South Koreans yesterday calmly awaited a historic Constitutional Court ruling on whether to oust or reinstate impeached President Roh Moo-hyun, as the nine judges put finishing touches on the verdict and police secured their white-granite building.
Expectations run high that the court will reinstate the 57-year-old president, overriding the National Assembly's March 12 impeachment of him on charges of a minor electioneering violation and incompetence. The verdict will be broadcast live on national television at 10am today.
Roh suffered the humiliation of becoming the first South Korean president to be impeached by its legislature. But the disgrace soon translated into a political blessing as South Koreans rallied against the unpopular impeachment and voted in April 15 parliamentary polls to give a majority to the Uri Party, which supports Roh.
PHOTO: AP
Discussions in news media -- and even inside the opposition parties that impeached Roh -- focused not so much on whether the court will unseat the president as on whether it should announce "minority opinions" from judges who reportedly favor Roh's ouster.
The National Assembly needs at least six of the nine judges to unseat Roh.
Unconfirmed news reports had said that the court has decided not to reveal the minority views to avoid further divisive political debate at a time of deepening economic uncertainty and persistent tension over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"No one should hide from history," said a statement from the main opposition Grand National Party, which sponsored the impeachment. "The Constitutional Court should reveal the opinions of each judge, including minority views."
If Roh is permanently unseated, the nation will elect a new president within 60 days.
The National Police Agency tripled the number of officers dispatched around the court house to 200 yesterday. Police stood guard at the gate and patrolled around the court house.
On the eve of the verdict, there was no comment from the presidential Blue House. Its Web site carried a photograph of Roh smiling and looking confident and holding a clenched fist toward supporters. He was quoted as saying that the impeachment was "not just a painful and wasteful process but rather the growing pain for new advancement."
"We expect a wise Constitutional Court ruling that honors the will of the people," said the Uri Party in a statement, referring to its strong showing in the April 15 election. It said it has "no doubt" that the ruling will restore Roh's executives powers, suspended for two months.
The GNP leadership, which is considering a party name change after its crushing election defeat, was rocked Wednesday when a key member called the party to "kneel and apologize to the people 100 times" if the court rules against the impeachment.
GNP leaders said there was plenty of blame to go around.
"Regardless of the verdict, the president should feel ashamed by the fact that he was the first president impeached and should behave himself," said Lee Kang-doo, the GNP's chief policy maker.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema