President Yoon Suk Yeol announced the decree \u2013 which only lasted a few hours before being struck down by lawmakers who forced their way past soldiers into parliament \u2013 in an extraordinary late-night television address late Tuesday night <\/p>\n
\u201cI replied, \u2018That\u2019s a deepfake. It has to be a deepfake. There\u2019s no way that\u2019s real,\u2019\u201d he said, referring to the term for fake audio and video created with artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I watched the video, the president was indeed declaring martial law \u2013 yet I thought to myself, \u2018This is fabricated, it\u2019s fake.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The news was especially stunning given South Korea has spent the last four decades shaping itself into a vibrant democracy with frequent protests and protected freedoms \u2013 a hard-won victory after a long history of bloody authoritarian rule. <\/p>\n
In the last few days, after Yoon backed down and lifted the decree early Wednesday, protesters have demanded the president\u2019s removal while opposition parties including the DP begin impeachment proceedings. <\/p>\n
Lee, who was Yoon\u2019s main rival in the 2022 presidential election and is himself embroiled in multiple legal difficulties after being indicted on criminal charges, has led the impeachment efforts. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday night, within an hour of Yoon announcing martial law, Lee rushed to the parliament in Seoul \u2013 live-streaming as he climbed over a fence to enter the building as lawmakers scrambled to vote against the decree. The video has since gone viral, viewed tens of millions of times on the social platform X. <\/p>\n
Parliament could vote on impeachment as soon as Saturday. If it reaches the two-thirds majority to pass, it will then go to one of the country\u2019s highest courts for further approval. <\/p>\n
However, Yoon\u2019s ruling People Power Party is working to block the move. <\/p>\n
Multiple members of Yoon\u2019s party joined their political opponents in blocking the martial law decree during the remarkable late-night scenes inside parliament. <\/p>\n
But party leader Han Dong-hoon said in a briefing Thursday he would oppose the impeachment because it could cause \u201cunprepared chaos,\u201d though he emphasized he was \u201cnot defending President Yoon\u2019s unconstitutional martial law,\u201d <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, many lawmakers haven\u2019t dared leave the parliament building \u2013 including opposition member Kang Sun-woo, who has been there since Tuesday night. <\/p>\n
Questions now swirl around the future of Yoon\u2019s presidency, his party\u2019s position in government, and how this could reshape the country\u2019s political landscape of a major Asian economy and key US regional ally. <\/p>\n
Lee, a human rights lawyer turned former provincial governor, only lost the 2022 election by a razor-thin margin \u2013 but neither candidate was particularly popular. Both men were mired in scandal, and have been dogged by legal cases and allegations in the years since. <\/p>\n
Lee now faces several trials including for bribery and charges related to a $1 billion property development scandal, Reuters reported. In November, he was indicted for personal misuse of public funds, and separately convicted and sentenced for violating election law. <\/p>\n
Lee has denied the charges and said he would appeal. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Yoon Suk Yeol announced the decree \u2013 which only lasted a few hours before being struck down by lawmakers who forced their way past soldiers into parliament \u2013 in an extraordinary late-night television address late Tuesday night \u201cI replied, \u2018That\u2019s a deepfake. It has to be a deepfake. There\u2019s no way that\u2019s real,\u2019\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}