South Korean President declares martial law, accuses opposition | Martial law lifted

Minutes before Yoon spoke, his party leader Han Dong-hoon appeared on television saying it had become clear that the president was not going to step aside. Han then urged members of the party to vote to remove him from office this Saturday.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gp8p875g8o

Sounds like the next impeachment will be successful from the parliament's side. Then the question is if they'll get a six-judge majority to confirm his removal.
 

Here are the latest developments.​


South Korea’s National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, suspending him from office after his stunning declaration of martial law earlier this month caused widespread outrage and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis.

With the impeachment vote, Mr. Yoon has been suspended from office. Under South Korea’s Constitution, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will step in as interim leader. The Constitutional Court will now decide whether to reinstate Mr. Yoon or formally remove him, a process that could take up to six months.
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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/14/world/south-korea-impeachment-president-yoon
 
WPMUFC said:
The level of detail coming out of this is insane. The impeachment block by his party is looking dumber and dumber by the minute. Democracies not holding wannabe dictatorships to account only gives the space to try and validate their actions. Not only should he have been impeached, there should've been police waiting at the vote to then arrest him.

Absolutely pathetic by the parliament.
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The following clause in the original impeachment motion explains in part why the ruling party failed to support it:

"Under the guise of so-called 'value diplomacy,' the (Yoon Suk Yeol) administration ignored geopolitical balance, provoked North Korea, China, and Russia, and pursued an unusual pro-Japan stance by appointing Japan-aligned figures to key government positions. This approach resulted in Northeast Asian isolation, heightened risks of war, and a failure to uphold the responsibilities of national security and public

In other words, the opposition used the motion as an opportunity to acquire tacit official recognition of its view on the last few years of ruling party foreign policy, which were basically an essential correction to the previous administration's pro-North policy. Thus it was an impeachment they obviously could not support. Hence:

In response, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) and other opposition groups revised the second impeachment motion, set for a Dec. 14 vote, removing contentious language and scrambling to issue explanations through diplomatic channels.
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=388418

The martial law move was incontestably daft and with as yet unknown potentially dangerous repercussions. But if you want to know a little more about the background to domestic politics in SK, take a look at this guy's stuff. He's the most acute foreign resident observer of its goings on.
https://sthelepress.com/

Look at his back catalogue if you want to learn about the sympathies and ideological underpinnings of the Minjoo-dang (Korean Democratic Party).
 
S Korean president accused of ordering use of guns to stop martial law vote
Prosecutors allege that South Korea's suspended president told the military to use guns while attempting to remove lawmakers from parliament while they were voting down his martial law decree.
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When MPs were able to force entry, prosecutors say Yoon told the chief of the capital defence command, Lee Jin-woo, that military forces could shoot if necessary to enter the National Assembly.

"Tell (your troops) to go to the voting chamber, four for each (lawmaker) and carry them out," Yoon is alleged to have told Gen Lee. "What are you doing? Break down the doors and drag them out."
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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xj7kpe7kjo
 
WPMUFC said:
every update gets worse and the system seems paralysed/unable to treat this with the gravity it deserves.
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The guy's been suspended.

The other guy who tried to launch a coup in the US is about to be President again.

I'd say that South Korea is doing fairly well do far at dealing with this.
 
Frosty said:
The guy's been suspended.

The other guy who tried to launch a coup in the US is about to be President again.

I'd say that South Korea is doing fairly well do far at dealing with this.
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Yes, the US is a basket case. South Korea is still not dealing with this seriously enough.

Mr Han, a career public servant and economist, spent the next two weeks trying to reassure Korea's major diplomatic partners and stabilise the markets. But he was also embroiled in political strife with the liberal opposition Democratic Party (DP), which holds a majority in the National Assembly.

A major trigger for Mr Han's impeachment was his refusal to accept a DP demand that he immediately appoint justices to three vacant seats on the country's Constitutional Court to enhance fairness and public confidence in its upcoming ruling on Mr Yoon's impeachment.

Restoring the court's full nine-member panel is crucial for the opposition because a court ruling to uphold Mr Yoon's removal from office needs backing from at least six justices, meaning a full bench would increase the prospect of Mr Yoon's ouster.
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However, Mr Han said he wouldn't appoint the justices without bipartisan consent — a move critics suspected meant he was siding with Mr Yoon's loyalists in the governing conservative People Power Party, or PPP, who want to see Mr Yoon regain power.
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Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership think tank, says Mr Han lacked a legitimate reason to go against the appointment of the court justices.

However, he also believes the DP shouldn't have pursued the acting president's impeachment so hurriedly — and the resulting instability and loss of international standing is far worse for the country than the fallout from the first impeachment.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-28/han-duck-soo-impeached-republic-korea-explainer/104767790
 
WPMUFC said:
Yes, the US is a basket case. South Korea is still not dealing with this seriously enough.







https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-28/han-duck-soo-impeached-republic-korea-explainer/104767790
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Sadly I think we are seeing the erosion of democratic checks and balances in many countries. I agree more should be done. But consider the UK where Johnson reduced the power of the electoral commission and introduced photo ID for elections, disenfranchising a huge number.

We need to strengthen these institutions. Populist politicians enfeeble them.
 
Their political landscape seems to be extremely partisan, the parties more interested in impeding and hampering each other whereever they can rather than actually doing what's good for the country. And the amount of constant corruption up into the highest echelons is certainly not helping things.

It feels hard to see where the crap they fling at each other is a genuine issue that warrants the reaction, and where they're just trying to trip each other up again. Impeaching the stand-in seems to be sort of reasonable to me - it appears to be a play to get Yoon back in power by refusing to sign off on the new judges until the parliament agrees on the candidates. A parliament that would probably have trouble agreeing on what the weather outside is while looking out the window. Fat chance.
 
A court has now ordered the arrest of the impeached president Yoon after he ignored three summons by the investigators of his shortlived invocation of martial law. He can now be lawfully arrested and interrogated for up to 48 hours, after which they'll have to decide whether to release him or petition for a longer-term arrest while the investigations are ongoing.
The court's order also contains a permission to search his property for potential evidence.
 
"We determined that executing the detention warrant would be practically impossible due to the continued confrontation, and suspended the execution out of concern for the safety of on-site personnel caused by the resistance," the CIO said in a notice to the press. "We plan to decide on the next steps following a review.
"We express serious regret over the behavior of the suspect who refused to comply with legally set procedures," it added.
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They actually retreated rather than arrest the people who are preventing the arrest and search... the execution of a lawful court order is suspended because a military unit and the president's security detail can just decide they don't care.
The country is fecked, isn't it? When its organs decide that the rule of law doesn't matter, partisanship to whichever side they're on does, then that's about as fecked as it can go before open civil war, no?
 
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