South Korea’s opposition parties on Wednesday, December 4, submitted a motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is facing pressure to leave office or be forced out hours after he ended a short-lived martial law that prompted troops to encircle parliament before lawmakers voted to lift it, Agence France-Presse has reported.
Impeaching Yoon would require the support of two-thirds of parliament for the motion and then the backing of at least six Constitutional Court justices. The motion submitted Wednesday could be put to a vote as early as Friday, Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Yong-min said.
Yoon’s senior advisers and secretaries offered to resign collectively and his cabinet members, including Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, were also facing calls to step down, as the nation struggled to make sense of what appeared to be a poorly-thought-out stunt.
On Tuesday night, Yoon abruptly imposed the emergency martial law, vowing to eliminate "anti-state" forces after he struggled to push forward his agenda in the opposition-dominated parliament. But his martial law was effective for only about six hours, as the National Assembly voted to overrule the president. The declaration was formally lifted around 4:30 am during a Cabinet meeting.
The liberal opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the 300-seat parliament, said Wednesday that its lawmakers decided to call on Yoon to quit immediately or they would take steps to impeach him.
Yoon’s government and ruling party have been embroiled in an impasse with the Democratic Party over next year’s budget bill and a Democratic Party-led attempt to impeach three top prosecutors.
"President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law declaration was a clear violation of the constitution. It didn’t abide by any requirements to declare it," the Democratic Party said in a statement. "His martial law declaration was originally invalid and a grave violation of the constitution. It was a grave act of rebellion and provides perfect grounds for his impeachment."
Yoon’s martial law declaration, the first of its kind in more than 40 years, harkened to South Korea’s past military-backed governments when authorities occasionally proclaimed martial law and other decrees that allowed them to station combat soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles on streets or at public places like schools to prevent anti-government demonstrations. Such scenes of military intervention had not been seen since South Korea achieved a genuine democracy in the late 1980s until Tuesday night.