South Korea’s former defense minister was arrested Sunday, local media reported, a day after President Yoon Suk Yeol survived an impeachment vote over his calamitous attempt to impose martial law.
The motion failed due to a boycott of the vote by Yoon’s party, even though huge crowds braved freezing temperatures in another night of protests outside parliament in Seoul to demand the president’s ouster.
Kim Yong-hyun had already resigned as defense minister after the brief suspension of civilian rule late on Tuesday by Yoon that saw soldiers and helicopters sent to parliament.
Yoon was forced to rescind the order hours later and parliament voted down his decree.
Kim had already been slapped with a travel ban.
Police have launched an investigation into Yoon, Kim and others for alleged insurrection.
The prosecutors’ office was not immediately available for comment on Kim’s arrest, reported by the Yonhap news agency and other local media outlets Sunday morning.
Opposition parties proposed the impeachment motion, which needed 200 votes in the 300-member parliament to pass, but a near-total boycott by Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) doomed it to failure.
The PPP said after the vote that it had blocked the impeachment to avoid “severe division and chaos”, adding that it would “resolve this crisis in a more orderly and responsible manner”.
Party leader Han Dong-hoon said that the party had “effectively obtained” Yoon’s promise to step down, and said until this happened he would “be effectively excluded from his duties”, leaving the prime minister and party to manage state affairs.
The failure of the impeachment motion came as a huge blow to the massive crowds — numbering 150,000 according to police, one million according to organizers — demonstrating outside parliament.
National Assembly speaker Woo Won-shik called the PPP’s walkout “a failure to engage in the democratic process” on the part of the ruling party.
“Even though we didn’t get the outcome we wanted today, I am neither discouraged nor disappointed because we will get it eventually,” protester Jo Ah-gyeong, 30, said Saturday.
“I’ll keep coming here until we get it,” she told AFP.