South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said early Wednesday morning local time that he has lifted the “emergency martial law” decree that he signed into effect just six hours earlier.
“I declared emergency martial law at 11 p.m. last night as an act of national resolve against the anti-state forces that are trying to paralyze the essential functions of the state and disrupt the constitutional order of our liberal democracy,” he said in a statement.
“However, a short time ago, the National Assembly demanded that martial law be lifted, so I withdrew the military forces that had been deployed to carry out martial law,” he continued, “I will lift martial law as soon as we have a quorum in the cabinet. It’s early in the morning, so we don’t have a quorum yet.”
Yoon’s decision to end the martial came after 190 members of South Korea’s 300 National Assembly members quickly gathered for an emergency session in which all 190 voted to block the move.
He called on the National Assembly to “immediately stop the outrageous behavior that is paralyzing the functioning of the country with impeachments, legislative manipulation and budget manipulation.”
The decree from Yoon, who has seen his approval ratings plummet in recent months, comes after the country ended its military dictatorship in the 1980s.
The New York Times noted that the conservative president won his election by campaigning on being tougher toward North Korea and calling for strengthening the country’s alliance with the U.S.
Yoon declared martial law in an attempt to bring an end to the paralysis in operating the government that was caused by the National Assembly being won by the opposing party, the country’s Democratic Party, earlier this year.
In his speech announcing the martial law, Yoon said that the political opposition inside the country had paralyzed the government’s ability to operate by initiating 22 impeachment proceedings against government officials over the last six months in addition to nearly a dozen more that were planned.
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“This is a situation that is not only unprecedented in any country in the world, but has never been seen since the founding of our country,” he said late on Tuesday night local time. “It is paralyzing the judiciary by intimidating judges and impeaching a number of prosecutors, and it is paralyzing the executive branch by trying to impeach the Minister of the Interior, the Chairman of the Communications Commission, the Chair of the Board of Audit, and the Defense Minister.”
He said that the country’s security was being weakened by members of the National Assembly who had “undermined the essential functions of the state” by cutting key measures from the country’s national budget.
He added that the country’s Democratic Party had a “legislative dictatorship” that it was using “as a means of political struggle.”
He said the National Assembly had turned into a “den of criminals” that was committing “obvious anti-state act[s]” and plotting “insurrection.”
Yoon said martial law was needed “to defend the free Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces and to eradicate the shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people and to protect the free constitutional order.”
CNN said that the South Korean public was upset over the way Yoon handled a tragedy after he was elected when more than 150 people were crushed to death at a Halloween party.
The report said there was also a controversy involving a designer handbag that his wife, Kim Keon See, was accused of accepting valued at more than the $750 limit.
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