SEOUL: Suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Tuesday South Korea had been facing an “existential crisis” when he declared martial law last year, remaining defiant and unapologetic as he faced the final day of impeachment hearings that could formally remove him from office.
Yoon’s short-lived suspension of civilian rule plunged democratic South Korea into political turmoil and he was removed from office by parliament in December.
The Constitutional Court in Seoul has held weeks of fraught impeachment hearing, with Tuesday’s proceedings the last before judges decide whether to formally remove Yoon from office over his disastrous martial law declaration.
Yoon, in his closing remarks, defended the December 3 declaration as a “proclamation that the nation was facing an existential crisis”.
“This was never a decision made for my personal benefit as Yoon Suk Yeol,” he told the court.
He said “external forces, including North Korea, along with anti-state elements within our society” were “working together to seriously threaten our national security and sovereignty”.
Opposition lawmaker Jung Chung-rae earlier urged the court to uphold the impeachment in an emotional closing statement recalling his torture at the hands of South Korea’s military government in the 1980s.
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