South Korea’s opposition leader urges president’s party to support impeachment over state of emergency By Reuters

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung said on Friday the best way to restore order in the country was to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol, a day ahead of a planned parliamentary vote on Joon’s short-lived state of emergency.

Yoon’s move to impose military rule on December 3 was lifted barely six hours later, but plunged the country into a constitutional crisis and widespread calls for him to step down due to law-breaking.

The embattled president survived an initial impeachment attempt a week earlier when his People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the vote, preventing a quorum.

At least seven PPP members have since declared their intention to support the impeachment on Saturday, close to the eight PPP votes needed to reach the 200-vote threshold along with 192 opposition party MPs.

Jun vowed on Thursday to “fight to the end”, blaming the opposition party for the government’s paralysis and claiming that North Korea’s intrusion into the election commission had jeopardized his party’s defeat in April’s parliamentary elections.

Democratic Party leader Lee called Jun’s statements a “declaration of war” on the people. “Impeachment has proven to be the quickest and most effective way to end the confusion,” he said.

Jun survived the first impeachment attempt last Saturday when a majority of his ruling People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the vote. Since then, at least seven PPP members have publicly supported a vote to impeach him.

Opposition parties have introduced another impeachment bill and plan to hold a vote on Saturday at 4pm (0700 GMT).

Lee urged PPP members to “join and vote for impeachment,” saying “history will remember and record your decision.” A vote to impeach Ion would send the case to the Constitutional Court, which has six months to decide whether to remove him from office or reinstate him.

There was more criticism of Yun’s defiant address on Thursday, including his claim that North Korea’s hacking last year may have compromised the National Election Commission’s computer system, without providing evidence.

Yoon cited the commission’s refusal to fully cooperate in inspecting the system as one of the reasons for declaring a state of emergency, which meant that the integrity of the parliamentary elections held in April could not be ensured.

On Friday, the commission’s secretary-general, Kim Jong-bin, denied the possibility of election fraud, saying voting was done entirely by paper ballots and that the courts had dismissed all 216 claims of irregularities as baseless.

Yoon is under separate criminal investigation for allegedly rebelling against the declaration of a state of emergency.

DIPLOMATIC, ECONOMIC EXPLOSIONS

South Korean shares rose for a fourth straight session on Friday on hopes that political uncertainty will ease after a parliamentary vote this weekend to impeach the president.

The finance ministry said authorities will implement more measures to stabilize markets if volatility increases excessively after the results of Saturday’s vote.

Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told parliament that South Korea’s diplomatic position had been “severely damaged” by the state of emergency decree.

Cho said he told Yun in a brief cabinet meeting before the announcement that the move would have diplomatic ramifications and potentially undo many of the achievements in the decades since South Korea’s founding.

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said last week that Yoon’s decree was seen as “deeply problematic” and “illegitimate”.

But the US and other Western partners, many of whom have previously praised Yun as a champion of democracy in Asia, have been largely muted, except to express general concerns about stability and praise Yun’s decision to revoke his order.

A Western diplomat in Seoul told Reuters that working-level meetings with South Korean counterparts had continued largely unaffected by the political crisis, but that the diplomatic community was closely monitoring whether the situation worsened.

Jun’s potential ouster comes as South Korea faces the leadership of the new administration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who clashed with the previous South Korean president over trade and the payment of US troops in the country.