Impeached, Coup-Happy President Holes Up In Compound, Refuses Arrest, Hopes Donald Trump Will Help Brother Out

Make South Korea Great Again!

South Korea’s National Assembly meets to respond to the martial law declaration. Video screenshot, Reuters on YouTube.

The nation of South Korea has given America so many gifts — K-pop, Korean barbecue joints, the former first lady of Maryland, the animation for a couple of hundred episodes of “The Simpsons” — that it seems only fair we return the favor. How about our Constitution? There is no reason America should keep that wonderful document and its toothless enforcement to ourselves.

At a minimum, we have already handed South Korea’s recently impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol a legal argument about presidential immunity, and according to the Yonhap News Agency, he and his lawyers are running with it.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

In a document presented to the Constitutional Court in Yoon's impeachment trial, the legal team said Yoon exercised his due presidential power to handle a “national emergency situation” while declaring martial law on Dec. 3. [...]

Yoon's side pointed to the US court ruling in July last year that said Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president.

Yr Wonkette was unfamiliar with South Korea’s constitution, so we dug up a copy of it. As best we can tell, it does not contain Article II of the United States Constitution, Article II being the one our own Supreme Court more or less rewrote last summer to say that Donald Trump could do whatever illegal shit he wanted provided he claimed said illegal shit was a core constitutional power our Founding Fathers in their genius had granted to him that no one else had noticed for the previous 200-plus years.

What South Korea’s constitution does have is Article 69 (Nice!!!), which includes the president’s oath of office. Now, whereas the oath the American president takes says he will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” the South Korean oath simply charges the president with “observing the Constitution.” Well, that’s pretty general. Maybe he’s allowed to observe it from a great distance.

While Yoon’s lawyers were filing this document on Friday, the police were trying to enforce a warrant for Yoon’s arrest after he refused three times to meet with prosecutors who are investigating him for declaring martial law in early December. South Korea’s legislature had already impeached Yoon for issuing an unlawful declaration and stripped him of his presidential powers.

South Korean President Very Sorry He Tried To Do That Coup That You Do

But Yoon is technically still the president, and still gets to live in the presidential compound with a couple of hundred soldiers and security agents protecting him. All of them being commanded by a guy named Park Jong-joon, whom Yoon had appointed chief of the presidential security service in September. His loyalty appears to be with the guy who appointed him instead of with the actual legal structures of his nation. Which also sounds very Trumpist, now that we think about it.

Additionally, hundreds of Yoon’s supporters packed the streets around the presidential residence to yell and jeer the 80 or so officers who showed up early in the morning to take Yoon into custody. Apparently quite a few of them were waving “Stop the Steal” signs and pleading with Donald Trump to intervene for some reason.

From Reuters:

Pyeong In-su, 71, holding a flag of the United States and South Korea with the words “Let’s go together” in English and Korean, said he was banking on Trump's return to save Yoon.

“I hope that Trump will take office soon and raise his voice against the rigged elections in our country plus around the world so as to help President Yoon to return (to power) swiftly,” Pyeong said.

Seo Hye-kyoung who was holding a “Stop the Steal” sign with the Chinese flag claimed that “Chinese people have come to our country and stole our votes”.

So there is something else America has gifted South Korean democracy recently: “Stop the Steal” signs and a stubborn imperviousness to reality. Cheonman-eyo!!

Imagine if, on January 7, the FBI had gone to the White House to arrest Donald Trump, and the Secret Service had refused to turn him over while MAGA weirdos had flooded Pennsylvania Avenue instead of fleeing the city and deleting all their social media accounts like a bunch of cucks. That would be the American equivalent of the scene in South Korea on Friday.

Eventually, the cops backed down and left the compound without anyone getting injured or shot or forced to watch Nicolle Wallace for hours and hours as a sort of deprogramming measure.

It is very much unclear what happens next. The South Korean prosecutors have until January 6 to enforce the subpoena. But he sounds defiant, and his lawyer called the warrant “illegal [and] invalid.” It does not sound as if anyone’s mind is getting changed by Monday. Meanwhile, the number of Yoon supporters who are going to rush to hang around outside the presidential palace and block the cops from getting in could grow, increasing the chances of violence if the cops return with larger numbers

And to think, it was not so long ago that we were jealous of South Korea. The president tried to do a coup, even members of his own party denounced him, the legislature impeached him and stripped him of his powers almost immediately, and no one stormed the parliament while wearing face paint and a stupid helmet. It seemed like as good an outcome as anyone could have hoped for.

Oh well. They haven’t re-elected Yoon yet or had his personal Supreme Court rewrite the nation’s laws to get him off the hook. So, silver linings, we guess.

[Yonhap News Agency]

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