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    Delayed US report on global human trafficking is released

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    The US Department of State has released a long-delayed, legally required report on human trafficking after an investigation by the Guardian and bipartisan pressure from Congress.The 2025 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which details conditions in the United States and more than 185 countries, was initially scheduled for release at an event in June featuring the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the Guardian has reported, but the event was scrapped and staff at the state department office charged with leading the federal government’s fight against human trafficking were cut by more 70%.The US Trafficking Victims Protection Act requires that the state department provide the report to Congress each year no later than 30 June. The delay in the release of the report this year raised fears among some anti-trafficking advocates that the 2025 document had been permanently shelved.The report was published quietly on the agency’s website on Monday without a customary introduction from the secretary of state or the ambassador tasked with monitoring and combating human trafficking, a position Donald Trump has not filled.The state department did not answer repeated questions from the Guardian about why the report had been delayed, but said it was subject to “the same rigorous review process as in years past”.The Guardian highlighted the report’s delay in a 17 September article reporting that the Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking. White House officials called the Guardian’s findings “nonsense” and said the administration remains committed to anti-trafficking efforts.Representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, who won unanimous approval from the House foreign affairs committee for an amendment that added additional oversight of federal anti-trafficking efforts hours after the Guardian’s investigation was published, expressed a mix of relief and frustration. “Let’s be clear: this report should never have been delayed in the first place,” she said in a statement.McBride said she would “be reading it closely, alongside advocates and survivors, to ensure that it lives up to its mission – shining a light on trafficking and pressing governments to act”.Current and former state department officials told the Guardian that unlike the department’s annual human rights report, which was significantly weakened amid reports of political interference, the human-trafficking report largely appears to represent an honest assessment of agency experts on anti-trafficking work abroad. There was a notable exception. Earlier this year, an effort to draft a section on LGBTQ+ victims, written in coordination with two trafficking survivors, was terminated.Jose Alfaro, one of the survivors invited to draft the now-excised section, said he was told that Trump’s executive order banning references to diversity, equity and inclusion was the reason he and the rest of the team were pulled off the project.The term “LGBTQ” doesn’t appear in the 2025 report, and Alfaro says this is a mistake. Without “critical context” about what makes some groups vulnerable to trafficking and how to identify potential victims, “we only contribute to the problem rather than solving it”, he said.According to a state department spokesperson, “Human trafficking affects human beings, not ideologies. The 2025 TIP report focuses on human trafficking issues directly, as they affect all people regardless of background.”A state department spokesperson said the US had made significant strides in ending forced labor in the Cuban export program and working with the Department of Treasury in imposing sanctions on entities using forced labor to run online scam centers.As for shifts in anti-trafficking strategy, the state department provided a statement from Rubio saying the agency is “reorienting our foreign assistance programs to align directly with what is best for the United States and our citizens. We are continuing essential lifesaving programs and making strategic investments that strengthen our partners and our own country.”The report names Cambodia a “state sponsor” of trafficking for the first time, a designation that can lead to sanctions. It alleges senior Cambodian government officials profit from human trafficking by allowing properties they own to be “used by online scam operators to exploit victims in forced labor and forced criminality”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAfghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea and Russia – which the report says forcibly has transferred “tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia, including by forcibly separating some children from their parents or guardians” – are also listed among the state sponsors of trafficking.Representative Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey who wrote the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, released a statement praising Trump. “The president is absolutely right to spotlight and criticize those countries that are not only failing to stop human trafficking, but in many cases, are actively profiting from it,” he said.Brazil and South Africa were put on a state department “watchlist” of countries that show insufficient efforts to combat human trafficking and may face sanctions for the first time, with the department citing failures of both countries to demonstrate progress on the issue, with fewer investigations and prosecutions.The document is also critical of Israel, describing as “credible” reports that “Israeli forces forcibly used Palestinian detainees as scouts in military operations in Gaza to clear booby-trapped buildings and tunnels and gather information”.The allegations were first raised by Palestinian sources and confirmed by Israeli soldiers in testimony gathered by Breaking the Silence, an organization of current and former members of the Israeli military. They have since been substantiated in investigations by Israeli media.Joel Carmel, a former IDF officer who serves as Breaking the Silence’s advocacy director, said he hoped the report “would be used to be sure Israel is held accountable” and “doesn’t end up sitting on a shelf somewhere”. He said despite a ruling by the Israeli supreme court that declared the use of human shields to be illegal, “there’s certainly the fear that this is the new norm for the IDF”.Under previous administrations – including Trump’s first – the TIP report was released with great fanfare. The secretary of state typically hosts a “launch ceremony” featuring the TIP ambassador and anti-trafficking “heroes” from around the world.​​The delayed report release is part of an ongoing retreat in the Trump administration’s support of anti-trafficking measures, including the impending lapse of more than 100 grants from the Department of Justice, which advocates say could deprive thousands of survivors from access to services when funding runs out today.

