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Challenges after the passage of the impeachment motion

Published: 16 Dec. 2024, 20:01

Kim Ho-ki
The author is a sociology professor at Yonsei University.

Sometimes outside eyes can be more piercing. The British newspaper The Guardian said President Yoon Suk Yeol made a “bizarre, appalling and short-lived attempt” to impose martial law on Dec. 3. The Associated Press called the quick overturn of martial law in just six hours a “victory for a hard-won democracy” of Korea.

The subsequent passage of the impeachment motion by the National Assembly was a path that followed the will of the majority. Korean society has once again vividly demonstrated that democracy is a system in which the people are the masters.

Two years ago, I edited and published “South Korea’s Democracy in Crisis” with Gi-Wook Shin, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University. The subtitle read, “The Threats of Illiberalism, Populism and Polarization.” We emphasized the fact that despite the procedural democracy of periodic elections and the functioning balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, factional politics that deny each other and a lack of trust in the government and political parties that are powerless to resolve inequality are pushing our democracy into crisis.

As I observed the martial law declaration and impeachment, two thoughts came to mind.

One is how a democratic crisis emerges. In our book, we cited five signs of a democratic crisis: the denial and demonization of opposing political forces; the judicialization of politics and the politicization of the judiciary; undermining the rules of the democratic game through double standards; the excessive ideological confrontation of civil society and nationalistic populism were listed as the five signs. However, we did not predict the threat posed by a presidential coup, which the U.S. diplomatic journal Foreign Policy once pointed out. The politics of surreal risks that threaten democracy by declaring emergency martial law was the portrait of our society in 2024.

The other is the remarkable resilience of our democracy. It was the strength of civil society and political institutions that saved it on the night of Dec. 3, when the people defended parliament, which lifted martial law. Ahead of the passage of the second impeachment motion on Dec. 14, the people demanded Yoon’s ouster, and politicians responded by removing the “extremely dangerous president.” This interactive, synergistic “two-track democracy” was the source of its resilience.

The time frame for the impeachment trial started with the passage of the impeachment motion on Dec. 14. The time frame of the presidential election will be added, if we look back at the experience of 2016 and 2017. The Constitutional Court will make a ruling on Yoon’s impeachment within 180 days, but a new president must be elected within 60 days after the ruling. Society will have to endure some overlap between the two events.

There are two major challenges for our society following parliament’s passage of Yoon’s impeachment. First, the time of the impeachment trial is a period of uncertainty. We need to minimize the period of uncertainty and normalize the country. To this end, the court’s impeachment trial as well as the prosecution’s investigation into Yoon’s high treason charges must be conducted strictly and quickly. The government, the ruling and opposition parties must make national interests the top priority to minimize the impacts on the economy, society and international relations.

Specifically, they should establish and operate an emergency governance system that involves all three of them as well as key relevant organizations in the area of the economy, foreign affairs and national security. Meanwhile, the presidential race will start. The threats facing our democracy are illiberalism that rejects tolerance and coexistence, populism that incites hostile rifts, and economic and political polarization triggered by structured inequality and consolidated factional politics.

These point to the limitations of the 1987 system. Without a new power structure and political order that goes beyond the five-year imperial presidency, our democracy is highly likely to experience repeated crises. The two forces that sustain democracy are institutions and rituals. If an election is held early next year, a main promise should include a concrete plan for a constitutional amendment to overcome the limitations of system.

In National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik’s closing remarks after the Dec. 14 vote, he said, “The future of Korea, our hope, lies in the people. Hope is powerful.” In Kim Kwang-kyu’s poem “Hope,” he says hope is “not something someone gives us, but something we have to fight for and defend.” The past 11 days have been a time to rediscover the strength and power of hope in democracy, which we fought for and won. I believe only those who embrace hope can build a new future.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.