Seoul, April 17 (IANS) A plan to create a new political party in support of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been put on hold at his request, the ousted president’s lawyers said on Thursday.
Kim Gye-ri and Bae Ui-cheol, attorneys who have represented Yoon since his impeachment proceedings, had earlier planned to hold a press conference for the launch of the party named “Yoon Again” on Friday but canceled it, citing potential “misunderstanding” the move could cause ahead of the June 3 presidential election.
“With the early presidential election, the proposal of a new party could lead to various misunderstandings regarding (Yoon’s) intention or exercise of influence, so we determined that it would not be ideal to make it official through a press conference,” the lawyers said.
They also said Yoon himself had dissuaded them from the idea, saying it was time to join forces together as one. Seok Dong-hyeon, another lawyer for Yoon, said the former President was not involved in efforts to create the party, Yonhap news agency reported.
South Korea will hold a presidential election in June after Yoon was removed from office on April 4, when the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment over his short-lived imposition of martial law.
Meanwhile, Yoon, who dramatically rose from a top prosecutor to the presidency in about three years, became the nation’s second President to be formally removed from office, with his surprise martial law bid rattling the nation for months and deepening political polarisation.
With the ruling, Yoon, 64, follows in the footsteps of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was ousted in 2017 when the Constitutional Court upheld her impeachment over a corruption scandal.
Before taking the nation’s highest office, Yoon began his career as a prosecutor in 1994, rising through the ranks to lead an investigation team into Park’s corruption scandal that ultimately led to her ouster and subsequent imprisonment.
In 2019, he was appointed as the nation’s top prosecutor under then South Korean President Moon Jae-in but clashed with the administration as he oversaw investigations into family members of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk.
Amid mounting pressure from the Moon administration, Yoon stepped down from his post in 2021, only to enter politics shortly after and win the presidential election in 2022 as the candidate for the conservative People Power Party.
Yoon’s term was riddled with conflict with an uncooperative National Assembly dominated by the main Opposition Democratic Party (DP). Yoon exercised his presidential veto power against 25 Bills passed by the National Assembly.
Tensions with the DP appeared to reach an extreme in early December as the main Opposition introduced motions to impeach the country’s top auditor and a senior prosecutor, with Yoon declaring martial law on December 3, which ultimately led to his downfall.
–IANS
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