Lawmakers could vote as soon as Friday to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for his desperate attempt to declare martial law yesterday. Just a few hours after Yoon made the surprise declaration, lawmakers voted unanimously to strike it down, requiring him to retract it, which he did. (Washington Post)
Our Take
While Yoon’s declaration of martial law surprised virtually everyone, the dynamics that drove him to take such a desperate and ultimately ill-fated gamble have been on prominent display for months. Yoon has had an acrimonious relationship with the opposition-controlled parliament ever since he took office. Those tensions have only heightened since his People’s Power Party, or PPP, fared poorly in legislative elections in April that were widely seen as a referendum on Yoon’s leadership.
Indeed, the Democratic Party, or DP, won that vote largely by emphasizing Yoon’s unpopularity, with his approval rating falling below 40 percent before the election and plummeting afterward. As Joel Atkinson wrote in April, Yoon’s opponents capitalized on a series of incidents that made the president appear incompetent, out of touch and stubborn, as well as a scandal involving the first lady’s acceptance of a Dior bag as a gift.