[Editorial] Focus on livelihoods

Opposition party buried in reckless impeachment and special counsel

The main opposition party is turning up the heat on President Yoon Suk Yeol and the ruling party over impeachment and special counsel issues.

Democratic Party lawmakers on the legislation and judiciary committee of the Assembly on Monday filed a complaint with the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials about Presidential Chief of Staff Chung Jin-suk and nine others who refused to attend the committee hearings on presidential impeachment as witnesses.

In spite of the complaint, the presidential office said they would not attend the "unconstitutional" hearings. First lady Kim Keon Hee and her mother, also selected as witnesses, are not expected to appear, either.

It is bizarre to hold an Assembly hearing on presidential impeachment solely on the grounds of a petition. Such a hearing is unprecedented in Korean constitutional history.

The party says the committee is holding hearings because over 1.5 million people signed a petition for Yoon's impeachment. A petition to the Assembly is supposed to be referred to the committee if more than 50,000 people agree to it, but politically motivated ones should be filtered out. This is why the then-opposition People Power Party did not seek to hold a hearing on a petition for the impeachment of President Moon Jae-in even after 1.46 million people consented.

The reasons for impeachment, cited in the petition in question, are absurd.

The petition claims that the Yoon administration aggravated the crisis with North Korea by resuming propaganda broadcasts across the Demilitarized Zone. It depicts the government's stern response to Pyongyang's launch of trash balloons and other provocations as an escalation. From a common-sense point of view, this is hard to understand.

The Yoon government's decisive solution to the problem of compensating Koreans who were mobilized into forced labor in Japan when Korea was a Japanese colony cannot be a reason for impeachment. The previous administration did little to restore Korea-Japan ties even as they were worsening over the South Korean Supreme Court's order for a seizure of Japanese companies' assets.

Suspicions about the manipulation of a planned expressway and an argument that Seoul aided Japan in releasing radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant are ill-founded.

Many people would wonder if these can be reasons for impeachment.

A Democratic Party bill to appoint a special counsel who will look into the accidental death of a Marine was vetoed by Yoon, but the party reportedly considers going around the veto if the bill is rejected in an Assembly re-vote. The alternative is the rarely-used "Permanent Special Counsel Act" which has restrictive guidelines on the scope and period of investigation and the number of prosecutors under special counsel.

Under the law, a special counsel is appointed by the president after the Assembly approves the special counsel's investigation in its plenary session, and the president has no veto.

This would make it difficult for the Democratic Party to appoint special counsel as it pleases. The party is reportedly seeking to revise the rules so that only opposition parties can recommend all four Assembly-recommended candidates for special counsel.

Earlier, the party prescribed in the bill on a Marine's death that only opposition parties can recommend candidates for special counsel. This blocks the impartial and transparent investigation that a special counsel should pursue. It was one of the main reasons Yoon vetoed it.

The Permanent Special Counsel Act emphasizes the consensus of rival parties and the political neutrality of investigations. Revising related rules as the Democratic Party wishes goes against the constitution and shakes the legal system.

A few days ago when he declared his candidacy to return as party leader, ex-leader Lee Jae-myung said that it was the duty of politicians to solve the people's bread-and-butter issues.

An opposition party preoccupied with special counsels and impeachment does not share these priorities.

If a political organization is truly trying to help the people make ends meet, it would not act in this manner.

By Korea Herald(khnews@heraldcorp.com)