Twice-failed martial law probe bill passes Assembly

The bill for opening a special counsel investigation into the now-detained President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law declaration last month passed late Friday, after the Democratic Party of Korea revised it to remove the contested accusations that the president was trying to provoke a war with North Korea.

The Democratic Party, which controls the Assembly’s 170 seats to the rival People Power Party’s 108, voted to pass the revised bill minus the warmongering accusations following backlash from the ruling party.

This is the third time that the bill for appointing a special counsel to investigate the martial law case was put to vote at the Assembly, after the first one was vetoed by acting President Choi Sang-mok and the second one failed on the floor.

Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, the People Power Party’s floor leader, said his party would support the Democratic Party push for kicking off a special counsel investigation -- on the condition that the opposition party remove from the bill what he called “baseless” accusations that Yoon was deliberately seeking to wage a war with North Korea with his hawkish policies.

Instead the scope of the investigation under the bill should be limited to the circumstances surrounding the declaration of martial law, Kweon said.

After hours of negotiation, the Democratic Party at the last minute said it would leave out the accusations related to Yoon’s North Korea policies.

But the People Power Party still refused to back the bill over the provision inserted by the Democratic Party allowing the special counsel to open additional investigations into “related cases” -- which the party said is vague enough to widen the scope of the investigation to include the contentious accusations.

The vast majority of the People Power Party lawmakers are on board with the special counsel investigation, just not on the Democratic Party’s terms.

Out of the 108 lawmakers of the People Power Party, four did not sign the ruling party’s draft of the bill submitted Friday.

One of them, Rep. Jung Hee-yong, wrote in a Facebook statement that he does not see the point of launching another investigation when there is already one underway by the police and the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials.

Aside from the four, most of the ruling party lawmakers previously reputed as being pro-Yoon signed the bill.

The People Power Party agreeing to the special counsel investigation of Yoon is seen as the ruling party distancing from the president who shocked the country with his martial law declaration.

“It pains me personally as someone who has known the president a long time that things have come to this,” Kweon said at a meeting of the party lawmakers Thursday.