By Jack Kim
SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said on Friday the best way to restore order was to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, a day ahead of a planned parliamentary vote over Yoon’s short-lived imposition of martial law.
Yoon’s move to impose military rule on Dec. 3 was rescinded barely six hours later but it plunged the country into a constitutional crisis and triggered widespread calls for him to step down for breaking the law.
The beleaguered president survived an initial impeachment attempt a week earlier when his People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the vote, preventing a quorum.
At least seven members of the PPP have since declared their intention to support impeachment on Saturday, nearing the eight PPP votes needed to reach the 200-vote threshold alongside the 192 opposition party lawmakers.
Yoon vowed on Thursday to “fight to the end”, accusing the opposition party of paralysing the government and claiming a North Korean hack into the election commission made his party’s crushing defeat in an April parliamentary election questionable.
Democratic Party leader Lee called Yoon’s remarks “a declaration of war” against his people. “It proved that impeachment is the fastest and the most effective way to end the confusion,” he said.
Yoon survived the first attempt to impeach him last Saturday when most of his PPP boycotted the vote.
Opposition parties have introduced another impeachment bill and plan to hold a vote at 4 p.m. (0700 GMT) on Saturday.
A Gallup Korea poll on Friday had two-thirds of supporters of Yoon’s party opposing the impeachment, though three-quarters of all respondents supported it.
Lee called on PPP members to “join and vote yes for impeachment”, saying “history will remember and record your decision”. A vote to impeach Yoon would send the case to the Constitutional Court, which has up to six months to decide whether to remove him from office or reinstate him.
There was more criticism of Yoon’s defiant address on Thursday, including his assertion that a hack by North Korea last year may have compromised the computer system of the National Election Commission, without citing evidence.
Yoon cited as one reason for declaring martial law a refusal by the commission to cooperate fully in a systems inspection which he said meant the integrity of the parliamentary election held in April could not be assured.
On Friday, the Secretary General of the commission, Kim Yong-bin, denied the possibility of election fraud. He said voting is entirely done by paper ballots and the courts have dismissed all 216 claims of irregularities raised as groundless.
Yoon is separately under criminal investigation for alleged insurrection over the martial law declaration.
As part of ongoing investigations, prosecutors on Friday arrested an army commander in the Capital Defence Command, and the country’s two most senior police officers were detained for alleged involvement in the martial law order, Yonhap news agency reported.
DIPLOMATIC, ECONOMIC FALLOUT
South Korean shares rose for a fourth straight session on Friday on hopes that the political uncertainty would ease after this weekend’s parliamentary impeachment vote.
The finance ministry said authorities would take more measures to stabilise markets if volatility heightens excessively after the voting result on Saturday.
Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told parliament that there had been “serious damage” to South Korea’s diplomatic position because of the martial law decree.
Cho said he told Yoon in a brief cabinet meeting before the declaration that the move would have diplomatic repercussions and potentially undo many [democratic?– he did not specify] achievements in the decades since South Korea’s founding.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said last week that Yoon’s decree had been seen as “deeply problematic” and “illegitimate”.
But the U.S. and other Western partners, many of whom had previously lauded Yoon as a champion of democracy in Asia, have been largely muted, beyond expressing general concerns for stability and praising Yoon’s decision to revoke his order.
A Western diplomat in Seoul told Reuters that working-level meetings with South Korean counterparts had largely continued unaffected by the political crisis, but the diplomatic community was watching closely to see if the situation deteriorated.
Yoon’s potential ouster comes as South Korea is faced with navigating the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who during his first term in 2017-21 clashed with Seoul’s previous president over trade and paying for U.S. troops based in the country.
(Reporting by Jack Kim; additional reporting by Josh Smith, Hyonhee Shin, Joyce Lee, and Ju-min Park; editing by Tom Hogue, Michael Perry and Mark Heinrich)
