Net closing on South Korea’s president as lawmakers receive death threats over impeachment vote

In South Korea, news is spreading so fast that newspapers are no longer able to keep up. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s shock attempt to impose martial law last Tuesday night was so short-lived that it failed to make the front page. By the time he sent the army, it was printed in the press. By the next day’s edition, the failed power grab had already been defeated.

Within weeks, the president has gone from being remorseful and apologetic, hoping to avoid impeachment, to being brazenly defiant, vowing to fight on even after an Internet shutdown.

Banned from leaving the country while he is investigated for treason – a crime punishable by death – he faces a second impeachment vote this weekend as support from his party continues to dwindle. . Meanwhile, the roar of anger of thousands of people on the streets is getting louder every night.

For a brief moment this week it seemed as if he had made a deal with his party to step down early in exchange for not removing him from office in last Saturday’s vote. But as the weeks went on, there was no sign of the President nor any details of such a plan, and it gradually became clear that Yoon had no intention of resigning.

On Thursday he came out adamant. “I will fight to the end,” he declared, Because he defended his decision to take over the country.

His speech was rambling and filled with baseless conspiracy theories, including a vague suggestion that North Korea could have rigged previous elections in which he failed to gain control of parliament. Parliament, he said, was a “monster”; The opposition party was “dangerous”, and was trying to protect the people and save democracy by declaring martial law.

Yoon spent much of this week in hiding while police attempted to raid his offices to collect evidence. To calm public anger, his party announced that he would no longer be allowed to make decisions – although legal experts agreed that there was nothing in the constitution that would allow this.

This has raised only one question before everyone – who is running the country? – Senior commanders of Yun’s military in particular have said that they would disobey Yoon’s orders if he tried to impose martial law again.

There is now a troubling power vacuum in the country, which faces the constant threat of attack by North Korea. “This arrangement has no legal basis. We are in a dangerous and chaotic situation,” said Lim Ji-bong, a law professor at Sogang University.

It was clear to everyone outside that this unstable and strange situation could not continue much longer. But it took some time for the president’s party, the People’s Power Party (PPP), to realize that Yun’s impeachment was inevitable.

Initially his party members protected him, they were eager to save their political skins, and were consumed by their hatred of South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, whom they feared would kill Yoon if If removed he will become President. But on Thursday, after several days of stalling, the PPP leader, Han Dong-hoon, came to urge all lawmakers to impeach him. “The President should be immediately suspended from office,” he said.

To pass impeachment, two-thirds of the members of Parliament would have to vote in favor, meaning eight MPs from the ruling party would have to join the opposition. So far a handful have declared their intention to do so. One of the first people to change his mind was Kim Sang-wook. “The president is no longer qualified to lead the country, he is completely 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 Yun. In his ultra-conservative constituency, Kim said he has received death threats if he switches sides. He described South Korean politics as “highly tribal”, saying, “My party and supporters have called me a traitor.”

However, most of the anger is directed at the lawmakers who have protected Yoon so far.

At a protest on Wednesday night, slogans had simply changed from “Impeach Yun” to “Impeach Yun, dissolve the party”.

“I hate both of them very much right now, but I think I hate lawmakers even more than the president,” said Chang Yo-hoon, a 31-year-old graduate student who joined thousands of others in the freezing temperatures. Had happened. , to express his disillusionment.

Throughout the week, MPs faced thousands of abusive messages and phone calls from the public, including what one Member of Parliament described to me as “phone terrorism”, while some sent flowers to funerals.

Even if enough lawmakers vote to impeach Yun this weekend, his party, now divided and widely loathed, will face political oblivion. “Now we don’t even know who we are or what we stand for,” an angry party official told me.

Defection lawmaker Kim Sang-woo thinks it will take time to regain the trust of voters. “We will not disappear, but we need to reinvent ourselves,” he said. “There is a saying that South Korea’s economy and culture are first-rate, but its politics are third-rate. Now is the time to reflect on this.”

Yoon has dealt a serious blow to South Korea’s reputation as a well-established, albeit young, democracy. When lawmakers swiftly overturned the President’s martial law decision, there was pride that the country’s democratic institutions were finally functioning. But the fragility of the system was again exposed as the party maneuvered to keep him in office, with the opposition labeling it a “second coup”.

But Professor Yoon Jeong-in, a research professor at Korea University’s Legal Research Institute, stressed that the country is dealing with “not a systemic failure of democracy, but an aberration”, pointing to the massive protests that occur every night. . He said, “People are not panicking; they are fighting back. They see democracy as something they have a right to.”

South Korea’s international relations have also been harmed, and ironically, much of what Yun wanted to achieve has been harmed. His dream was that South Korea would become a “global pivotal state”, playing a major role on the world stage. He also expected Seoul to receive an invitation to join the elite group of G7 countries.

A Western diplomat told me they were hoping for a “quick 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 office on Saturday, he will not go down without a fight. A prosecutor by profession, who knows the law inside out, he has decided that he would prefer to pursue impeachment, and challenge it when the case goes to court, rather than go quietly. And the shock they have caused will reverberate across the country for years, perhaps decades, to come.

Additional reporting by Jake Kwon and Hosu Lee.