    Aaron Glantz is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

    Bernice Yeung is managing editor at the investigative reporting program at UC Berkeley Journalism

    Noy Thrupkaew is a reporter and director of partnerships at Type Investigations More

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      One by one, leaders learn that grovelling to Trump leads to disaster. When will it dawn on Starmer? | Simon Tisdall

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      Sucking up to Donald Trump never works for long. Narendra Modi is the latest world leader to learn this lesson the hard way. Wooing his “true friend” in the White House, India’s authoritarian prime minister thought he’d conquered Trump’s inconstant heart. The two men hit peak pals in 2019, holding hands at a “Howdy Modi” rally in Texas. But it’s all gone pear-shaped thanks to Trump’s tariffs and dalliance with Pakistan. Like a jilted lover on the rebound, Modi shamelessly threw himself at Vladimir Putin in China last week. Don and Narendra! It’s over! Although, to be honest, it always felt a little shallow.Other suitors for Trump’s slippery hand have suffered similar heartbreak. France’s Emmanuel Macron turned on the charm, feting him at the grand reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral. But Trump cruelly dumped him after they argued over Gaza, calling him a publicity-seeker who “always gets it wrong”. The EU’s Ursula von der Leyen, desperate for a tete-a-tete, flew to Trump’s Scottish golf course to pay court. Result: perhaps the most humiliating, lopsided trade deal since imperial Britain’s 19th-century “unequal treaties” with Peking’s dragon throne.The list of broken pledges and dashed hopes is lengthy. Relationships between states normally pivot on power, policy and strategic interests. But with faithless, fickle Trump, it’s always personal – and impermanent. Disconcertingly, he told Mexico’s impressive president, Claudia Sheinbaum, that he “likes her very much” – then threatened to invade her country, ostensibly in pursuit of drug cartels. Leaders from Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and South Africa have all attempted to ingratiate themselves, to varying degrees. They still haven’t fared well.All this should set red lights flashing for Britain’s Keir Starmer ahead of Trump’s state visit in 10 days’ time. The prime minister’s unedifying Trump-whisperer act has produced little benefit to date, at high reputational cost. Starmer apparently believes his handling of the US relationship is a highlight of his first year in office. Yet Trump ignores his Gaza ceasefire pleas and opposes UK recognition of a Palestinian state. He hugely boosted Putin, Britain’s nemesis, with his half-baked Alaska summit. US security guarantees for postwar Ukraine are more mirage than reality. His steel tariffs and protectionist policies continue to hurt UK workers.His second state visit is an appalling prospect. The honour is utterly undeserved. It’s obvious what Trump will gain: a royal endorsement, a chance to play at being King Donald, a privileged platform from which to deliver his corrosive, divisive populist-nationalist diatribes at a moment of considerable social fragility in the US and UK. Polls suggest many Britons strongly oppose the visit; and most don’t trust the US. So what Starmer thinks he will gain is a mystery. The fleeting goodwill of a would-be dictator who is dismantling US democracy and wrecking the global laws-based order championed by the UK is a poor return.View image in fullscreenAs he demands homage from abject subjects, this spectacle will confirm the UK in the eyes of the world as a lackey state, afraid to stand up for its values. Starmer’s government is now so morally confused that it refuses to acknowledge that Israel, fully backed by Trump, is committing genocide in Gaza, while at the same time making the wearing of a pro-Palestine T-shirt a terrorist act. The Trump travesty will be an embarrassment, signalling a further descent into colonial subservience. As next year’s 250th anniversary of US independence approaches, the chronically unhealthy “special relationship” has finally come full circle.Not everyone is genuflecting to Trump – and evidence mounts that resistance, not grovelling, is by far the best way to handle this schoolyard bully. Modi’s geopolitical fling in China showed he’s learned that when dealing with Trump, firm resolve, supported by alternative options, is the better policy. Last week’s defiant speech by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, reflected a similar realisation. Both he and Putin have discovered that when they dig their heels in, whether the issue is Ukraine, trade or sanctions, Trump backs off. Xi has adopted an uncompromising stance from the start. Putin uses flattery, skilfully manipulating Trump’s frail ego. The result is the same. Like cowards the world over, Trump respects strength because he’s weak. So he caves.The bigger the wolf, the more sheepishly Trump responds. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, like Putin, an indicted war criminal, has shown that by sticking to his guns (literally, in his case), he can face down Trump. More than that, Trump can be co-opted. After Netanyahu attacked Iran in June, against initial US advice, he induced the White House to join in – although, contemptibly, Trump only did so once he was certain who was winning. Then, typically, he claimed credit for a bogus world-changing victory. North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, similarly bamboozled Trump during his first term. Having learned nothing, and nursing his implausible Nobel peace prize ambitions, Trump is again raising the prospect of unconditional engagement with Kim.Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has the right idea. The more Trump tries to bully him with 50% tariffs and a barrage of criticism, the more he resists. Trump is particularly exercised over the fate of Jair Bolsonaro, Lula’s hard-right predecessor, who, like Trump, mounted a failed electoral coup. But Lula is not having any of it. “If the United States doesn’t want to buy [from us], we will find new partners,” he said. “The world is big, and it’s eager to do business with Brazil.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat’s the spirit! And guess what? Lula’s poll ratings are soaring. Wake up, Keir Starmer – and dump Trump.

      Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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      Trump says he wants to meet with Kim Jong-un as South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung visits US

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      Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and that he was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.South Korea’s new president, Lee Jae Myung, arrived for talks just after the US president criticized the South Korean government, apparently over its handling of investigations related to his conservative predecessor’s December attempt to impose martial law.The remarks cast a dark mood over high-stakes talks for Lee, who took office in June after a snap election that followed Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment and removal.Welcoming Lee to the White House’s Oval Office, Trump said he was open to negotiating aspects of the US-South Korean trade deal and to meeting Kim.“I’d like to have a meeting,” Trump told reporters. “I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future.“Trump and Lee held their first meeting in tense circumstances. The US president lodged vague complaints about a “purge or revolution” in South Korea on social media before later walking the comments back as a likely “misunderstanding” between the allies.Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher US tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending and details of a trade deal that included $350bn in promised South Korean investments in the United States.North Korea’s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint US-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defense systems.Since Trump’s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump’s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, and a May visit from Cyril Ramaphosa, the South African president.Lee, deploying a well-worn strategy by foreign visitors to the Trump White House, talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president’s interior decorating and peacemaking. He told reporters earlier that he had read the president’s 1987 memoir, Trump: The Art of the Deal, to prepare.As the leaders met, the liberal South Korean encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea.“I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong-un, build a Trump World [real-estate complex] in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,” Lee said, speaking in Korean.South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the US, with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a “money machine” that takes advantage of American military protection. More

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      Russia Claims to Have Retaken Final Village in Its Kursk Region

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      Ukraine denied that it had been pushed out of the region and said that its military operations inside Russia were continuing. Russia’s top military commander said on Saturday that Moscow’s forces had retaken the last village that Ukraine was holding in the Kursk region of western Russia, though Ukrainian officials denied that their brazen campaign in the area had finally come to an end.The Russian claim was made by Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, who has managed the invasion of Ukraine and defense of Russia as chief of the general staff. His statement came six weeks after his forces retook all but a tiny sliver of the Russian territory that Ukraine had been holding since a surprise offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region last summer.In a televised video, General Gerasimov reported to President Vladimir V. Putin that Russian forces had on Saturday recaptured the village of Gornal, on the border with Ukraine. Speaking to Mr. Putin via a video link, General Gerasimov said that the advance had “completed the defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces that attacked the Kursk region.”The Ukrainian General Staff denied that its forces had withdrawn fully from the region, saying the country’s military operation there was ongoing.“The operational situation is difficult, but our units continue to hold their positions,” the General Staff said in a statement.The expulsion of Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region could remove one of the major complications vexing the peace talks pushed by President Trump, whose special envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin for more than three hours in Moscow on Friday to discuss a deal that could end the conflict.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s shuttering of global media agency endangers reporters, staff say

