After failed martial law, South Koreans ask: Who’s in charge?

SEOUL – South Korea’s government was paralysed on Dec 8, mired in a new constitutional crisis after President Yoon Suk Yeol clung to his office, but his own party’s leader suggested that he had been ousted from power.

Mr Yoon has barely been seen in public since his

ill-fated decision last week to declare martial law.

Meanwhile, Mr Han Dong-hoon, chair of Mr Yoon’s People Power Party, or PPP, has presented himself as the government’s decision-maker and said the President is no longer running the country.

The trouble is that South Korea’s Constitution does not allow for anyone to replace the president unless he resigns or is impeached.

Mr Yoon’s office did not comment on Mr Han’s statement. But Mr Yoon “has not and by law, cannot, cede power to anyone” except through resignation, impeachment or election, said a senior government source familiar with the discussions inside Mr Yoon’s office.

Mr Yoon exercised his role as president on Dec 8 by accepting the resignation of his home minister, Mr Lee Sang-min.

Opposition groups immediately complained that Mr Han was overreaching: trying to use the power vacuum created by Mr Yoon’s ill-fated imposition of martial law and the ensuing turmoil to establish himself as the top leader in the governing camp.

“We have a situation where the President cannot make decisions, he cannot give guidelines, he cannot give orders,” said Seoul National University’s political science professor Kang Won-taek.

“Although we have a president, we are in a state of anarchy.”

The result was deepening political uncertainty on Dec 8, as South Koreans wondered who was in charge of their government, including its military, at a time when South Korea faces multiple foreign policy challenges.

Those include North Korea’s growing nuclear threat and the delicate diplomacy needed in its alliance with the US as the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump looms.

At home, thousands of young doctors have been on strike for nearly a year to protest Mr Yoon’s planned changes to healthcare policy. Militant labour unions have vowed to escalate strikes until Mr Yoon is impeached.

The country also faces a slowing economy, mounting household debt, low birthrates, unaffordable housing prices and a host of other intractable problems.

The martial law order lasted only six hours from late Dec 3 until the National Assembly voted against it early on Dec 4, forcing Mr Yoon to back down. But it prompted waves of protests and calls for his resignation or impeachment.

In a last-ditch attempt to survive an attempt by opposition lawmakers on Dec 7 to impeach him, Mr Yoon apologised to the nation for his misjudgment.

But he did not offer to resign and left it to his party to decide how long he should remain in office and how the government should be run. In return, his party boycotted the parliamentary vote,

saving him from impeachment.

The ensuing manoeuvring by Mr Yoon, Mr Han and the rival political parties has created what analysts called a state of chaos: a politically incapacitated President who the opposition says has never intended to step down; an ambitious party leader jockeying to consolidate his power; and an opposition determined to force Mr Yoon out of office as fast as possible so as to hold a new national election.

In an announcement on the morning of Dec 8, Mr Han said Mr Yoon must resign because he could no longer function as a normal head of state for the remainder of his five-year term, which ends in May 2027.

But he did not say when Mr Yoon should step down, only that the country needed time to arrange for him to make an “orderly exit”.

Mr Han, without clarifying whether he had the authority to make such a statement, said:  “Even before he resigns, the President will no longer be involved in state affairs, including diplomacy.”

He said Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, a political appointee of Mr Yoon’s, would run the government in close consultation with the PPP.

That appeared to be a nod to South Korea’s constitutional requirement that only the prime minister can step in as an interim leader until South Korea selects a new president through a national election. But no law defines the president’s “exclusion” from state affairs: His office can be legally vacated only through resignation or impeachment.

The opposition quickly accused Mr Han of trying to grab power illegally through “a second insurrection”, adding to the confusion created by Mr Yoon’s short-lived attempt to place his country under martial rule for the first time in 45 years.

“He should stop acting as if he were the president,” Mr Yoon Jong-kun, a spokesman for the principal opposition Democratic Party, said on Dec 8. “No one – not the people, not the laws of the nation – gave him the power to exclude the President from office.”

The opposition parties have vowed to seek Mr Yoon’s impeachment again, as early as Dec 14. Mr Park Chan-dae, the floor leader of Mr Lee’s main opposition Democratic Party, said the assembly would try to vote on his impeachment “every Saturday”.

Adding to the turmoil, opposition parties called for Mr Yoon’s arrest, asserting that the President and his followers in the government and military committed insurrection and other crimes when they sent soldiers and police officers into the National Assembly to try to seize the legislature shortly after Mr Yoon declared martial law.

A team of more than 60 prosecutors and investigators has been put together to investigate the accusations, Mr Park Se-hyun, chief of the Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office, said on Dec 8. Earlier on Dec 8, prosecutors detained Mr Yoon’s former defence minister, Mr Kim Yong-hyun, for questioning.

The current uncertainty raised the crucial question of who would give orders to South Korea’s armed forces in case they needed to respond to North Korea, said Mr Lee Byong-chul, a North Korea expert at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

“By law, Yoon is still commander in chief,” he said. “If North Korea launches a provocation to test South Korea’s political situation, will he reassert his power as commander in chief? Will that lead to a fight over power?” NYTIMES