South Korea’s National Assembly votes to impeach President Yoon Suk-yeol | Political Affairs

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Other members of Yoon’s conservative People Power Party cast key votes in favor of impeachment.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has been impeached by the National Assembly over his short-lived attempts to impose martial law, a move that plunged South Korea into political turmoil during his presidency.

The unbalanced National Assembly voted 204 to 85 on Saturday to impeach Yoon, the second such vote in eight days. Three members did not abstain and eight votes were declared invalid.

The vote was taken by secret ballot, with a two-thirds vote needed to remove the case. All 300 assembly members voted.

Loud cheers were heard in the chamber as the result of the vote was announced. Outside, thousands of protesters greeted the announcement with applause and cheers.

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from inside the assembly building, described the situation as “sombre” after the vote.

But our reporter said that the political disagreement has not ended as the president has “sworn and asserted that he will fight” his case before the court.

“But regarding the opposition parties and this meeting, they have not achieved what they intended to do.”

What happens next?

Upon his indictment, Yoon is automatically suspended from office while South Korea’s Constitutional Court deliberates on his fate.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo takes over as interim president.

The Constitutional Court will then have 180 days to rule on Yoon’s future. If upheld, Yoon would become the second president in South Korean history to be successfully impeached.

Park Geun-hye, another radical president, was impeached in December 2016 and removed from office in March 2017.

The position of the People Power Party is changing

Yoon’s conservative People Power Party (PPP) boycotted the first vote to put him in office last week, blocking a quorum.

Since then, PPP leader Han Dong-hoon has urged the party to participate in the voting process, although the party’s official position rejects Yoon’s impeachment.

Ahead of the vote, at least seven PPP members said they would vote to impeach Yoon, meaning only one vote is needed to reach the 200 needed to impeach Yoon.

‘The weight of history’

An estimated 200,000 people took to the streets in the capital, Seoul, to rally against Yoon hours before the impeachment vote.

Al Jazeera’s Eunice Kim, reporting from Seoul, said “the protesters came out for a historic moment, and they made history.”

“The uncertainty that South Koreans have had to live with for the past two weeks is the same uncertainty as what is to come,” added our correspondent, noting the long-running political battle after the impeachment.

“This is an important time. But I don’t think anyone is pretending that the war we are going to fight is over.”

At the opening of the National Assembly session, Speaker Woo Won-shik announced that the “weight of history” was in the hands of the members of the assembly.

Park Chan-dae, the grassroots leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea, declared that “Yoon is the leader of the revolution”.

He added that the impeachment vote was “the only way” to “protect the constitution” of South Korea.

Yoon is unapologetic and defiant as the fallout from his declaration of martial law escalates and investigations into his inner circle increase.

His approval rating – which has never been so high – has fallen to 11 percent, according to a Gallup Korea poll released Friday. An earlier poll conducted in November showed him with a 19 percent approval rating shortly before the declaration of martial law.

The same poll showed that 75 percent of people now support his prosecution.