South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Thursday he would fight to the end as his party moved closer to impeaching him over his short-lived martial law order that shook the country.
He cast doubt on his party’s landslide election loss in April by accusing North Korea of hacking South Korea’s election commission in a long televised speech.
Yoon should either resign or face impeachment by parliament, according to the leader of the People Power Party (PPP).
Six opposition parties, especially the Democratic Party, submitted a bill for Yoon’s impeachment to parliament in the late hours of Thursday. They have scheduled an anticipated vote for Saturday, one week after the first vote failed due to the boycott of the majority of PPP members.
Yoon stated that the opposition was “dancing the sword dance of madness” by attempting to remove a democratically elected president from power, nine days after his unsuccessful attempt to grant the military broad powers.
He said, “I will fight to the end. Whether they impeach me or investigate me, I will face it all squarely.”
As a career prosecutor and expert in the law, Yoon may have chosen to take a chance in court in the hopes of making a comeback, as his defiance suggests.
If a vote were to impeach Yoon, the Constitutional Court would have up to six months to decide whether to remove him from office or reinstate him.
Separately, Yoon is under investigation for alleged insurrection in relation to the Dec. 3 martial law declaration, which he later rescinded.
The martial law attempt precipitated South Korea’s most significant political crisis in decades and sent economic and diplomatic shockwaves.