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      Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. Staff have been placed on administrative leave and contractors have been fired. The agency had around 3,500 employees with an annual budget of $886m in 2024.“We have many coworkers in different services, several of whom came here and sought asylum visas. If their own government knew they worked for RFA [Radio Free Asia] and they went back to their own country, their lives would be at risk,” Jaewoo Park, a journalist for RFA, who was placed on administrative leave along with all of his coworkers, told the Guardian.“Authoritarian governments have praised what Trump is doing right now,” Park said. “In Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, there were people who fought for freedom and democracy, and they came to work at RFA. It’s very risky for them. Their lives are in danger if Radio Free Asia doesn’t exist.”Chinese and Russian state media have praised the cuts of the news agencies, with a Russian broadcaster calling the cuts a “holiday” for Russian state media outlets.The shuttering of the agency was unexpected and has caused chaos for Park and others. “My wife is 28 weeks pregnant and we’re very concerned because I might go back to South Korea because I’m on a working visa. My wife is almost due and we just bought a home last year,” he added. “It’s very concerning and depressing.”But the impact of the decision will be felt globally, said Park. He cited Radio Free Asia’s broadcasts to North Korea which, he noted, defectors from North Korea have cited as an important source of independent news.“We know North Korea is a very oppressed country. They cannot hear anything other than the government press,” he said.Workers at Voice of America have also pointed out the risks and dangers posed to some employees on visas who may have to return to their home countries now their positions are in jeopardy.Two contributors for VoA are currently imprisoned in Myanmar and Vietnam and four contributors to Radio Free Asia are currently imprisoned in Vietnam. Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan also reportedly have journalists affiliated with the news agencies currently imprisoned.“Dozens of VoA staffers in Washington are on J-1 visas [non-immigrant visas meant to encourage cultural exchange], and if they lose them, they may have to return to countries whose governments have a record of jailing critics,” wrote Liam Scott in the Columbia Journalism Review, a VoA journalist who was notified their contract would be terminated on 31 March. “Two Russian contractors on J-1 visas who are set to be officially terminated at the end of March are considered at significant risk of being imprisoned if they return to Russia, according to a VoA staffer with knowledge of the situation.”Stanislav Aseyev, a Ukrainian journalist, shared in a post on X that he was tortured for writing for Radio Liberty after being told it was an “enemy” of Russia.“Now, the ‘enemy of Russia’ is being destroyed by America itself, and my torture seems doubly in vain,” he wrote.A VOA employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian: “Screwing over the people who worked for them and helped them, reminds me of what happened to Afghan interpreters.” Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Afghan interpreters for the US military were left behind, stranded and in danger while trying to obtain special visas to escape to the US.“It would be an even bigger shame if people that sacrificed for our country were thrown under the bus. It’s a tremendous own goal in terms of US foreign policy and US national interests,” they said.Federal workers, journalists and labor unions filed a lawsuit last week against the US Agency for Global Media over the shuttering of the agency by the Trump administration, seeking immediate relief to reverse it.Donald Trump issued an executive order to defund the US Agency for Global Media, on 14 March. Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, formally joined Voice of America as special adviser in late February 2025.Lake lost the 2022 election for governor of Arizona and a 2024 US Senate race in Arizona as the Republican nominee. She claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and filed lawsuits claiming her 2022 election bid was also stolen from her. Those lawsuits were dismissed and her lawyers were recently ordered by a federal court to pay $122,000 in legal fees to Maricopa County for the “frivolous” lawsuits.Lake claimed in a press release that the agency was “not salvageable” and accused it of “massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency”.The US state department and US Agency for Global Media did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Asked about the visa and immigration statuses for workers at the news agencies during a press briefing on 21 March, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said: “I have the question out to the secretary. It’s something that I’m following up with as well. He’s a busy guy.” More

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      North Korea Says It’s Building a Nuclear-Powered Submarine

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      The announcement came amid fears that Pyongyang may be receiving crucial military technology from Russia in return for sending troops and weapons for its war against Ukraine.North Korea said on Saturday that it was building its first nuclear-powered submarine to enhance its nuclear weapons abilities, and the state news media showed the nation’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting part of what appeared to be a new submarine larger than any owned by the country.The announcement, made in the state news media, came as United States and South Korean officials feared that the North may be receiving technological help from Russia to help modernize its military in return for sending troops and conventional weapons to help in its war against Ukraine.Mr. Kim “learned about the building of a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said in a report on Saturday about his visit to an unidentified naval shipyard. The agency carried photographs showing what appeared to be the hull of a submarine under construction.It was the first time that North Korea claimed that a nuclear-powered submarine was under construction and claimed to show a photograph of it.North Korea has dozens of old Soviet-era submarines, all diesel-powered, which would have to resurface frequently to recharge their batteries during a long-distance trip like crossing the Pacific. A nuclear-powered submarine, which can cover a long distance without resurfacing, would enhance North Korea’s ability to approach a faraway enemy like the United States without being detected, and to strike it with nuclear missiles.The state news media on Saturday quoted Mr. Kim as saying that his country’s naval might would be “fully displayed in any necessary waters without limitation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Korean Officials Convicted Over Forcibly Sending North Koreans Home

