‘The president is a grave danger’. A large protest is expected in Seoul
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol “must be quickly suspended” from his duties: “he is a grave danger” and “there is the possibility that he could take radical action again” if he decides to defend himself to the bitter end. On the eve of the vote in Parliament on the opposition’s impeachment motion, Han Dong-hoon, the leader of the ruling People Power Party, launched a harsh indictment against Yoon, now in the trenches, pushing for his resignation.
He provided details on the coup nature of the martial law, declared on Tuesday evening by the president and then withdrawn due to parliamentary rejection, which also included the arrest order for key political figures deemed “anti-state” forces and the mobilization of intelligence to carry out the raid. Among others, Han himself and opposition leader Lee Jae-myung are targeted, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.
“Given the facts just revealed, I believe it is necessary to quickly suspend President Yoon from his duties”, reiterated Han in the meeting with his deputies, suggesting a vote in favor of the impeachment of the former prosecutor who had led to victory in 2022. Late in the evening, group leader Choo Kyung-ho visited Yoon: “The president said he will listen carefully to what our deputies have to say and will think about it for a long time,” a spokesperson said.
The difficult and hectic day saw the interim Defense Minister Kim Seon-ho call a press conference to deny the hypothesis of a new martial law. “The rumors this morning are not true. The Ministry of Defense and the army would not obey any new order to implement martial law,” assured Kim, who in the meantime suspended three military commanders involved in Tuesday’s turbulent events.
The Attorney General’s Office set up a special team to investigate the procedure Yoon followed when he declared martial law, and the Defense Ministry guaranteed “full cooperation”, including by mobilizing the military prosecutor’s office. The protests for the resignation were staged again today, with wide-ranging strikes. Thousands of people mobilized near Parliament, dress rehearsals of the “huge demonstration”, between vigil and march, estimated tomorrow by the police.
“We cannot entrust the government of the nation, not even for a moment, to a president who has endangered the lives of the sovereign people with unconstitutional and illegal actions”, said Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, sure that the impeachment will pass. Only 8 dissident votes are needed among the 108 deputies of the People Power Party to reach a quorum of 200.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his counterpart Cho Tae-yul and expressed deep concern about the martial law and relief at its lifting, confident “in democratic resilience”. Washington’s commitment “to the alliance remains ironclad”, he assured. Finally, from Stockholm, the writer Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, said she follows “the news in a state of shock”. He recalled his studies of South Korean military dictator Chun Doo-hwan’s martial law for his 2014 novel ‘Human Acts’: “I sincerely hope that we will not return to a time when voices are silenced by force or violence. coercion”.
