A governing party walkout deprived the opposition of the votes needed to remove the president.
A motion to impeach South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has failed as National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik closed the session, which had stalled for hours after legislators from the governing party boycotted the vote.
Nearly all 108 members of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) walked out of the chamber before the vote on Saturday, prompting angry reactions from opposition legislators, with some accusing them of being “accomplices to insurrection”.
The walkout came hours after the embattled leader apologised for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this week.
Up for a vote earlier was a bill to investigate First Lady Kim Keon-hee, who is seen as a driving force behind Yoon’s decision to impose martial law, which failed. The PPP parliamentarians walked out after that vote.
‘Derailing the impeachment’
The impeachment motion by the opposition required a two-thirds majority. Opposition parties control 192 of the legislature’s 300 seats, meaning they needed at least eight additional votes from Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP).
“So far this vote seems to be derailing the impeachment process,” Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride reported earlier on Satruday from Seoul, adding that only one member of the governing party had remained in the Chamber during the vote.
Speaker Woo stopped short of calling the result, appealing to PPP legislators to return “to protect the Republic of Korea and its democracy”.
The chair of the PPP, Han Dong-hoon, had called for Yoon’s removal on Friday, but the party remained formally opposed to impeachment.
Han said he had received intelligence that during the brief period of martial law, Yoon ordered the country’s defence counterintelligence commander to arrest and detain unspecified key politicians based on accusations of “antistate activities”.
Following Yoon’s televised apology on Saturday, in which he said the decision was born of “desperation”, Han reiterated his call for him to step down.
“President Yoon Suk Yeol’s early resignation is inevitable,” Han told reporters, adding that Yoon was not in a state to carry out official duties.
Slide towards authoritarianism
The vote took place as tens of thousands of people packed streets near the National Assembly, waving banners, shouting slogans, dancing and singing along to K-pop songs with lyrics changed to call for Yoon’s removal.
A smaller crowd of Yoon’s supporters, which still seemed to be in the thousands, rallied in separate streets in Seoul, decrying the impeachment attempt they saw as unconstitutional.
Opposition legislators accuse Yoon of a slide towards authoritarianism.
The president shocked the nation on Tuesday night when he announced martial law, giving the military sweeping emergency powers to combat unspecified threats from “North Korean communist forces” and “eradicate the shameless pro-North antistate forces”.
Sometime after midnight, soldiers attempted to enter the main parliament, with scuffles breaking out as staffers and legislators barred their way with office furniture as barricades.
In the early morning hours on Wednesday, legislators voted 190-0 to nullify Yoon’s declaration and demonstrators poured onto the streets before Yoon said he would lift martial law.
Six opposition parties later filed an impeachment motion against Yoon. Opposition legislators also filed separate complaints of “insurrection” against the president, his defence and interior ministers and key military and police officers.
