South Korea’s acting president has been impeached. What to know

The successive impeachments that suspended the country’s top two officials are unprecedented, and the deputy prime minister Choi Sang-mok is now South Korea's new interim leader.

The impeachment of South Korea’s acting President Han Duck-soo Friday has plunged the country into further political turmoil, coming less than two weeks after lawmakers impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The successive impeachments that suspended the country’s top two officials are unprecedented, and the deputy prime minister and finance minister, Choi Sang-mok, is now South Korea’s new interim leader. Upon taking over power, Choi swiftly ordered the military to boost readiness to thwart potential North Korean aggressions and told diplomats to reassure key partners like the U.S. and Japan.

“(Han’s) impeachment now creates an opportunity for external threats while causing Korea’s foreign partners to alienate it from the global community,” said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

A look at the latest developments on the South Korean political tumult, which began with Yoon’s short-lived Dec. 3 martial law.

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the No. 2 official in South Korea, became the acting leader after the assembly impeached Yoon on Dec. 14 over his martial law decree that brought hundreds of troops into Seoul streets and harkened back to the days of military rule in the 1960-70s.

Han, a career bureaucrat, tried to reassure major diplomatic partners and stabilize markets. But he was embroiled in political strife with the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the assembly. A major trigger for Han’s impeachment was his refusal to accept a DP demand that he immediately appoint three vacant justices’ seats at the Constitutional Court to enhance fairness and public confidence in its ruling on Yoon’s impeachment.

Restoring the court’s full nine-member panel is crucial because a court ruling to remove Yoon from office needs backing from at least six justices, and a full bench will likely increase the prospects for Yoon’s ouster. Han said he wouldn’t appoint the justices without bipartisan consent, but critics suspect he was siding with Yoon’s loyalists at the governing People Power Party, or PPP, who want to see Yoon regaining power.

Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership, said Han lacked legitimate reasons to go against the appointment of the court justices. But he noted that DP shouldn’t have pursued Han’s impeachment so hurriedly.