South Korea’s president sparked chaos with martial regulation ‘to evade felony probe in to him and his spouse’ regardless of claiming it was to flush out professional Kim Jong-un forces, impeachment movement claims

South Korea‘s president allegedly sparked chaos with his declaration of martial law to evade a criminal probe into him and his wife. 

A motion filed to impeach Yoon Suk Yeol alleges that he ‘gravely and extensively violated the Constitution and the law’.

It added that the imposition of martial law was ‘motivated not by national security concerns but by an intent to evade investigations into criminal allegations involving President Yoon and his family’.

Yoon’s approval ratings had already tanked prior to him declaring martial law and causing chaos in his country due to a string of scandals including corruption and influence-peddling allegations against his wife Kim Keon-hee.

Footage shows Kim allegedly accepting a £1,800 Dior handbag from a Korean American pastor in September 2022.

The pastor filmed the exchanged with a hidden camera in his watch and said he had been supplied with both the watch camera and the Dior bag he allegedly gifted to Kim by Voice of Seoul, a left-leaning YouTube channel critical of the president, CNN reports. 

The clip was shared on YouTube late last year, but Yoon refused to apologise when the incident first made waves in February. He eventually apologised in November in a bid to rebuild his public image. 

His wife can be heard telling the pastor after reportedly when presented with the bag: ‘Why do you keep bringing these? Please, you don’t need to do this.’

A shopping was seen standing on the table between them as Kim and the pastor continued their conversation, but the footage didn’t show Kim taking the bag.

The handbag in question reportedly is a cloud blue calfskin Lady Dior Pouch, which at £1,800 exceeds the legal gift value limit government officials are allowed to receive. 

Kim was questioned over the exchange by prosecutors, but she has not been charged.

Yoon defended her in his apology and said his wife had been excessively ‘demonised’ because of the scandal. But he did not specifically deny that his wife had accepted the bag. 

The South Korean president also claimed that the video had been leaked as a ‘political maneuver’ against him and that the parliament, in which the majority of seats is held by the opposition, was ‘problematically’ investigating her. 

Kim has also been accused of falsying her resume, academic plagiarism as well as allegedly participating in a stock manipulation scheme.

The presidential office has repeatedly denied that Kim had participated in any stock manipulation schemes, but hasn’t addressed the other two allegations. 

‘The Dior bag is the proverbial needle that broke the camel’s back,’ law professor Cho Hee-kyoung told CNN, citing the ‘never-ending litany of scandal’ surrounding Kim since Yoon started campaigning for president. ‘But with the Dior bag, there is this powerful visual evidence.’    

Yoon is now facing impeachment less than 24 hours after his shock declaration of martial law plunged the country into chaos.

Opposition lawmakers, journalists and political experts are now questioning their leader’s sanity and labelled his sensational stunt nothing more than ‘political suicide’. 

The scandal-hit political leader declared the extraordinary measure on Tuesday night in a bid to thwart ‘pro-North Korean, anti-state forces’ – but the move was widely seen as a political ploy to exercise greater power.

Now, South Korea’s opposition parties, whose lawmakers jumped fences and tussled with security forces to vote down the law, have already filed a motion to impeach Yoon with a vote expected as early as Friday. 

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung warned that the ruling party ‘will try (martial law) again when the situation is organised and improved’, while MP Joon Hyung Kim told the BBC that Yoon’s ‘impulsive’ decision showed ‘maybe he’s not in his right mind’.

If Yoon resigned or was removed from office, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo would fill in as leader until a new election was held within 60 days.

‘South Korea as a nation dodged a bullet, but President Yoon may have shot himself in the foot,’ Danny Russel, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute think tank in the United States, said of the first martial law declaration in South Korea since 1980.

Yoon scraped into the presidency in a close run election in 2022, winning by a margin of less than one per cent over opposition leader Lee.

But Yoon’s People Power Party suffered a landslide defeat at a parliamentary election in April this year, ceding control of the unicameral assembly to opposition parties that captured nearly two-thirds of the seats. 

Yoon’s popularity has tanked in particular due to his dismissal of calls for independent investigations into scandals involving his wife and top officials – drawing quick, strong rebukes from his political rivals. 

The President has repeatedly vetoed bills passed by the Democratic Party to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate alleged wrongdoings by his wife, including allegations of stock price manipulation before Yoon’s election.

The opposition has also sought to impeach cabinet members, including the government’s auditing chief, for failing to investigate the First Lady amid allegations of corruption and influence peddling. 

On Wednesday evening, civic and labour groups held a candlelight vigil in downtown Seoul calling for Yoon’s resignation – a reminder of the massive candlelight protests that led to the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye in 2017. 

They then marched to the presidential office. Six South Korean opposition parties submitted a bill in parliament to impeach Yoon, who had already faced accusations of heavy-handed leadership from his opponents and from within his own party, with voting set for Friday or Saturday.

A plenary session to formally introduce the bill was scheduled to begin shortly after midnight (3pm UK time) on Wednesday.

‘We couldn’t ignore the illegal martial law,’ DP lawmaker Kim Yong-min told reporters. ‘We can no longer let democracy collapse.’