Opposition parties submit motion to impeach Yoon after his shock bid to put South Korea under martial law for first time in over four decades
People take part in a rally to demand South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's removal from power, in Seoul on Wednesday.People take part in a rally to demand South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's removal from power, in Seoul on Wednesday.South Korean opposition parties said they had submitted a motion to impeach the president, Yoon Suk Yeol, over his short-lived declaration of martial law.
The US indefinitely postponed meetings of the nuclear consultative group and related tabletop military exercises, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The NCG is a signature Yoon effort aimed at having South Korea play a greater role in allied planning for potential nuclear war on the peninsula.
Opposition parties together control 192 seats in the 300-seat parliament, so would need lawmakers from Yoon’s own party to join them to attain the required two-thirds majority in the legislature for impeachment.If the national assembly votes to impeach Yoon, the decision must then be upheld by at least six out of nine judges in the constitutional court. If he is removed from office, Yoon would become only the second president of South Korea since it became a democracy to have met that fate.
“We will accept the national assembly’s request and lift the martial law through the cabinet meeting.”The U-turn prompted jubilation among protesters outside parliament who had braved freezing temperatures to keep vigil through the night in defiance of Yoon’s martial law order. Demonstrators who had been waving South Korean flags and chanting “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol” outside the national assembly erupted in cheers.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning Hankyoreh’s editorial framed Yoon’s martial law declaration as a “betrayal of the people”, expressing disbelief that 21st-century Korea could see an elected president use the same justification as the military junta did 45 years ago. It said that Yoon had “lost the minimum judgment and rationality required of a head of state”.
“Our national assembly has become a haven for criminals, a den of legislative dictatorship that seeks to paralyse the judicial and administrative systems and overturn our liberal democratic order,” Yoon said.
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