How to Impeach a President (in

Korea)
Democrats brought down a wannabe dictator
in Seoul. The same tactics can work in
Washington.
A candlelight protest in Seoul

Protesters attend a candlelight rally calling for South Korean President Park
Geun-hye's impeachment in downtown Seoul on Dec. 31, 2016. Jeon Yung-
Ye/AFP/Getty Images

It was a political crisis like no other: The conservative president publicly admitted
to having committed a crime, somehow thinking the admission was exculpatory.
Yet the liberal party was being timid, despite having the popular mandate from a
landslide victory in the midterm election. The calls for impeachment were getting
louder, but the majority leader was hesitant—the party might have the majority
but not enough votes to see the process through.

U.S. politics in September 2019? No, this was the situation in South Korea in
December 2016 as the bizarre corruption scandal involving a shaman’s daughter
was beginning to unravel Park Geun-hye’s presidency.

For a Korean American with center-left politics like myself, the past several years
of Donald Trump’s presidency have been a horror movie version of Groundhog
Day. The parallels between the presidencies of Park and Trump have been
numerous and uncanny. Like Trump, Park squeaked out an unexpected victory
with no small help from an online psy-op campaign run by a spy agency. (Not the
Russian kind, to be sure—South Korea’s own spy agency intervened in the
presidential election.) On taking office, Park began appointing clearly unqualified
media personalities as presidential advisors and spokespeople. She developed a
cult of personality to a point that she had a “concrete floor” of support: Around 35
percent of her constituents would support her even if she shot a person in the
middle of the busiest street in Seoul.
Now, the good news: I have seen this movie before, and it has a happy ending.
Against all odds, Park was impeached and removed—although the opposition
Democratic Party did not have enough votes. The way in which South Korea’s
liberals pulled this off can serve as a road map for the Democratic Party in the
United States.

To be sure, the impeachment processes are not identical. South Korea’s

legislature, the National Assembly, has a single chamber with 300 members. The
National Assembly may move to impeach the president with more than two-thirds
of its members—in other words, 201 votes or more in favor. Once the
impeachment motion is approved, the impeachment trial is held before the
Constitutional Court. Despite the word “court” in the name, the Constitutional
Court is not a part of the judiciary; rather, it is a nine-member council that
presides over the three branches of the government, deciding matters of
constitutional importance. If six or more justices of the Constitutional Court vote
to sustain the impeachment motion, the president is removed from the office.

But despite these differences, Woo Sang-ho—then-assembly leader of South

Korea’s Democratic Party—faced the same issue as U.S. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi: He did not have enough votes. Just as with Trump, the indications of
Park’s wrongdoings were everywhere from the very beginning of her presidency
in 2012. In April 2016, Woo’s Democratic Party became the majority party in the
National Assembly elections as the steady drip feed of scandals eroded Park’s
support.

Then the big scandal broke: On Oct. 24, 2016, the cable TV network JTBC
reported on a tablet PC belonging to Park’s spiritual advisor Choi Soon-sil, which
contained an edited presidential speech. It was the smoking gun proving the
rumor that most Koreans dismissed as too outlandish: that Choi, whose only
qualification was the fact that her father claimed to speak with the president’s
dead mother, was running a shadow government that peddled influence. Park, in
her characteristic obliviousness, held a press conference and admitted that Choi
reviewed the speeches, defending Choi as someone who “helped” her “during the
difficult past.” Outraged, hundreds of thousands of Koreans began gathering in
weekly candlelight protests, demanding the Democrats impeach Park. Yet Park’s
Saenuri Party still held 122 votes in the legislature. To safely get over 201 votes,
Woo needed nearly a quarter of the conservatives to defect.

