South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attended a Constitutional Court hearing on Tuesday for his impeachment trial.
The impeached president denied ordering military commanders to forcibly remove lawmakers from parliament during his brief attempt to impose martial law.
Before the hearing began, Yoon stated that he had served in public office with a strong commitment to free democracy. Yoon has been incarcerated since last week under a separate criminal investigation on charges of leading an insurrection with his attempt to impose martial law in early December—a move that shocked the nation and was swiftly overturned by parliament.
During the hearing, Yoon testified that the special forces troops sent to parliament on December 3 were not there to disable the legislature or prevent it from blocking his martial law, as he knew such an action would have led to an indefensible crisis. “In this country, parliament and the news media are far more powerful than the president, in a far superior position,” he told the court.
Yoon’s lawyers defended his martial law declaration, arguing that it was intended to sound the alarm over abuses committed by the opposition Democratic Party. They claimed that the opposition’s actions had paralyzed the government and pushed the country’s democratic and constitutional order to the brink of collapse. “The decree was intended simply to establish the format of martial law and was never intended to be executed, nor was it possible to execute it because of the potential for conflict with higher-level laws,” lawyer Cha Gi-hwan told the court.
Cha also denied testimony from military commanders involved in the martial law declaration, who claimed that Yoon and his top aides ordered the arrest of some members of parliament who had politically clashed with the president. The opposition Democratic Party, joined by minority parties and 12 members of Yoon’s People Power Party, voted with a two-thirds majority to impeach Yoon on December 14.
