South Korea’s Yoon defends martial law as act of governance

Seoul: South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol defended his martial law decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges, vowing Thursday to “fight to the end” in response to attempts to impeach him and intensifying investigations into last week’s dramatic move.

The main opposition Democratic Party quickly slammed Yoon’s speech as “an expression of extreme delusion” and “false propaganda.” Later Thursday, it and other opposition parties submitted a new impeachment motion against Yoon for a floor vote this weekend.

The opposition-controlled parliament also passed motions Thursday to impeach and suspend Yoon’s police chief and justice minister over the imposition of martial law, escalating the pressure on Yoon’s embattled government.

Yoon’s short-lived December 3 martial law declaration has generated political chaos and large protests calling for his ouster. The decree brought hundreds of armed troops who attempted to encircle parliament and raid the election commission, though no major violence or injuries occurred. Martial law lasted only six hours as Yoon was forced to lift it after the National Assembly unanimously voted it down.

In a televised speech Thursday, Yoon, a conservative, said he enacted martial law as a warning to the liberal Democratic Party. He called the party “a monster” and “anti-state forces” that he said tried to use its legislative muscle to impeach top officials, undermined the government’s budget bill for next year and sympathised with North Korea.

“I will fight to the end to prevent the forces and criminal groups that have been responsible for paralysing the country’s government and disrupting the nation’s constitutional order from threatening the future of the Republic of Korea,” Yoon said. “The opposition is now doing a sword dance of chaos, claiming that the declaration of martial law constitutes to an act of rebellion. But was it really?”

Yoon said martial law was an act of governance that cannot be the subject of investigations and doesn’t amount to rebellion. He said the deployment of nearly 300 soldiers to the National Assembly was designed to maintain order, not dissolve or paralyse it.

Kim Min-seok, head of a Democratic Party task force, dismissed Yoon’s statement as “an expression of extreme delusion” and “a declaration of war against the people.” Kim accused the president of attempting to incite pro-Yoon riots by far-right forces.