South Korea's opposition parties today filed a motion to start impeachment proceedings against President Yoon Suk-yeol over the shocking short-term imposition of a state of emergency . Under the state of emergency, heavily armed soldiers surrounded the parliament, and lawmakers had to climb fences around the parliament to get inside and unanimously vote to repeal the announced measure, the Associated Press reported.
The completion of the impeachment procedure of the head of state will require the support of two-thirds of the deputies and at least six judges of the 9-member Constitutional Court.
The impeachment motion, brought jointly by the main opposition Democratic Party and five smaller opposition parties, could be put to a vote as early as Friday.
Senior advisers to the president and his secretaries have offered to resign collectively, and cabinet members, including Minister of National Defense Kim Jong-hyun, have also been called to step down as the nation tries to make sense of what happened, which seems like a poorly thought out move.
In his speech announcing his sudden order on Tuesday evening, Yoon Suk-yeol vowed to eliminate “anti-state” forces and continued to criticize parliament's attempts to remove key government members and senior prosecutors from office.
However, martial law only lasted for about 6 hours as the National Assembly voted to revoke the presidential order and martial law was officially lifted at around 4.30am. the next morning at a cabinet meeting.
The liberal opposition Democratic Party, which has a majority in the 300-seat parliament, said today that its lawmakers have decided to ask the president to resign immediately or they will take steps to remove him.
An impeachment will require the support of 200 deputies. The Democratic Party and smaller opposition parties have a total of 192 votes. But the repeal of the president's martial law order was voted by 190 lawmakers with the support of 18 representatives from Yoon Suk-yeol's People's Power Party, according to parliamentary officials.
The leader of the “Power of the People” Han Dong-yun, who has been close to the president since they were both prosecutors, criticized Yoon and called the imposition of martial law “unconstitutional”.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-on, seen as a potential candidate for the next president by “People Power”, said the martial law order was against the “founding spirit of democracy” and that the deployment of soldiers around the National Assembly was an act that violated the separation of powers.