South Korea’s parliament votes to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol

Seoul: South Korea’s parliament voted on Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over a short-lived martial law declaration on December 3 that has caused huge political turmoil in the country.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will take over as acting president while the Constitutional Court decides whether to dismiss Yoon or restore his powers.

Protesters rally in support of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.Credit: AP

The court has up to 180 days to come to a decision. If Yoon is thrown out of office, a national election to choose his successor must be held within 60 days.

The motion was carried after some members of Yoon’s People Power Party joined the opposition parties, which control 192 seats in the 300-member national assembly, clearing the two-thirds threshold needed for impeachment. The number of lawmakers supporting impeachment was 204, with 85 against, three abstentions and eight invalid ballots.

“While I may come to a stop for now, the journey toward the future that I have walked with the people over the past two and a half years must never be halted,” Yoon said in a statement, adding that he would “never to give up”.

It was the second impeachment vote after Yoon survived an initial move against him last Saturday. In that vote, most members of his ruling party boycotted. Public protests against Yoon have since intensified and his approval rating has plummeted.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is pictured here in a photo released by his office on Saturday.Credit: AP

Yoon is the second conservative president in a row to be impeached in South Korea after Park Geun-hye was removed from office in 2017.

Tens of thousands of people have braved the bitter cold and poured onto the streets of the capital, Seoul, every night for the past two weeks, calling for Yoon’s ouster and arrest.

Smaller groups of Yoon’s conservative supporters – still in the thousands – have also been rallying in Seoul, denouncing attempts to impeach the president. Both rallies have largely been peaceful.

Yoon’s martial law imposition, the first of its kind in more than four decades in South Korea, lasted only six hours, but it has caused massive political tumult, halted diplomatic activities and rattled financial markets. Yoon was forced to lift his decree after parliament unanimously voted to overturn it.

After declaring martial law, Yoon sent hundreds of troops and police officers to the parliament to try to impede its vote on the decree before they withdrew after the parliament rejected it. No major violence occurred.

Opposition parties and many experts accuse Yoon of rebellion, citing a law clause that categorises rebellion as the staging of a riot against established state authorities to undermine the constitution. They also say that by law a president in South Korea is allowed to declare martial law only during wartime or similar emergencies and has no right to suspend parliament’s operations.

The impeachment motion alleged that Yoon “committed rebellion that hurts peace on the Republic of Korea by staging a series of riots.” It said Yoon’s mobilisation of military and police forces threatened the National Assembly and the public and that his martial law decree was aimed at disturbing the constitution.

In a fiery speech on Thursday, Yoon rejected the rebellion charges, calling his martial law order an act of governance.

“I will fight to the end to prevent the forces and criminal groups that have been responsible for paralysing the country’s government and disrupting the nation’s constitutional order from threatening the future of the Republic of Korea,” Yoon said.

Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung called Yoon’s speech a “mad declaration of war” against his own people.

Prior to the impeachment vote, Yoon was banned from leaving South Korea. A leader of a rebellion plot can, by law, face the death penalty or life imprisonment.

AP, Reuters