Reuters
President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the world with his attempt to impose martial law
News travels so fast in South Korea that newspapers can no longer keep up. President Yoon Suk Yeol's shock attempt to impose martial law last Tuesday night was so fleeting that it did not make headlines. By the time he sent in the troops, the press was already in print. In the next day's editions, the failure of the takeover had already been overcome.
In a week, the president went from acting contrite and apologetic, hoping to avoid impeachment, to brazenly defiant, vowing to keep fighting as the net closed around him.
Banned from leaving the country while he is under investigation for treason – a crime punishable by death – he faces a second impeachment vote this weekend, amid support from his party is diminishing. Meanwhile, the angry roars of thousands of people in the streets each evening grow louder and louder.
For a brief moment this week, it looked like he had struck a deal with his party to step down early, in exchange for not being thrown out of power in last Saturday's vote. But as the week progressed, there was no sign from the president or details of such a plan, and it gradually became clear that Yoon had no intention of resigning.
On Thursday, he was stubborn. “I will fight to the end,” he said, defending his decision to take control of the country.
His speech was disjointed and filled with baseless conspiracy theories, including a vague suggestion that North Korea may have rigged the previous election, in which it failed to take control of Parliament. Parliament was a “monster”, he said; the opposition party is “dangerous”, and it, by declaring martial law, is trying to protect the people and save democracy.
Yoon spent much of this week in hiding as police attempted to raid his offices to gather evidence. In an attempt to temper public anger, his party announced it would not be allowed to make decisions in the future – even though legal experts agreed there was nothing in the Constitution to allow this.
Protesters are angry at Yoon – and at the lawmakers who protect him
This left everyone with the same pressing question: who runs the country? — especially since Yoon's top army commanders have said they would defy his orders if he tried to impose martial law again.
There is now a troubling power vacuum in a country that lives with the constant threat of attack by North Korea. “There is no legal basis for this arrangement. We are in a dangerous and chaotic situation,” said Lim Ji-bong, a law professor at Sogang University.
It was obvious to everyone on the outside that this destabilizing and bizarre situation could not continue any longer. But it took some time for the presidential party, the People Power Party (PPP), to realize that Yoon's impeachment was inevitable.
Initially, his party members protected him, eager to save their political skin and consumed by their hatred of South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, whom they fear would become president if Yoon is dismissed. But on Thursday, after procrastinating for days, PPP leader Han Dong-hoon urged all lawmakers to impeach him. “The president must be immediately suspended from office,” he said.
MP Kim Sang-wook plans to vote against president
For the impeachment to pass, two-thirds of Parliament must vote in favor, meaning eight MPs from the ruling party must join the opposition. A handful have so far declared their intention to do so. One of the first to change his mind was Kim Sang-wook. “The president is no longer qualified to lead the country, he is totally unfit,” he told the BBC from his office in the National Assembly.
But Kim said not all lawmakers would follow his lead; there is a core that will remain loyal to Yoon. In his very conservative constituency, Lee said he received death threats for switching sides. “My party and my supporters called me a traitor,” he said, calling South Korean politics “intensely tribal.”
However, the vast majority of anger has been directed at the MPs who have protected Yoon thus far.
At a demonstration Wednesday evening, the slogans had changed from simply “impeach Yoon” to “impeach Yoon, dissolve the party.”
“I hate them both so much right now, but I think I hate the lawmakers even more than the president,” said Chang Yo-hoon, a 31-year-old graduate student who had joined tens of thousands of others, in freezing temperatures. , to express his disillusionment.
Chang Yo-hoon (left) was among those participating in the street protests
All week, lawmakers were bombarded with thousands of abusive messages and phone calls from the public, in what one member described to me as “phone terrorism,” while some received funeral flowers.
Even if enough lawmakers vote to impeach Yoon this weekend, his party, now divided and widely hated, risks political oblivion. “We don’t even know who we are or what we stand for anymore,” one exasperated party official told me.
Incumbent lawmaker Kim Sang-wook says it will take time to regain voters' trust. “We will not disappear, but we must rebuild ourselves from scratch,” he said. “There is a saying that South Korea's economy and culture are first-class, but its politics are third-class. Now is an opportunity to think about it.”
Yoon dealt a major blow to South Korea's reputation as a well-established, albeit young, democracy. There was pride as lawmakers quickly reversed the president's martial law decision, saying the country's democratic institutions were working after all. But the fragility of the system was once again exposed, as the party maneuvered to keep him in power, with the opposition calling it a “second coup.”
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But Professor Yun Jeong-in, a research professor at Korea University's Institute of Legal Research, insisted the country was facing “an aberration, not a systemic failure of democracy.” , highlighting the mass protests every night. “People are not panicking; they are fighting back. They see democracy as something that is rightfully theirs,” she said.
Damage was also done to South Korea's international relations and, ironically, to much of what Yoon wanted to achieve. He had a vision that South Korea would become a “global pivot state”, playing a greater role on the world stage. He even hoped that Seoul would be invited to join the elite group of G7 countries.
A Western diplomat told me they were hoping for a “rapid resolution” to the crisis. “We need South Korea to be a stable partner. Impeachment would be a step in the right direction.”
If Yoon is suspended from duty on Saturday, he won't go down without a fight. A trained prosecutor, with full knowledge of the law, he decided he would rather be indicted and challenge the decision when it came to court, rather than go silently. And the shock wave it unleashed will spread across the country for years, if not decades.
Additional reporting by Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee.
