ReutersNews moves so fast in South Korea, newspapers can no longer keep up. President Yoon Suk-yeol's surprise attempt to impose martial law last Tuesday night was so short-lived that it failed to make the front page. By the time he sent the troops, the press had already begun printing. By the next day's editions, the failed takeover had already been defeated.
In the space of a week, the president has gone from contrite and apologetic, hoping to avoid accountability, to brazenly defiant, vowing to keep fighting as the net closes in on him.
After being banned from leaving the country while under investigation for treason – a crime punishable by death – he faces a second impeachment vote this weekend, with support pouring in from his party. Meanwhile, voices of anger emanate from thousands of people in the streets every night.
For a brief period this week, it looked as if he had reached an agreement with his party to step down early, in exchange for not being thrown out of office in last Saturday's vote. But as the week went on, there was no sign of the president or details of such a plan, and it gradually became clear that Yoon had no intention of resigning.
He came out stubbornly on Thursday. “I will fight to the end,” he declared. Where he defended his decision to control the country.
His speech was rambling and full of baseless conspiracy theories, including a vague suggestion that North Korea may have rigged the previous election, in which he failed to take control of parliament. He said Parliament was a “monster.” The opposition party is “dangerous”, and by declaring martial law it is trying to protect the people and save democracy.
Yoon spent most of this week in hiding, while police attempted to raid his offices to collect evidence. In an attempt to calm public anger, his party announced that he would not be allowed to make decisions in the future – although legal experts agreed that there was nothing in the constitution that would allow this.
This left everyone with the same pressing question: Who runs the country? – Especially since Yoon's army's top commanders said they would defy his orders if he tried to impose martial law again.
Now there is a worrying power vacuum in a country that lives under the constant threat of attack by North Korea. “There is no legal basis for this arrangement,” said Lim Jee-bong, a law professor at Sogang University. “We are in a dangerous and chaotic situation.”
It was clear to everyone outside that this strange and destabilizing situation could not be allowed to continue for much longer. But it took the president's party, the People Power Party, some time to realize that Yoon's impeachment was inevitable.
At first his party members were protective of him, eager to save their political careers and preoccupied with their hatred of South Korea's opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, whom they fear would become president if Yoon is removed. But on Thursday, after stalling for days, PPP leader Han Dong-hun came out to urge all lawmakers to impeach him. He added: “The president must be suspended from office immediately.”
For the impeachment to pass, two-thirds of parliament members must vote in favour, which means eight MPs from the ruling party must join the opposition. A handful have so far announced their intention to do so. Kim Sang Wook was one of the first to change his mind. “The president is no longer qualified to lead the country, he is not qualified at all,” he told the BBC from his office in the National Assembly.
But Kim said not all lawmakers will follow his example; There is a core that will remain loyal to Lyon. In his ultra-conservative constituency, Kim said he received death threats to change his position. “My party and my supporters have called me a traitor,” he said, describing politics in South Korea as “very tribal.”
However, the vast majority of the anger was directed towards the deputies who had protected Yoon up to this point.
At Wednesday night's protest, the chants changed from simply “Impeach Yoon” to “Impeach Yoon and dissolve the party.”
“I hate them so much now, but I think I hate the members of parliament more than the president,” said Zhang Yu-hun, a 31-year-old graduate student, who joined tens of thousands of others, in freezing temperatures. , to express his disappointment.
Throughout the week, lawmakers were bombarded with thousands of abusive messages and phone calls from the public, in what one MP described to me as “telephone terrorism,” while some were sent funeral flowers.
Even if enough MPs vote to impeach Yoon this weekend, his party, now divided and widely hated, faces political oblivion. “We don't even know who we are or what we stand for anymore,” one angry party official told me.
Dissident lawmaker Kim Sang-wook believes it will take time to regain voter confidence. He added: “We will not disappear, but we have to rebuild ourselves from scratch.” “There is a saying that South Korea's economy and culture are first-rate, but its politics are third-rate. Now is the opportunity to reflect on that.”
Yoon has dealt a severe blow to South Korea's reputation as an established, if emerging, democracy. There was pride when members of parliament quickly overturned the president's decision to implement martial law, and that the country's democratic institutions were working anyway. But the fragility of the regime was exposed once again, with the party maneuvering to keep him in office, with the opposition describing it as a “second coup.”
News1But Professor Yoon Jeong-in, a research professor at Korea University's Legal Research Institute, insisted that the country was dealing with “an aberration, not a systemic failure of democracy,” referring to the massive protests every night. “People are not panicking, they are resisting,” she said. “They see democracy as something they have a right to.”
It also damaged South Korea's international relations, ironically much of what Yoon wanted to achieve. He had a vision that South Korea would become a “global hub” and play a greater role on the world stage. He was even hoping to get an invitation from Seoul to join the elite group of G7 countries.
A Western diplomat told me they hoped for a “quick solution” to the crisis. “We need South Korea to be a stable partner. Isolation would be a step in the right direction,” he added.
If Yoon is suspended from his position on Saturday, he will not leave without a fight. The prosecutor, who knows the law well, has decided that he would rather impeach him, and challenge the decision when he goes to court, than proceed quietly. The shock waves it unleashed will ripple across the country for years, perhaps decades, to come.
Additional reporting by Jake Kwon and Hosoo Lee.
