South Korea's parliament votes to impeach President over his martial law order

https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-martial-law-yoon-impeach-6432768aafc8b55be26215667e3c19d0

by Geekette • 2 years ago

81 23 2 years ago

It is refreshing to the leader of a country doing something insanely untoward, and then suffering the consequences for their actions.

sofixa• 2 years ago

And especially that the politicians from his party managed to (after some time, convincing and protests, but still) overcome their affiliation and personal political interests to impeach the president.

janice1999• 2 years ago

Some of that may be self-interest given that the President tried to imprison the heads of his own party during his attempted coup. The army deserves at least some praise for refusing to escalate the situation and ignoring orders to invade their own parliament.

crop_rotation• 2 years ago

Sadly very few politicians from his party voted for impeachment (although more than zero). Goes to show how if only his party had 15 more members he might not be getting impeached.

throw43214• 2 years ago

You're assuming they're not gonna go the way of Cheney and Romney.

Around the world, most of this stuff is dry runs for other stuff.

petre3• 2 years ago

Dunno what's wrong with this guy, I understand he's a former prosecutor who locked up presidents Lee and Park. Now he somehow repeats the same mistakes, declares martial law, sends the army to the Parliament to arrest the uncooperating opposition? And it all backfires because the National Assembly can always override the President. He'll probably end up in prison. He should have known better. What is wrong Korean politicians (both ROK and obviously DPRK) and abuse of power? At least in the ROK they have a functional democracy with at least two former convicted presidents.

PhasmaFelis• 2 years ago

I've read that he had cronies in the military. My only guess is that he was hoping they'd back him hard enough to suppress the opposition. (Either by ignoring the vote, or by preventing them from voting in the first place--which it seems came close to happening.)

yongjik2• 2 years ago

The story is even wilder: because Yoon was a former prosecutor who went after the previous conservative president Park, when Moon (the previous liberal president) appointed Yoon as chief prosecutor, it was initially widely opposed by conservatives.

And what did he do? Almost immediately after becoming chief prosecutor, he starts hunting down Cho Kuk, his superior (minister of law) who Moon just appointed, and Cho's whole family members, in a blatantly motivated investigation. And also doing the same for Lee Jaemyung, the current opposition leader, who is now one supreme court verdict away from becoming ineligible for the next presidential election, for violating some election law.

(One can argue for days whether Cho and Lee did crimes, maybe they did some, but it's clear that if prosecutors were 10% as enthusiastic in investigating other politicians, half of the current legislative and executive branch would be out of jobs.)

...which gave him a gigantic publicity boost as "defender of law and order," but it was always built on hypocrisy and Korean prosecutors' ability to take care of their own first. We knew Yoon was a hypocrite, but nobody expected him to be crazy enough to start a coup. In one drunken decision Yoon apparently handed presidency to his archenemy Lee Jaemyung, who's also known for being rather divisive and not forgiving his enemies. Talk about karma.

kergonath• 2 years ago

He’s not been tried yet, though.

diamondfist25• 2 years ago

This drama is more entertaining than the US election

BadHumans3• 2 years ago

It's entertaining in that South Koreans are taking appropriate actions in response to a takeover of the country while in the US everyone is just watching like a slow motion car crash.

cmxch• 2 years ago

I’ll take the US on this one.

At least the US gives a voice and wide representation to its flyover country instead of telling it to “know its place”.

from-nibly• 2 years ago

Shoold we call the result of every election a "takeover" then?

People act like this isn't democracy in action.

It's not democracy when you get what you want. It's democracy when the vote turns out how it turns out.

I guess this is just how it's gonna be every time though huh. Last time it was red team complaining now it's blue team.

ReptileMan• 2 years ago

If you shoot at the king, you'd better not miss.

South Korea's parliament votes to impeach President over his martial law order

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