South Korea’s main opposition party is urging President Yoon Suk Yeol to resign immediately or face an impeachment, hours after Yoon lifted a short-lived martial law that prompted soldiers to encircle parliament.

Summary

South Korea’s main opposition party has called for President Yoon Suk Yeol to resign or face impeachment after his six-hour martial law declaration, deemed unconstitutional.

Yoon’s move, the first martial law since the 1980s, involved deploying troops to encircle parliament but was swiftly overturned by a 190-0 vote in the opposition-controlled legislature.

Critics, including U.S. officials, condemned the action as a democratic setback.

The Democratic Party, holding 192 seats with allies, may pursue impeachment, recalling South Korea’s history of ousting presidents through public and legislative pressure.

Yoon has yet to publicly respond.

  • @[email protected]English
    34•8 hours ago

    This was maybe the most pathetic coup attempt in recent years (excluding jan 6th and brazil’s jan 8th because they both wouldn’t have worked as actual coups regardless). At least some part of the military was clearly in on it too, but they didn’t even stop the representatives from voting to invalidate the declaration, and even worse, it was attempted while the opposition nearly had a supermajority, and with an incredibly disliked president.

    Maybe this is overthinking it, but why would you ever try a coup without at least some popular support? Yeah, it doesn’t matter what the people think as far as making it happen, but lack of popular support often leads to a lot of instability, and the first one to die in an unstable dictatorship is often the guy at the top.

    • xorEnglish
      3•7 hours ago

      I think the Brazilian coup was actually more viable than you might think, he probably could have pulled it off if it wasn’t for a small handful of military members who refused to take part.

      Jan 6th was pathetic fr though

      I’ve been baffled by this south Korean attempt, too, though. The consensus seems to be that he’d assumed his own party would back him (which presumably would have been enough that the opposition couldn’t form a majority against his declaration). I suppose he must have had strong military support to be so (overly) confident.

    • @[email protected]English
      6•11 hours ago

      Smells a bit like distraction, but being entirely ignorant of South Korean politics, no idea for what.