South Koreans on resort island Jeju march in call for President Yoon's resignation
A woman holds up a sign during a demonstration calling for the resignation and arrest of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Friday night in Jeju City, Jeju Island, South Korea. Photo by Darryl Coote/UPI
JEJU ISLAND, South Korea, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Hundreds of South Koreans on the southern resort island of Jeju converged on City Hall on Friday night to demand that embattled South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol resign and be arrested over his failed attempt earlier this week to institute martial law.
Organized by local unions and non-governmental organizers, the protest began at 7 p.m. local time with speeches, followed by a march of an estimated 1,000 people through Jeju's downtown core, an area populated by restaurants and bars and a hot spot for university students.
The crowd waved flags, carried signs and chanted "Yoon Suk-yeol, step down. Arrest Yoon Suk-yeol."
"Protests are happening everywhere, because he is not the president of Seoul, he's the president of all Koreans," Kim Jeong-hee, one of the protest organizers from a local union, told UPI.
Like many South Koreans, those who took to the streets Friday night on Jeju were enraged by their president's late Tuesday declaration of martial law. Although it was rescinded by lawmakers after only a few hours, its declaration opened old wounds, unearthed buried trauma and ignited new fears.
The last time martial law was declared was in 1979, after the country's decades-long dictator, President Park Chung-hee, was assassinated. That event led to the rise of another military dictatorship under President Chun Doo-hwan, which lasted until democracy finally came to the southern half of the peninsula in 1987.
However, the the first declaration of martial law in South Korea occurred in October 1948, just two months after the country's founding, to suppress a rebellion in Suncheon and Yeosu ignited by soldiers who refused to be sent to Jeju to quell ongoing protests.
A month later, President Syngman Rhee again declared martial law, this time on Jeju. Under this order, and in the name of squelching a communist-led uprising, tens of thousands of islanders were slaughtered in what is now known as the Jeju Massacre, or the Jeju 4.3 Incident in Korean.
Kim Jung-hyun, 22, a Jeju native attending university in Seoul was among those marching in downtown Jeju Friday night. She told UPI that she was scared when she heard martial law had been declared.
"I couldn't believe this was happening in the 21st century. I feel like I am in North Korea," she said, adding that it is because of Jeju's history that so many people were voicing their anger.
Yoon's martial law declaration not only revived old fears on the island, but for some too young to remember the horrors of South Korea's previous regimes, it posed a threat they were struggling to understand.
As the protest was ending, Byun Ji-yun, a 17-year-old Jeju high school student, came up to UPI and demanded to be heard.
She said she should be studying for her final exams next week, but she and her friends had to join the protest, for what was at stake was nothing less than their future.
"I'm learning about Korean history and I never thought that would happen again," she said.
Byun said she was initially frightened after the declaration was made, but soon felt compelled to demonstrate against Yoon.
"It is my future," she said. "I have to live in this country for maybe 60, maybe 70 years. This situation is about my future."
The Democratic Party-led opposition has filed an impeachment vote against Yoon, which will be voted on Saturday evening.
Protest organizer Kim Jeong-hee stated that marches will continue nightly on Jeju until Yoon is impeached or resigns.
"Even if it doesn't work tomorrow, we will keep going until the president resigns," she said.
"Even though we are a small island, we are fighting to protect democracy."
Jeju Island is home to fewer than 700,000 people. The demonstrations here since Yoon's martial law are the largest the island has seen since Jeju residents came out on Dec. 3, 2016, in protest of then-President Park Geun-hye, who would be impeached on Dec. 9 of that year, according to local newspaper Jeju Sori.
South Korea's president a 'great danger' to citizens, his own party says
Yoon Suk-yeol appears to be losing his last remaining support after declaring a short-lived martial law order that shocked the country.
Members of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's own People Power Party (PPP) said the leader posed a "significant risk" to South Korean citizens and called for his powers to be frozen during a party meeting on Friday.
Yoon was likely to engage in "extreme actions, like reattempting to impose martial law, which could potentially put the Republic of Korea and its citizens in great danger,” PPP's leader, Han Dong-hun, said.
“It’s my judgment that an immediate suspension of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s official duties is necessary to protect the Republic of Korea and its people,” Han added.
Han's comments spell trouble for Yoon, who is on the verge of losing power as opposition parties push for a parliamentary vote on his impeachment on Saturday.
Yoon briefly imposed a martial law order on South Korea this week, citing the need to "eliminate anti-state forces." As he announced martial law, he accused the country's opposition, the liberal Democratic Party, of sympathising with North Korea.
