Vote to Impeach South Korean President Fails After Martial Law Declaration

The effort to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol failed on Saturday morning. Yoon was able to survive because his party, the People Power Party, ultimately opposed impeachment.

The impeachment effort came after Yoon set off a political crisis earlier this week in South Korea by declaring martial law. Yoon’s move led to protests and a bipartisan parliamentary vote to reject the martial law declaration. The president quickly responded on Wednesday by lifting the declaration.

Yoon apologized on Saturday morning for his decision to impose martial law, saying, “I am deeply sorry and sincerely apologize to the citizens who must have been greatly shocked.”

Saturday’s impeachment attempted to further the effort to hold Yoon accountable, but it was not able to overcome the high bar required to do so. As the New York Times reports:

To impeach, the assembly needed a two-thirds vote from the 300-member assembly, requiring at least eight defections from Yoon’s party.

All but three of the 108 members of Mr. Yoon’s party sat out the vote, which meant the assembly did not have the minimum number of legislators required for the impeachment vote to be valid.

Opposition lawmakers stretched out the session for several hours while they urged members of the ruling party to return to the chamber and support the ouster, but ultimately called off the session around 9:20 p.m.

Han Dong-hoon, the leader of Mr. Yoon’s party, said earlier in the day that it was impossible for the president to carry out his normal duties, and that he would need to leave office before the end of his term. What that looks like, short of impeachment, he did not specify.

The Wall Street Journal reported that one lawmaker shouted “Traitors!” as members of Yoon’s party walked out of parliament, and that others tried to block the doors. Lawmakers opposed to Yoon have said they will bring another impeachment vote next Saturday, and they have pledged to keep doing so each week until are successful, the Journal reports.

Tens of thousands of protesters were outside the National Assembly to demand that Yoon be removed from office. As Namhee Lee, a UCLA professor of modern Korean history, told my colleague Inae Oh earlier this week, South Korea has a storied, and often joyous, culture of protest:

Korea has a long history of protest, going back to the colonial period, the March 1 movement, and so forth. And you have to remember that these all happened when social media was not even around. Throughout history, during crucial moments, Koreans have been at the forefront of protests. Just take the fact that South Korea is probably the only country in the world to have specific names for generations based on the protests of their time. Yuk-sahn, Yushin, the 386 generation, etc…

But a major shift happened in 2008 during the protests against the conservative president’s decision to allow beef imported by the United States into the country despite serious mad cow disease concerns. That’s when the composition of protesters began to change drastically. It wasn’t just the usual labor unions and social movement organizations coming out. Mothers with baby strollers, hobby groups, and ordinary citizens concerned about their health. That’s the moment when South Korean protesting changed completely. And we saw this once again during the candlelight protests, where a more festive nature took hold with singers and entertainment among the protesters.