In a surprise twist, the People Power Party (PPP), ruling South Korea, boycotted the vote to remove President Yoon Suk-yeol from office for his attempt to apply martial law in the country and thus save his political career. The closing of ranks of the PPP with Yoon for partisan purposes, despite the serious accusations against the president, crisis triggers in South Korea and poses serious risks to the security of the Korean Peninsula just when the North Korean regime is flexing all its military muscle.
Let Yoon’s party indicate that it will be searched”an orderly exit“of the president, “to minimize the chaos” has not reassured the tens of thousands of South Koreans who extended their protests on Saturday night against what even the PPP itself defined as “a serious and clear violation of the Constitution“South Korean.
The disappointment of the protesters did not believe the leader of the conservative PPP, Han Dong-hoonwho stated that Yoon “will be effectively stripped of his duties until he leaves office and the prime minister (Han Duck-soo) will assume state functions in consultation with the party.”
Something easy to say, but complicated to do, since the president has fnon-transferable anointingssuch as the leadership of the Armed Forces (the most difficult), the representation of the nation as head of State and the appointment of senior officials of the institutions enshrined in the Constitution.
A possibility, then, that is too tangled and that suggests many more protests and rejection of what seems to be a confused attempt by Yoon’s praetorians to free him from being tried for accusations as serious as those of treason, mutiny and abuse of power for mobilizing soldiers last Tuesday against the General Assembly in order to close it.
If he is not removed, Yoon will be able to regain power whenever he wants
Furthermore, no one is aware that if the Constitution is not officially reformed establishing these changes, Yoon could take back all his power from the party whenever he wanted. “The president can take command again the moment he changes his mind,” he told the South Korean newspaper. Korea Herald the professor of Political Science Shin Yulfrom Myongji University.
“No one will be able to stop him if Yoon insists” on gaining that power again, Professor Shin said.
The opposition, led by Democratic Party (PD, liberal), has already made it clear that he will not give up until get Yoon resigned or dismissedand that to this end it will launch all the political motions that are necessary in a Parliament where it is the majority.
Conservatives won’t let Yoon sink
The vote in the National Assembly this Saturday on the motion demanding Yoon’s dismissal was expected to pass without major incidents and end with the defenestration of the current president of South Korea. But things took a different turn when a previous vote on the agenda on the president’s wife, Kim Keon-heeand their alleged cases of corruption did not come to fruition because the government deputies left the chamber en masse.
When they wanted to vote on Yoon’s dismissal, they could only count on the 192 votes from the opposition plus the support of three of the PPP legislators. The rest had already left the National Assembly (the South Korean Parliament) and two-thirds of the chamber, that is, 200 votes of the 300 seats, could not be reached. The PPP is a minority in the Legislature with its 108 seats.
Before this happened, everything seemed to indicate that the ruling party, or at least a good number of its deputies, would align with the opposition and give its approval to Yoon’s impeachment motion. Among the PPP legislators themselves, many had been heard voices of condemnation of the strange step that the president gave on Tuesday night when trying to impose martial law in the country.
As a pretext, Yoon had denounced a plot by the opponents of the Democratic Party (PD) and other legislators with North Korea to make South Korea ungovernable.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning it was the courage of the opposition deputies, supported by some of the ruling party, that avoided the catastrophe, as they voted to withdraw that law and they forced Yoon to retract and to order the return of the military and police to their barracks, in addition to stopping his order to arrest dozens of legislators, some from his own party.
Yoon apologizes for “the inconveniences” of the self-hit
The South Korean president appeared this Saturday morning to apologize for his attempt to apply martial law. “I sincerely apologize for causing concern and inconvenience to the public,” said Yoon, as if the precipice to which he wanted to push the South Korean people were just an administrative procedure and not the prelude to a possible dictatorial drift like those that South Korea experienced in the decades of the seventies and eighties, which resulted in hundreds of deaths.
The president insisted that he would not evade legal and political responsibilities for that step, but apologized, noting that “the declaration of martial law was made out of a sense of urgency.” Indeed, the urgency of avoiding prosecution of his wife and that all fingers were immediately turned against himself for his inefficiency in the Executive and his shenanigans in power.
In the midst of his rhetoric, Yoon gave a clue about what was going to happen hours later, when his PPP acolytes left the National Assembly en masse and sabotaged de facto the impeachment vote. Yoon had said in his televised statement that he left the stabilization of the political situation and the presidential term itself “in the hands of the party“.
Not in the hands of Justice, but in his own lieutenants, who can now put on a farce and “take it back” momentarily from power, leave him in the second line of fire and return all his perks when the storm passes.
And so it was, the PPP put partisan politics ahead of national security and prevented Yoon from falling. It was decided to close ranks with the president and on Saturday afternoon the almost 160,000 protesters who took to the streets again this Saturday to demand Yoon’s ostracism.
South Korean internal chaos may break the tense calm on the peninsula
In these protests the memory of South Korean dictatorshipswith its police persecutions, arbitrary arrests, lack of freedom, re-education camps and above all the massacres committed by the military, as occurred in Gwangju, in May 1980.
But many are also evaluating the risk that martial law could escalate the tension with Pyongyang. Since Yoon came to power, the situation has worsened between the two Koreas, with the South Korean president aligning himself with the US strategy of confrontation with Washington’s new axis of evil, that is, Russia, Iran, China and North Korea itself. .
A president, the South Korean, who has also been characterized by a taste too marked for the militaryas he made very clear when he came to power and moved the presidential office from its traditional home in the mansion called the Blue House to the Ministry of Defense in the center of Seoul.
If, if martial law were applied, the military had assumed a position of power alongside Yoon to defend South Korea from North Korean machinations, the risk of a direct clash between Seoul and Pyongyang It would have been triggered in moments of already very high tension.
This week the defensive pact between Russia and North Koreawhich includes mutual military aid in case of foreign attack. Moscow is indebted to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for sending at least 10,000 North Korean soldiers to fight the Ukrainians, as well as supplying ammunition and missiles for use by the Russian army in Ukraine.
Added to the very serious internal crisis unleashed by Yoon in South Korea is the kick he has given to the complicated stability of East Asia and specifically on the Korean peninsula itself, where the temperature has risen many degrees and has put the current military containment and deterrence system into play.
South Korea is one of the armed arms of the United States policy in the Asia-Pacific. Although the number of US soldiers stationed in that country is smaller than that in Japan (24,000 compared to 54,000), however, the involvement of South Korean forces in the Pentagon’s military command is much greater. It is not trivial that both Koreas have remained at war since 1953.
South Korean aid to Ukraine pending
For now, the martial law crisis has already had a scapegoat, whose fall may affect South Korean foreign policy. On Thursday, Yoon accepted the resignation of Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who in a statement practically exposed himself as the person responsible for what happened.
Under the direct monitoring of Yoon and the US embassy in Seoul, former Minister Kim negotiated the possible shipment of lethal South Korean weapons to Ukrainean issue that, however, should require a parliamentary agreement, since South Korean laws prohibit it, or certain peremptory actions by the president, including perhaps martial law.
Yoon’s misstep has left all this up in the air, but his permanence in power is necessary for it to finally come to fruition. Some, including the US, are very interested in Yoon not leaving.
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