A public theology of media values the discourse ethics of parrhesia and prudence in confronting the truth in each situation and thoughtfully considering it for engagement. When it comes to pursuing truth and mitigating the gap between truth and deception within each scenario, a trustworthy word is alive as it relates to life itself, implying a posture of mistrust or a critique of an ideology.
In short, maintaining this stance is essential for the public theology of media and the Shalom Church in the face of rising fascism and far-right Christian movements, both in South Korea and in the global context.
[1] Timothy Snyder, “Dictators for a Day: South Korea and America,” Dec 4, 2024. https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219789438
[2] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vantage Books, 1978), 25.
[4] Ilya Prigone and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chao (New York: Bantam, 1984), 112, 143-44.
[5] Axel Honneth, The I in We: Studies in the Theory of Recognition, trans. Joseph Ganahl (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), 69.
[6] Richard Swedberg, Tocqueville, Tochqueville’s Political Economy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009), 260.
[7] Critical Theory Selected Essays Max Horkheimer, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), 52. 54.
[8] Stig Hjarvard, The Mediatization of Culture and Society (London: Routledge, 2013).
[9] Jűrgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 342. 359.
[10] https://www.koreaherald. com/view. Broadcaster claims assassination plot; ruling party dismisses allegation.
[11] https://kslnewsradio. com/ How Youtube became a force in Korean politics.
[12] Beck, Risk Society, 6.
[13] Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, “The Ethical Challenges of the Digital Age Between Promises of Salvation and Prophecies of Doom,” The Ecumenical Review Vol. 72. Nr 2. April 2020, 167-182.
[15] Eerishika Pankaj, “China stands to gain from South Korea’s political crisis,” East Asia Forum (3 March 2025).
[16] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trans. George Schwab (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), 5.
[19] Roger Cotterrell, “Social Theory and Legal Theory: Contemporary Interactions.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 17 (2021), 1-26.
[20] Niklas Luhmann, Law as a Social System, trans. Klaus A. Ziegert (New York: Oxford University Press), 60.
[21] Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (W.W. Norton & Company, 2020).
[22] Critical Theory Selected Essays Max Horkheimer , trans. Matthew J. O’Connell et al. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1972), x.
[23] Ibid., 69. 97.
[24] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1962), 290-302.
[25] Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (New York: Random House, 2018).
[26] Creeds of the Churches: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present, ed. John H. Leith, 3rd ed. (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1982), 521.
[27] Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” Karl Barth Theologian of Freedom, ed. Clifford Green (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 265-96.
[29] John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 137.
[30] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics. Ed. Clifford J. Green. Trans. R. Krauss, et al DBWE 6 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006), 182.
[31] Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. Neville H. Smith (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 361.