South Korea’s SEOUL Following his unsuccessful effort to implement martial law, which threw the East Asian democracy and important U.S. ally into pandemonium, South Korean parliament decided on Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeolover.
With three abstentions and eight ballots declared invalid, the vote was 204 in favor and 85 against. The motion, which needed a two-thirds majority to pass, was put to a vote by all 300 members of the unicameral National Assembly.
Go enjoy the year-end celebrations, everyone. Following the passage of the proposal, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-sik said.
According to the motion, Yoon’s imposition of martial law was unlawful and unconstitutional since he failed to notify the National Assembly beforehand and there were no indications of a national emergency.
Members of Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP), whose boycott of an earlier impeachment vote had led it to fail, supported the proposal. Despite controlling parliament, the opposition only has 192 seats, and in order to remove Yoon from office, at least eight PPP lawmakers have to back it.
The primary opposition Democratic Party’s floor leader, Park Chan-dae, declared the vote a victory for democracy and the people.
He answered, “This is just the beginning.” People participating in the martial law will be thoroughly investigated.
Yoon’s state duties were immediately suspended after the vote, and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo took over as interim president. The PPP had previously stated that it was collaborating with Han to oversee state affairs and that Yoon was already essentially suspended from duty.
Following the impeachment decision, Han told reporters, “I will do my best in the stable governance of our country.”
Because of his alleged involvement in the declaration of martial law, Han may possibly be impeached.
Yoon remained in the presidential home on Saturday, the presidential office confirmed to NBC News. He will stay there until the Constitutional Court renders a decision, which has six months to consider whether to sustain the impeachment motion.
Since he imposed martial law last week, there have been numerous calls for Yoon to resign. The short-lived order, which Yoon lifted within hours after lawmakers voted unanimously to reject it, banned all political activity and censored the news media.
Former chief prosecutor Yoon, 63, is prohibited from traveling abroad while he is being investigated for potential rebellion charges. On Wednesday, police made an attempted attempt to raid his workplace, but security guards stopped them.
Yoon, who was elected to a single five-year term in 2022, has had difficulty implementing his policies in the opposition-controlled parliament, and the imposition of martial law has only made his popularity worse. According to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday, Yoon’s approval rating dropped from 13% a week ago to a record low of 11%, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Even within his conservative PPP, there was growing support for Yoon’s impeachment.
All we all have to think of today is our country South Korea and the people of South Korea, PPP leader Han Dong-hoon told reporters before lawmakers gathered for the vote.
Newly elected PPP floor leader Kweon Seong-dong, a veteran politician who is close with Yoon, had said the party remained formally opposed to impeachment.
A sizable contingent of demonstrators braved the cold to gather in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, the capital, prior to the vote.
Yoon s martial law declaration has deeply shaken South Korea, whichspent decades under military-authoritarian rule.
Park Geun-ha, a member of the Korean University Students Progressive Alliance, stated at a rally on Saturday before the vote that, in the hours following his announcement on December 3, “I thought if the country was not stable, my dream could be shattered at once, no matter how well I did on exams and prepared for my dreams.”
So we are asking for President Yoon s immediate impeachment and arrest.
Supporters of the protesters, many of whom carried K-pop light sticks, preordered food for them. K-pop singer-songwriter IU said she was providing 200 pieces of bread, 100 rice cakes, 200 bowls of rice soup and oxtail soup and 200 drinks so rallygoers could warm up a little bit.
A dedicated website helped protesters keep track of where they could find bathrooms as well as free food and drinks, while a bus was provided for parents needing a place to change their children s diapers.
Others rallied in support of Yoon, with pro-Yoon protester Lee Gang-san saying almost a million people were at his event. NBC News was not able to independently verify that figure.
We fear that if President Yoon is impeached, the opposition will gain more power, he told NBC News by phone.
Advocacy group Humans Rights Watch said South Koreans had stood up and fought to protect their democracy and human rights.
The impeachment proceedings highlight how checks and balances are essential in stopping abuses of power and supporting the rule of law, Deputy Asia Director Simon Henderson said.
A number of people have already been arrested in connection with the martial law declaration, including former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, the commissioner of the National Police Agency and the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
Though Yoon has apologized twice for the anxiety his order caused the public, he vowed to fight to the end in a defiant speech Thursday in which he accused the opposition of paralyzing the government to the point where he felt declaring martial law was his only choice.
Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, said Friday that Yoon s speech was a declaration of war against the people.
Impeachment is the quickest and surest way to end the crisis, said Lee, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election.
He urged PPP lawmakers to vote in favor of the second impeachment motion, saying history will remember and record your choice.
Lee also thanked the United States and allied countries for their consistent support for democracy in South Korea, which hosts almost 30,000 American troops.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told lawmakers on Friday that he would put all efforts into restoring trust in international relations and maintaining the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
Yoon s impeachment is not the end of South Korea s political turmoil, said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
It is not even the beginning of the end, which will ultimately involve election of a new president, he said.
Lee, who is favored to win an election to replace Yoon, is also in legal jeopardy, with one conviction on appeal and several other rulings pending that could disqualify him from office, Easley said.
Communist-ruledNorth Koreahas seized on the political turmoil in the South, highlighting protests demanding the impeachment of the puppet Yoon Suk Yeol regime in a second day of state media coverage Thursday after not reporting on the martial law declaration for a week. The two Koreas technically remain at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.
Without providing evidence, Yoon, who takes a harder line on North Korea than his democratic predecessor, had accused the opposition of sympathizing with the nuclear-armed state, citing it as justification for the martial law declaration when he announced it.
In his speech Thursday, Yoon said without evidence that North Korea had hacked into South Korea s National Election Commission last year, exposing security issues that he said called into question the integrity of the results of April s parliamentary election, which the liberal oppositionwon in a landslide.
Kim Yong-bin, the commission s secretary general, said Friday that there was no evidence of election fraud or that its system was hacked, saying all votes are cast with paper ballots.
It is impossible to commit election fraud with our system, he said.
Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.
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