South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol's own ruling party leader has demanded his suspension from office following his decision to declare martial law.
Protesters have gathered outside the National Assembly, demanding the president's arrest. The opposition is pushing for a vote on Yoon's impeachment. Our correspondent Shane Hahm is in Seoul.
#southkorea #yoon #impeachment
Protesters have gathered outside the National Assembly, demanding the president's arrest. The opposition is pushing for a vote on Yoon's impeachment. Our correspondent Shane Hahm is in Seoul.
#southkorea #yoon #impeachment
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00:00He's starting to feel the pressure now. President Yoon hasn't been seen in public ever since he announced that declaration of martial law here on the country several days ago.
00:09He did, however, have a meeting with the ruling party's chief earlier today.
00:15It's, in fact, the second meeting in as many days for the two.
00:19What we saw here was that Han has changed his position a complete 180 after finding out these new details about President Yoon's involvement in the martial law imposition a couple of days ago.
00:34So because he holds a lot of power in this impeachment vote that's coming up scheduled for Saturday here,
00:41because we know that at least eight conservative party members have to cross the aisle and defect for the majority two-thirds to have that impeachment vote passed.
00:53So as far as what Han Dong-un, what he's saying is that he needs to see more, but he didn't see that in today's meeting and he feels that the president needs to be stripped of his power.
01:05Now, on the other side, the opposition party chief, Lee Jae-myung, he had some harsher words for the president.
01:12Have a listen. We cannot let the president, who threatens lives of people through unconstitutional and illegal acts, be in charge of national affairs, not even for a second.
01:24We must suspend him of all duties as soon as possible and let people decide whether he can stay in the seat.
01:30And Shane, what's going on with those protests?
01:37Yeah, very reminiscent of the candlelight protests from 2017 when former President Park Geun-hye was impeached.
01:44We've seen protests every day ever since that martial law decree was issued today.
01:49In fact, I was at a rally just a couple of hours ago in front of the National Assembly.
01:54It's a Friday night here. It was a much bigger crowd than we've seen in the past couple of days.
01:58Tomorrow, just ahead of the impeachment vote, authorities here are expecting about 300,000 people to hit the streets, whether they're in favor or against this impeachment bill.
02:08But one thing's for sure is that the future of South Korean politics lays in the hands of the result of tomorrow's vote.
02:17If the impeachment bill does, in fact, pass the moment the speaker of the House hits his gavel,
02:23President Yun will be stripped of his presidential powers, which will be immediately transferred over to the prime minister
02:29until the higher courts decide and deliberate on whether this impeachment motion should go through.
02:35If it does, South Korea will be seeing another presidential election within 60 days.