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      The case of two North Korean fishermen, who murdered 16 compatriots before they sought asylum, has become a political minefield in the South.In 2019, two North Korean fishermen confessed to murdering 16 shipmates ​before they fled to South Korea by boat​ and sought asylum.​ The then-progressive government in ​the South denied them refugee status ​or a trial there and, in an unprecedented move, sent them back to the North​.​That decision triggered ​not only a political firestorm at the time​ but also criminal charges against four senior officials prosecuted after the current conservative government, with a more hard-line stance against North Korea, took power in Seoul in 2022.On Tuesday, a three-judge panel in the Seoul Central District Court found the four top national security aides to former President Moon Jae-in guilty of abusing their official power when they sent the fleeing North Korean fishermen back. The court announced prison sentences but decided not to impose them immediately, indicating in its verdict that it considered the criminal charges against the​ officials to be politically motivated under Mr. Moon’s successor, President Yoon Suk Yeol.The four former officials — Mr. Moon’s national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong; his director of national intelligence, Suh Hoon; his presidential chief of staff, Noh Young-min; and his unification minister, Kim Yeon-chul — were sentenced to six to 10 months in prison. But the sentences were suspended for two years, after which they will be removed.The criminal charges the four faced were the first of their kind in South Korea and reflect the polarization between the country’s two main political parties when it comes to dealing with its decades-old foe North Korea.​When South Korea captured the two North Korean fishermen, then ages 22 and 23, in its waters in 2019​, they were no ordinary defectors. They confessed that they fled after killing the captain and 15 other crewmen on their boat with ​hammers, dumping​ their bodies into the sea.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea Breaks Silence on South Korea’s Martial Law Declaration

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      In its first statement about the turmoil over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law decree, the North said nothing about how inter-Korean relations might be affected.North Korea made its first public statement on Wednesday about the short-lived declaration of martial law in South Korea last week, with its state media saying that President Yoon Suk Yeol had plunged his country into “pandemonium.”The article gave no indication of how the turmoil in the South might affect relations between the Koreas. Since Mr. Yoon, who has a confrontational policy toward North Korea, took office in 2022, the relationship has reached its lowest point in years.The North’s main government newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, gave the article relatively little prominence, running it on the sixth page of its Wednesday edition. It summarized Mr. Yoon’s failed attempt to seize control of the National Assembly on Dec. 3 by sending in troops, the spread of protests across South Korea and the political uncertainty that has prevailed since then.“The puppet Yoon Suk Yeol’s shocking decision to level his fascist guns and bayonets at his own people has turned the puppet South into pandemonium,” the article said.It also said that the failure of opposition lawmakers’ attempt to impeach Mr. Yoon in the National Assembly on Saturday, after Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party boycotted the vote, had turned all of South Korea into a “protest scene.”The political vacuum in the South has raised concerns that its government and military could be ill-prepared for any escalation in tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime in the North.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Korea’s Lawmakers Question Military About Yoon’s Martial Law Order

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      The military has spent decades trying to rehabilitate its image and win public trust after a brutal past. Its role in President Yoon’s martial law raised a specter from that era.South Korea’s military — agents of terror and violence in the 1970s and ’80s — spent decades scrupulously cleaning up its image to become what many people in the country came to see as a modern and disciplined force.But that image was shattered on Thursday when the general who led a short-lived spasm of martial law this week was grilled in Parliament, a rambling appearance that cast the military as ill-prepared and disorganized from the top down.“We were not militarily prepared because it was put into action in such a hurry,” Gen. Park An-su, the Army chief of staff, told a parliamentary hearing on Thursday. “There was confusion.”His testimony offered the first opportunity for lawmakers to question the military about the martial law order handed down on Tuesday night by President Yoon Suk Yeol. The decree plunged the country into a political crisis, sparking widespread anger that drove thousands of protesters to the streets. Mr. Yoon was forced to reverse course after just six hours.General Park insisted that he had not had any role in the planning: He told lawmakers he had been caught off guard, first learning of it when Mr. Yoon announced the extraordinary move on television. The military’s follow-up announcement, under his name, banned “all political activities” and public rallies and asserted control over media outlets, among other steps. But in his account on Thursday, General Park claimed he had not read it until his signature was requested.He described being at a loss over how to proceed as commander, unsure of what steps to take beyond trying to set up a new office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More