He reversed course only six hours later after 190 lawmakers forcibly entered the shuttered parliament to vote down the decree.
Opposition parties have called Yoon's martial law order “unconstitutional, illegal rebellion or coup.” They will need the support of two-thirds of the parliament to pass an impeachment motion and remove Yoon from power.
Elsewhere, Han said he received intelligence that Yoon had ordered one of the country's top intelligence commanders to arrest other politicians during the brief period he imposed a martial law order on the country.
His account was questioned by South Korea's spy agency director, Cho Tae-yong, who insisted that such an order would come to him and that he didn't receive any orders from Yoon to detain politicians.
Yoon under pressure
In addition to facing increasing cross-party support for his impeachment, Yoon's Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun is under investigation for his role in Yoon's decision.
Opposition parties claim it was Kim who recommended Yoon take the step, and he has been replaced in the interim by Vice Defence Minister Kim Seon-ho — who has promised the ministry would be co-operating with prosecutors in an additional investigation into the military's role in Yoon's martial law order.
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Seoul since Wednesday, calling for Yoon to resign.
Members of one of the country's biggest umbrella labour groups, the Korean Metal Worker's Union, have begun hourly strikes against Yoon, pledging to start indefinite strikes should the leader remain in power.
Events this week in Seoul have drawn international attention, with US President Joe Biden commenting he was "seriously concerned" about Yoon's martial law order and welcoming its removal.
Lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against Yoon just hours after the martial law order was lifted. They have set Saturday as the date parliament should vote to remove the president.
Opposition parties will need support from 200 members of the National Assembly's 300. They currently have 192 seats combined, with the PPP having 108 lawmakers.
Old boys’ club? S Korea plotters’ high
school links in spotlight
ByAFP
December 6, 2024
South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law but it was swiftly overturned by parliament -
SHIM Kyu-Seok
Key figures in South Korea’s failed martial law bid share one key connection: they are all graduates of a prestigious, all-boys school in Seoul.
The coincidence has sparked wild online speculation and even forced the school — a respectable but not academically famous, fee-paying establishment — to issue a public rebuke of its infamous alumnus.
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Tuesday declaration of South Korea’s first martial law in decades was swiftly overturned by parliament, and the conservative former prosecutor now faces impeachment and possible jail time.
South Koreans have been quick to point out that 63-year-old Yoon, his former defence minister, interior minister and head of the military’s intelligence all graduated from the Choongam High School.
There’s as yet no evidence that the connection played a role in their disastrous bid to shut down South Korea’s parliament.
But that hasn’t stopped many online from pointing fingers — leading the school’s superintendent Yoon Myung-hwa to quickly discredit her school’s infamous alumni.
She declared Yoon and ex-defence minister Kim Yong-hyun, 65, as “Choongam’s most embarrassing alumni a million times over”.
“They destroyed the reputation of the nation, as well as our school,” she wrote on Facebook.
– Class as usual –
Classes were on as usual at Choongam — a normal looking high-school in a peaceful leafy northwestern district of Seoul — on Friday, though administrators were clearly tense about the unwanted attention the school was getting.
The school is being bombarded by criticism from outsiders, with even bus drivers becoming the targets of bitter rants by citizens angry at current events.
Students have even been given special permission not to wear their school uniforms, local media reported, to prevent them from being targeted by angry members of the public.
When AFP toured the school Friday, students — who were not wearing uniforms — seemed confused to see reporters walking through their building, as they continued with lessons.
Superintendent Yoon told AFP the school was “distressed” to find itself associated with this week’s dark chapter in South Korean democracy.
“We at Choongam educate our students as democratic citizens, to value and treasure democracy,” she said.
“The acts perpetrated by those people are faults of the individual that do not reflect our ideals,” she added.
“As a school we feel uneasy and distressed about how our education is being faulted for these acts.”
– ‘Choongam clique’ –
Local media have run sensational stories decrying the group of schoolboy chums purportedly behind the dramatic events of Tuesday night, when heavily-armed soldiers were helicoptered into the parliament building with orders to “drag out” lawmakers.
Aided by determined staffers who blocked doors with office furniture to keep the soldiers out, enough MPs managed to gather to vote down the martial law declaration.
“The 12.3 martial law: behind the scenes lay the ‘Choongam clique'” wrote the magazine, Sisa Journal. “Was this a ‘Choongam clique’ coup?” asked the Segye Ilbo.
Interior minister Lee Sang-min denied the high school connection playing a role, saying there had been “no exclusive meeting between Choongam colleagues.”
