South Korea’s Yoon defends martial law as an act of governance, vows to ‘fight to the end’

SEOUL (TIP): South Korea’s president defended his martial law decree as an act of governance and denied rebellion charges, vowing December 12 to “fight to the end” in the face of attempts to impeach him and intensifying investigations into last week’s dramatic move.
Yoon Suk Yeol’s televised statement came hours before the main liberal opposition Democratic Party submits a new impeachment motion against Yoon to put it on a floor vote this weekend.
Yoon’s Dec. 3 martial law declaration, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, has generated political chaos and large protests calling for his ouster. The decree brought hundreds of armed troops attempting to encircle parliament and raiding 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.
Yoon, a conservative, said he enacted martial law as a warning to the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, which controls parliament. 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 sympathized with North Korea.
“I will fight to the end to prevent the forces and criminal groups that have been responsible for paralyzing 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?” he said.
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 paralyze it.
The Democratic Party quickly dismissed Yoon’s statement as “an expression of extreme delusion” and “a declaration of war against the people.” Kim Min-seok, head of a party task force, accused the president of attempting to incite pro-Yoon riots by far-right forces. He said the Democratic Party will focus on getting the motion impeaching Yoon passed on Saturday. If Yoon is impeached, his presidential powers would be suspended until the Constitutional Court decides whether to remove him from office or retore his powers. (AP)