South Korean parliament’s vote on opposition chief’s arrest a sign of ‘unprecedented’ political divide

The Thursday vote comes three weeks after opposition leader Lee Jae-myung began a hunger strike to protest a decline of democracy in the country
Apart from deepening economic woes, Lee and his party also blame President Yoon Suk-yeol for sacrificing ties with China, Japan’s release of Fukushima water

South Korea

Park Chan-kyong

Published: 9:30am, 21 Sep 2023

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South Korea’s parliament on Thursday greenlit the arrest of opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on corruption charges, three weeks after he launched a hunger strike to protest what he says is a retreat of democracy.

Prosecutors on Monday asked a Seoul court to issue a warrant to arrest Lee, hours after the 58-year-old leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) was hospitalised as a result of the fasting.

Prosecutors need parliamentary approval to arrest an incumbent lawmaker when the National Assembly is in session, as it is now.

The legislature approved the motion to lift arrest immunity for Lee in a 149-136 vote, the national Yonhap news agency said.

The opposition Democratic Party stage a rally in front of the presidential office in Seoul on September 18. Photo: EPA-EFE/Yonhap

Lee has been dogged by a series of criminal investigations since he lost the 2022 presidential election to Yoon Suk-yeol, a former prosecutor general, by a razor-thin 0.7 percentage point margin.

Prosecutors charged Lee with giving illegal favours to a private property investor between 2014 and 2017 in Seongnam city, south of Seoul, in return for kickbacks when he was serving as the city mayor.

They also assert that Lee asked a local garment firm, Ssangbangwool, to illegally transfer US$8 million to North Korea between 2019 and 2020, in an alleged attempt to pave the way for the North to open an economic exchange scheme with Gyeonggi Province, where Lee was governor at the time.

Lee has flatly denied all the charges, claiming that no evidence had emerged even after the authorities had carried out more than 300 raids with hundreds of investigators over the past two years.

Lawmakers of the opposition Democratic Party ask leader Lee Jae-myung to stop his hunger strike at his office at the National Assembly, on the 16th day of his fast. Photo: EPA-EFE/Yonhap

In a statement on Wednesday, Lee said the motion to approve his arrest was “absurd and illegal”, and politically motivated.

“Please stop the runaway train of prosecutorial dictatorship in front of the National Assembly. Protect the constitutional order and democracy that are in peril,” he said.

Lee had started a hunger strike on August 31, lamenting that South Korea’s hard-won democracy was being rolled back at the hands of what he called “a dictatorship by prosecutors”, who he alleges are out to weaken the opposition and gag the free press.

Hunger strikes have been used in the past as a means of political protest, often by opposition politicians under past authoritarian governments in the 1970s and 1980s.

“This hunger strike is the last resort left for Lee to make sure the National Assembly votes down the motion to approve his arrest,” said Choi Jin, head of the Institute of Presidential Leadership think tank.

Yoon endorsed the move to approve Lee’s arrest on Tuesday remotely after embarking on a five-day visit to New York on Monday to attend the UN General Assembly and meet world leaders amid signs of growing military cooperation between the North and Russia.

Another motion introduced by the DPK, for the dismissal of Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to heap pressure on the president, also was approved by the National Assembly. Yonhap said Yoon is expected to reject the motion.

The DPK had accused Han of incompetence as chief of the cabinet and held him responsible for what it called the Yoon administration’s failures, such as its “meek” response to Japan’s release of treated Fukushima water.

This fracas over Lee’s arrest has deepened political polarisation to an unprecedented degree since South Korea restored democracy in 1987

Professor Yoon Sung-suk, Chonnam National University

Yoon Sung-suk, a political-science professor at Chonnam National University, said the “fracas over Lee’s arrest has deepened political polarisation in this country to an unprecedented degree, since South Korea restored democracy in 1987”.

The president has recently escalated his attacks on progressive political opponents, likening them to “anti-state forces” and accusing them of siding with North Korea.

“Gulfs in public opinions over diplomacy are also widening as President Yoon pursues a ‘friend or foe’ policy in foreign relations, taking sides with the United States and Japan against China and Russia,” he said.

Alongside security, pursuing harmony among the people is one of the most important presidential tasks, but the president has never responded to repeated requests for a meeting with Lee, the professor said.

Lee and his party blame President Yoon for deepening economic woes such as rising inflation, low growth and high unemployment.

The opposition also accused the president of sacrificing ties with China, the country’s largest trade partner for many years, in order to ally the South closer to the United States and Japan and of risking public health by condoning Japan’s release of contaminated cooling water from its stricken Fukushima nuclear plant.

The latest opinion poll commissioned by local online new site News Tomato published on Monday showed Yoon’s approval rating at 28.5 per cent, down 4.8 percentage points from a week earlier.