South Korea’s top court has cast doubt on frontrunner Lee Jae-myung’s eligibility to run in next month’s snap presidential election, while the resignations of the prime minister and finance minister shook the interim government in place since December’s martial law.
Education Minister Lee Ju-ho took over as acting president, the third since the martial law decree, in advance of the June 3 snap election. The vote was called after the Constitutional Court removed former President Yoon Suk Yeol from office over his brief martial law attempt.
That race was rocked by a Supreme Court ruling that could threaten the candidacy of former opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung, who has dominated opinion polls.
The Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling that had cleared Lee, saying he had violated election law by publicly making “false statements” during his 2022 presidential bid. It sent the case back to the appeals court and ordered it to issue a sentence, which could bar Lee from running for office for up to five years.
South Korea has been led by a rotating cast of acting presidents since Yoon was impeached on December 14, hampering efforts to steer Asia’s fourth-largest economy through the choppy waters of US tariffs.
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who has been serving as acting president, announced on Thursday he would resign before an expected entry into the presidential race.
But the person who was set to replace him as acting leader, Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok, then abruptly resigned as well, when parliament restarted impeachment proceedings against him for decisions he made when previously serving as acting president.
Choi, who has played a leading role in the response to US tariffs, apologised in a statement for not being able to continue his work while the country faces severe economic conditions at home and abroad.
Education Minister Lee, the next in line by law to serve as the country’s acting president, took the helm late on Thursday.
Lee, 64, is an economist and professor and was named education minister in November 2022 by Yoon. He also served as education minister under a previous conservative administration.
Earlier, South Korean prosecutors indicted former President Yoon Suk Yeol for abuse of authority without arrest, the country’s news agency Yonhap said.
The indictment adds further legal jeopardy for Yoon, who is already facing an ongoing trial on insurrection charges, brought against him over his brief imposition of martial law last December.
Armed soldiers were deployed to parliament under the decree, but the order lasted only about six hours as it was swiftly voted down by opposition MPs, who scaled fences to enter the building. Parliamentarians later impeached Yoon over the martial law declaration.
Yoon, 64, was stripped of all power and privileges in April by the Constitutional Court, which upheld the impeachment motion. He was soon forced to move out of the presidential residence.
Prosecutors first indicted him in January, when he was still president, as “the ringleader of an insurrection”, a charge not covered by presidential immunity.
“We have since proceeded with the [insurrection] trial while conducting supplementary investigations into the abuse of power allegation, leading to this additional indictment,” prosecutors said in a statement on Thursday.
The new charge also comes a day after investigators raided Yoon’s private residence in Seoul as part of a probe into bribery allegations involving his wife, Kim Keon-hee, and a shaman accused of receiving lavish gifts on behalf of the former first lady.
If convicted of the insurrection charge, Yoon could be sentenced to life in prison or death, although South Korea has had an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1997.
Yoon was the second South Korean president to be removed from office, and the third to be impeached by parliament.
(Aljazeera)
