South Korean lawmakers impeached Acting President Han Duck-soo on Friday on the grounds that he was not moving quickly enough to complete the impeachment and trial of former President Yoon Suk-yeol after the latter’s disastrous attempt to impose martial law on December 3. Han’s tenure as acting president ended up lasting only 13 days.
National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik announced on Friday that 192 members of Parliament participated in the vote to impeach Han, and all 192 voted in favor.
The remaining members of South Korea’s 300-seat Parliament were mostly members of Yoon and Han’s People Power Party (PPP). They managed to delay the impeachment vote by loudly protesting and demanding the resignation of Woo, who enraged them by declaring that only a simple majority vote would be needed to impeach Han.
Speaker Woo Won-shik has emerged as a pivotal figure in South Korea’s political crisis, earning the nickname “Thor” from young South Koreans for his decisive wielding of the legislature’s gavel. He is technically a member of neither party, having been required to renounce his party affiliation when ascending to the speaker’s position.
Woo, a 67-year-old former student activist, captured the attention of the public by marching past the police and soldiers ordered to barricade the National Assembly after Yoon declared martial law on December 3, climbing over a fence, and getting into the Assembly chamber in time to preside over the vote that nullified Yoon’s orders.
Most observers of the political crisis credit Woo with remaining scrupulously devoted to proper legislative procedures throughout the December drama, including most legislators from the PPP, which is why the PPP became so angry with the speaker when they felt he was changing the rules on Friday to bounce Han out of the acting president’s office.
The opposition Democratic Party (DP) currently holds 170 seats, while the PPP has 108. Under the South Korean Constitution, impeaching a president requires a two-thirds majority, a threshold that would have been impossible for the DP to clear.
The DP got around that obstacle by arguing that since Han was both the acting president and sitting prime minister, he could be impeached using the lower threshold of 151 votes required for the prime minister. South Korean legal experts noted the situation was murky because no acting president has ever been impeached before. PPP lawmakers retorted that the DP was circumventing the Constitution and making South Korea’s political turmoil worse by using a procedural dirty trick to impeach Han.
Han said on Friday he would respect the National Assembly’s vote and step aside, paving the way for Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok, who is also the finance minister, to take over as acting president.
Choi unsuccessfully pleaded with lawmakers not to impeach Han, warning that South Korea’s “economy and external credibility must not be destabilized again after it just found its footing under the acting president’s governance.”
“In order not to add to the confusion and uncertainty, I will suspend my duties in line with relevant laws, and wait for the swift and wise decision of the Constitutional Court,” Han said after the vote was cast.
“The most important thing right now is to minimize the confusion in state affairs,” Choi agreed. “The government will do its best to stabilize them.”
The Constitutional Court lies at the heart of the dispute that culminated with Han’s impeachment. The court normally has nine justices, but three of them retired in early 2024. The vacancies have not yet been filled.
President Yoon was impeached on December 14, but only the Constitutional Court can actually remove him from office, and that requires six justices to vote in favor. Yoon’s presidential powers were suspended when he was impeached, but he still enjoys the presidential immunity from prosecution until he is removed from office.
The Constitutional Court could also overturn Yoon’s impeachment and restore the full powers of his office. Yoon is confident he will prevail before the court, and as long as three of its seats are vacant, he only needs one justice to vote in his favor to avoid being removed.
The opposition DP has nominated three justices to take the empty seats, but the PPP is boycotting their choices, and Han refused to appoint any of them unless they win bipartisan confirmation from the National Assembly. Han also said he was uncertain if the acting president has the authority to appoint justices to the Constitutional Court, so he wanted the legislature to vote in favor of granting him that power.
The DP discarded Han’s objections and accused him of stonewalling the impeachment process to protect Yoon, who would likely face criminal charges over his attempt to impose martial law if he is removed from office. Among other objections, the DP pointed out that when former President Park Geun-hye was impeached in 2016, the acting president at the time appointed a justice to the Constitutional Court.
Park is the only South Korean president to have been impeached and removed from office by the Constitutional Court, a process that ultimately took about three months. The terms of two current justices will expire in April 2025, so the opposition is accusing PPP of attempting to run out the clock by keeping three seats vacant.
Han’s warning about continued instability damaging South Korea’s economy was well-founded. The South Korean won tumbled to a 16-year low against the U.S. dollar on Friday to 1,467, coming perilously close to the 1,400 won-to-dollar threshold that South Korean economists regard as a crisis situation.
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