Impeachment Crisis Splits Koreans

As supporters rally to prevent arrest, economy shows signs of stress

By: Shim Jae Hoon

Seoul’s Yongsan District is increasingly resembling a city under siege as thousands of policemen in full riot gear surround the presidential compound where an impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol, defying arrest on mutiny and sedition charges for illegally declaring martial law on the night of December 3, sits sulking in defiance.

It is a domestic political crisis that is taking on ominous regional and international overtones, raising the possibility of the collapse of the trilateral security arrangement painfully fashioned by the Biden administration by getting Japan and South Korea together in the face of decades of lingering hostility left over from Japan’s World War II colonialism just at a time when an inexperienced and isolationist Trump II administration is about to take power in Washington, and as the north takes advantage by rattling its intercontinental rockets.

Oblivious to that, for nearly seven weeks Yoon has remained cooped up in the presidential compound, refusing to respond to an arrest warrant issued by the Corruption Investigation Agency for High Civil Servants as he does not consider it relevant to his case, and therefore has ordered his security services not to allow the police enter the presidential compound to seize him. Thousands, gathering daily either in support of or in opposition to the president, have converged on the area in a protracted confrontation between rivals.

It is not only citizens who are divided. So are members of the presidential security force, with the police demanding to arrest Yoon immediately, while an army security detachment says it can’t allow the arrest without an order from the top of their own chain of command. With the minister of defense under detention for collusion with Yoon, the military presumably doesn’t have a top officer to issue the order.

With regulations presumably contradictory governing the presidential security forces, the police’s attempt to force their way into the compound has met with stiff resistance from the military detachment. This tense confrontation has continued while a top police officer responsible for presidential compound security has surrendered to his superiors, warning that a continuing confrontation could touch off accidental gunbattles.

“Situation now borders on a civil war,” claim opposition Democratic Party legislators frustrated by the continuing siege.

To attempt to break the impasse, interim president Choi Sang Mok, the second to take the post as head of state, has urged the National Assembly to come up with a bipartisan proposal for a special counsel investigation of Yoon’s attempted martial law edict, even as the Constitutional Court hears Yoon’s impeachment.

But the Democratic Party refuses, together with its fringe allies now controlling a two-thirds majority in the congress, insisting they want Yoon locked up immediately, news reports say. Party leaders consider that extended Constitutional Court hearings not only provide Yoon a chance to blame his action on parliamentary obstructionism, but also provide time for the governing People Power Party to prepare for the presidential election that will follow the constitutional court’s verdict.

“We want a simultaneous criminal proceeding so that he will receive a death sentence on top of the constitutional court’s ruling,” declared Rep. Jung Chung Rae, chairman of the Democratic Party’s judiciary committee, provoking a howl of protest from the public, angered by what many considered a prejudgment of Yoon’s case.

Jung’s inflammatory comments have focused public attention on the party to hasten the coming presidential election that will follow the constitutional court’s ruling. Lee Jae Myung, the party president, is facing a host of corruption charges, having already been found guilty of violating the election law.

Jung’s death sentence comment has thrown the country into a maelstrom of protest. Jung, widely known for his leftwing views, caused a huge scandal in 1989 for trying to torch the official residence of the US ambassador, earning a two-year prison sentence. For this as well as Lee Jae Myung’s ambivalent position on North Korea and China, the Democratic Party is approaching the coming election facing significant public ambivalence.

Kim Jong-un takes advantage

With the crisis wearing on, North Korea test-fired another ballistic missile on January 6, alarming not only South Koreans but also neighboring Japan and the US. The intermediate-range missile was clearly intended to coincide with the arrival in Seoul of the departing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with foreign minister Cho Tae Yul and Choi Sang Mok. Blinken, looking somber, said the US had “serious concerns about some of the actions President Yoon took, but we have tremendous confidence in the resilience of South Korea’s democracy and the strength of its institutions.”

It’s unlikely, however, that Blinken found the situation here reassuring, with the country’s defense minister Kim Yong Hyun, charged with plotting the failed coup, sitting in jail as nuclear-armed North Koreans fired missiles. In the absence of an elected head of state, Blinken was talking to the second interim head in the ongoing crisis. Following the impeachment of Harvard-educated Prime Minister and interim head of state Han Duck Soo within days of Yoon’s coup, South Korea is now run by Choi Sang Mok, a Cornell-educated economics minister as, more and more, South Korea resembles a banana republic of revolving-door government.

As apprehensive as the US over the turbulent political unrest is Japan’s new cabinet under Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who is anxious to save the trilateral security partnership. But that prospect looks uncertain with a potential change of government likely in Seoul, and with the second Trump administration taking office in Washington on January 20.

Not only is the incoming Trump administration tending toward isolationism, but the Yoon government, considered Tokyo’s best option, is almost certainly headed for collapse. Tokyo is deeply concerned by the prospect of Lee Jae Myung, a nationalist who continues to attack Japan for its World War II colonial control of Korea, and who admires China as a newly assertive world power, taking over the Blue House.

To get a first-hand look at the situation, Japan’s new foreign minister Takeshi Iwaya was expected to arrive in Seoul today, January 13, the first visit to Seoul by a Japanese foreign minister in seven years.

Meanwhile, the political impact on the economy is becoming more evident by the day, with the Korean won sagging in value from W1,420 per US dollar before the crisis to W1,470 or even W1,480 within weeks. Foreign investors have divested Korean government bonds, while small businesses complain about falling consumption caused by street demonstrations. A recent disaster involving a jetliner crash that killed 179 passengers and crew at South Korea’s Muan airport has provoked mass cancellation of yearend overseas vacations.

A seemingly exhausted public is looking for relief. According to opinion surveys including the Korea Gallup poll, Yoon’s approval rate was making a comeback, from a wretched 14.8 percent before the impeachment, to 36.9 percent in the first two weeks of January, a spectacular gain of 22.1 percent. With voters looking for stability, his party’s approval was also making a comeback, rising to 36 percent vs 37 percent for Lee’s Democratic Party.

“The opposition’s hardball campaign is clearly backfiring,” said a headline in Chosun Ilbo, South Korea’s biggest daily newspaper. But it will take considerably more backfiring to save the PPP.