But school networks occupy important roles in South Korean elite society — often seen as one of three key factors, alongside blood ties and regional background, that determine success.
And many pointed to parallels with another group of school graduates whose connection last pulled South Korea into martial law — former president Chun Doo-hwan’s “Hanahoe” army clique.
Chun’s circle of comrades from the Korea Military Academy, South Korea’s West Point, were instrumental in the 1979 coup — and bloody crackdowns — that followed the assassination of President Park Chung-hee.
The autocratic Chun later filled key posts with fellow alumni — even anointing fellow graduate Roh Tae-woo as his successor.
An online post three months before Yoon’s martial law declaration suggesting the so-called “Choongam connection” could try and exercise emergency powers has since gone viral.
“I don’t know if its coincidence or not, but there appears to been an almost premodern, one-dimensional connection between the orchestrators of this unconstitutional act,” Lee Joon-han, a politics professor at Incheon University, told AFP.
“Yoon is known to have a very narrow personnel pool based largely on his personal ties,” Lee said.
“This is a recipe for creating an army of yes-men,” he explained.
“There were few stop brakes in between that could have prevented this disaster.”
By AFP
December 5, 2024
Protesters take part in a candlelight rally calling for the ouster of South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol
Hailey Jo and Kang Jin-kyu
South Korea’s ruling party chief demanded Friday that President Yoon Suk Yeol stand down over his martial law attempt, warning he posed a great danger to the country.
The stunning comments from Han Dong-hoon, the head of Yoon’s People Power Party, almost guarantees enough lawmakers will vote to impeach the president on Saturday.
Han’s comments were a U-turn from Thursday, when he said he would block the impeachment, and another party leader insisted all 108 members of the PPP would unite to support Yoon in Saturday’s vote.
But Han said Friday that Yoon’s refusal to acknowledge he had done anything wrong in declaring martial law on Tuesday night had prompted his change of position.
“Considering the newly emerging facts, I believe that a swift suspension of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s duties is necessary to safeguard the Republic of Korea and its people,” Han said.
Han said Yoon had not taken any personnel actions against military officials who had “illegally intervened”.
“Furthermore, he does not acknowledge that this illegal martial law is wrong,” he said.
“Therefore, if President Yoon continues to hold the office of the presidency, there is a significant risk that extreme actions similar to the current state of emergency could be repeated, which could put the Republic of Korea and its citizens in great danger.”
Yoon suspended civilian rule late Tuesday and deployed troops and helicopters to parliament only for lawmakers to vote down the measure and force him into a U-turn in a night of protests and drama.
Seoul’s allies were alarmed — Washington said it found out via television — and the opposition quickly filed an impeachment motion saying Yoon “gravely violated the constitution and the law”. A vote is set for Saturday at around 7:00 pm (1000 GMT).
The opposition holds a large majority in the 300-member legislature and requires only a handful of defections from the PPP to secure the two-thirds majority needed for impeachment.
According to a poll issued Thursday by Realmeter, 73.6 percent of respondents supported the impeachment.
Thousands of protesters continued to rally in central Seoul and near the parliament on Thursday evening demanding the president step down.
If the impeachment motion passes, Yoon will be suspended pending a verdict by the Constitutional Court. If the judges give the nod, Yoon will be impeached and new elections must take place within 60 days.
– Bad memories –
Yoon, who has lurched from crisis to crisis since taking office in 2022, has not been seen in public since his televised address in the early hours of Wednesday.
On Thursday, his office said that Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun had resigned, but other key allies, including Interior Minister Lee Sang-min, remain in office.
Prosecutors have also banned Kim from leaving the country, Yonhap news agency reported.
Lawmakers on Thursday grilled senior figures, including army chief of staff General Park An-su, who acted as Yoon’s martial law commander.
Park said he was kept in the dark until after the president had announced the imposition of martial law on live television late Tuesday.
It was the first such declaration in more than four decades in South Korea and brought back painful memories of its autocratic past.
The move was to “safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness,” Yoon said.
Security forces sealed the National Assembly, helicopters landed on the roof and almost 300 soldiers tried to lock down the building.
But as parliamentary staffers blocked the soldiers with sofas and fire extinguishers. Enough MPs got inside and voted down Yoon’s move.
Lawmakers formally presented the impeachment motion in the early hours of Thursday, saying Yoon’s decision to impose martial law was intended to “evade imminent investigations… into alleged illegal acts involving himself and his family”.
“This is an unforgivable crime — one that cannot, should not and will not be pardoned,” MP Kim Seung-won said.
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