Prime Minister Han Duck-SOO, from South Korea, was rejected according to the acting presidency on Monday, after the country’s constitutional court canceled its dismissal by the National Assembly. But the decision did not do much to announce political stability in the country, which went from the crisis to the crisis.
Mr. Han was briefly acting president of South Korea after the Assembly welcomed President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 14, suspending Mr. Yoon from his functions within the framework of his failed attempt to place the country under martial law. Han was in the role of less than two weeks when the Assembly also charged him, adding to the turmoil swallowing South Korea, a key Asian ally of the United States.
The Constitutional Court has not yet announced when it decides on the opportunity to avoid or reinstall Mr. Yoon – a much more consecutive decision than the South Koreans have been waiting for weeks with increasing anxiety. If Mr. Yoon is removed, South Korea will eliminate a new president within 60 days. If it is returned to power, he will face a more fractured country than ever about his presidency.
The Constitutional Court has the last word on the question of whether the officials dismissed by the Assembly are officially deleted or reinstalled. His decision on Monday came into force immediately and cannot appeal.
Mr. Han immediately returned to his duties, replacing the Minister of Finance Choi Sang-Mok, the official official in the government’s hierarchy, which had doubled as acting president. But the country still has not an elected leader because it faces nuclear threats from North Korea and the world rates that President Trump said he would impose in the coming weeks.
When the assembly dismissed Mr. Han, he accused him of collaborating in what he called the illegal declaration of the martial law of Mr. Yoon. He also declared that Mr. Han had violated his constitutional duties by refusing to appoint three judges of the Constitutional Court appointed by the Assembly. Mr. Han denied the accusations.
In the court’s decision on Monday, only one of his eight judges supported Mr. Han’s dismissal of his functions. Votes of at least six judges are necessary to withdraw the officials dismissed; Otherwise, they are restored.
The court said that he had found no evidence that Mr. Han had played a role in the taxation of Mr. Yoon of the martial law. Mr. Han insisted that he was not aware of Mr. Yoon’s plan before the night when the president said. When Mr. Han heard for the first time, he said, he expressed his objection to Mr. Yoon, saying that it would damage the country’s economy and his international reputation.
Mr. Han was the first acting president in South Korean history to be dismissed.
Four judges said that Mr. Han’s refusal to appoint the three judges of the Constitutional Court appointed by the Assembly was a violation of the Constitution and related laws, but that the violation was not serious enough to deserve its dismissal. Only one judge said it was quite serious.
When Mr. Yoon was charged, the Superior Court had only six judges, with three vacant posts to be filled by the assembly controlled by the opposition. The opposition denounced Mr. Han’s refusal to sign the candidates of the Assembly as an attempt to improve the chances of Mr. Yoon to be submitted – because his dismissal would require six votes, whatever the number of judges on the ground.
Mr. Choi, the successor of Mr. Han as an acting president, then appointed two of the three judges, leaving only one post in the court, which normally has nine members.
“I thank the Constitutional Court for his wise decision,” said Han by resuming his official functions after 88 days.
He called on South Korea to overcome its political polarization so that it can better face “intensifying hegemonic competition between the United States and China and a new geopolitical upheaval” following the inauguration of Mr. Trump.
“If there is something that we have witnessed and learned clearly in recent years, it is that an extremely polarized society cannot realize its dreams, meeting only miseries,” he said.
The decision on Monday did not provide any clue to the way the court would rule on the case of Mr. Yoon. But it was the last turn of a political drama that has seized South Korea for months.
The presidency of Mr. Yoon had been marked by the deepening of conflicts between his office and the National Assembly. Mr. Yoon vetoed a record number of his bills, while the Assembly voted to grant more civil servants than any previous legislature.
Kwon Young-Se, Mr. Yoon’s People’s Party, welcomed the court’s decision as a “severe warning against the legislative violence exercised by the giant opposition”.
But Lee Jae-Myung, the main opposition chief, said that it is only when Mr. Yoon is withdrawn from the office that South Korea could “start to end confusion and restore normality”.