The way Woo pulled it off was a masterclass on legislative maneuvering. The first
critical decision Woo made was not to bring the impeachment motion
prematurely. This exposed him to a great deal of criticism, much like that Pelosi
faced from progressive Democrats. But South Korea’s Democratic leadership
knew that enough conservatives were close to defecting. Like Trump, Park began
as a minority faction within the conservatives and then gradually strengthened her
hold over the party. The establishment conservatives who lost out in this power
struggle—such as Kim Moo-sung, the former chairman of the Saenuri Party (and
the star of this viral video)—were close to jumping ship. An overly aggressive
and hostile approach risked a visceral reaction among these conservatives,
causing them to recommit with the president.

The Democrats moved slowly instead. Woo asked major liberal leaders such as
Moon Jae-in to refrain from weighing in, to avoid the appearance of excess
partisanship. Rather than heading straight to an impeachment vote, Woo offered
Park a compromise: take an informal step back without formally resigning. Since
the next presidential election was less than a year away, the Democrats could
appoint the cabinet and run the government in the meantime.

It was a finely crafted poison pill: To the general public, it appeared to be a

reasonable enough offer for a president whose approval rating had crashed to a
single digit. But it was clear that Park could not accept the offer; if she handed
over the government’s reins, the Justice Ministry was likely to prosecute her
cronies and eventually herself. Much like Trump, Park had no interest in securing
the future of conservative politics—saving herself and her cronies was her only
goal.

When Park’s Blue House rejected the compromise on Nov. 9, her defiance
triggered an even stronger reaction from the public.

When Park’s Blue House rejected the compromise on Nov. 9, her defiance
triggered an even stronger reaction from the public.

The third candlelight protest on Nov. 12 climbed to over a million attendees; the
fifth protest on Nov. 26 attracted close to 2 million. The ever-increasing size of
the protests applied an enormous pressure to wavering conservatives. By Dec. 9,
when the National Assembly voted on the impeachment motion, the pendulum
had swung completely. The final tally was 234 votes in favor, 56 against.
Although the vote was secret, at least 62 conservative lawmakers—more than half
of the Saenuri Party—must have crossed over to impeach Park.
 When Park’s Blue House rejected the compromise on Nov. 9, her defiance
triggered an even stronger reaction from the public.

The South Korean experience offers two lessons for U.S. liberals who wish to
impeach and remove Trump. The first lesson is: Don’t lose hope. Many liberals
despaired at the seemingly indestructible support for Trump. They fret that the
Republican electorate is so emotionally committed to Trump that they will
overlook any wrongdoing, while Republican lawmakers are too cowardly to stand
up against Trump. South Koreans liberals made the exact same charge until 2016
—that Park’s concrete floor of support was too impenetrable and her hold over the
Saenuri Party too complete.

Fortunately, they were wrong. Authoritarian structures are rarely as strong as they
seem. They erode gradually and then fall apart suddenly. Since Pelosi began the
impeachment inquiry, the popular support for removing Trump from office has
been steadily rising. Former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake predicted at least 35
Republican senators would vote to remove Trump if the vote were anonymous. It
is hardly outlandish to think the next outrageous action from Trump will finally
cause at least some in the Republican Party to break with him. A straw may not
look like much, but when placed on top of the right amount of load, it can break a
camel’s back.

The second lesson is to recognize different roles for the public and the legislators.
It was entirely understandable that the South Korean public raged at Woo for not
moving quickly to impeach. It was likewise entirely justifiable for Woo and the
Democratic leadership to take their time and ensure they had the votes before
bringing the impeachment motion. They simply had different roles, which they
both performed ably. The public showed up in massive numbers to show their
support and apply pressure to the legislators, and the political leadership
leveraged the pressure into flipping votes that otherwise would not have been
there. It is a mistake to ask the public to restrain their rhetoric, just as much as it is
a mistake to demand politicians not to engage in the horse-trading that is essential
to any political process.

For U.S. liberals who want Trump gone, the path ahead is a narrow one. It is no
small task to convince nearly half of Republican senators to vote to remove the
president of their own party. But in 2016, South Korea showed how it could be
done. Braving the harsh winter winds, the public showed up in massive numbers
to the weekly candlelight protests, and liberal politicians showed leadership by
patiently negotiating with their conservative counterparts. Americans would do
well to take note.