South Korean President Impeached
khnews.kheraldm.com
khnews.kheraldm.com
At each stage of the very complex process, the government figured out what to do without too much fuss, even operating as a temporary parliamentary democracy.
It wasn't too long ago that this could have gone very differently: seizure of power, military occupation, coups, violence and corruption.
This is Korea's Nixon moment.
edit There's some very serious discussion regarding criminal charges they may now be brought now that she's freed from Presidential immunity.
edit2 For folks who want more background on what this is all about, "Ask a Korean" has done a magnificent job of writing the charges up.
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-ultimate-choi-soo...
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ultimate-choi-soo...
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If she were like GWB we wouldn't have gone this far. She is more like Nixon, but worse.
In nixon's defense: read his wikipedia article. He wasnt a monster. Many good things came from his presidency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-t...
The problem with Park is not that she had wrong ideas, but that she did not have any idea at all. Instead she let her close friend take care of the boring chore of running a country. During the past four years the country was essentially on auto-pilot, progressively worsening while bureaucrats were awaiting for leadership that never materialized.
I'd say she's more like Nikolai II, complete with Rasputin.
All power derives from the President, and thus cabinet, department heads, and various appointed positions exist only to accept delegated powers.
Additionally, due to the way many laws are written, the President has wide latitude to determine policy at various government branches, but obviously cannot actually do all of those jobs personally.
I think Trump is acting as the analogous 'visionary' CEO---he decides policy but is largely hands-off as to implementation. However if your actions blow up in his face, he'll fire you instantly. Some leaders are far more hands-on and even in large companies they cherry pick certain segments and micromanage them on occasion. Trump isn't that way. It's not good or bad, it's just his management style.
In a way, due to his life as a public figure and businessman, we knew what Trump's management style was going to be long before he entered office. Obama on the other-hand was a dark horse candidate, and no one really knew how he was going to make the jump from teaching students to setting policy for a massive number of governmental departments.
It's not perfect, but no place is, but I have a strong sense that it's changing for the better.
There's some social pressures and responsibilities for people who live there that can make it difficult if you can't get into the groove of the place, lots of Koreans will complain about them in various ways -- but they are what they are.
Admittedly, white foreigners (men and women) get treated fairly well. I've only ever had a couple of incidents where I didn't feel welcome as a foreigner. Non-white foreigners have various observations on their own treatment.
Here's some examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRdhJEl5FTc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTPpgjdl4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGxrW_PB8gI
Same question to white people
But the way impeachment process works in SK, once the process begins, you are no longer able to function as president.
So 'effectively', she was already impeached.
Obviously I'm the one being pedantic. lol.
Some countries for example charge you with a crime, but don't actually arrest you until they're bringing it to trial. Some countries don't have a prosecution, or a defence but a system where multiple government officials advocate for the truth.
You can set up a legal system anyway you want, and define the terms however you like---it'll be legal and valid in your country.
It is also possible that Korea may have explicitly defined this particular English word differently than the rest of the world. If that's the case, it seems worth calling out explicitly.
Unnecessary embarrassment at the sight of anything that could possibly cast a negative light on our country is one of the major causes of the trouble that we've been in. It makes us prone to hide our problems and pretend that everything is all right. It makes us blind to the shortcomings of our preferred political leaders. It makes us resent the few brave journalists and activists who dare to bring these problems to light. All of this hampers progress.
The same misguided sense of pride and embarrassment is at the root of Japan's constant refusal to admit their war crimes. They feel embarrassed that they are grandchildren of war criminals. But if they keep thinking that way, they will never be free of embarrassment. The only way forward is to do admit that something bad happened and to take pride in your passion to fix it. I truly hope that all Asian cultures can learn this, including Koreans and Japanese.
http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-irrational-downfa...
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/29/499864915/...
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/76...
https://medium.com/@thepenningtonlens/the-south-korean-puppe...
Yeah, but others are more or less factual. And that doesn't even begin to address the more odd bits, like Choi's friend Ko Young-Tae, who is a former Asian Game medalist who became a gigolo, made friends with Choi, and then reportedly had a fallout with Choi over a puppy owned by Choi's daughter...
...Unless someone has the craziest idea of killing her so that she could be a martyr. But I doubt they have someone who is that evil and that competent at the same time.
Not every country sees international relations as a form of game theory, with mutual assured destruction as an important component. Korean reunification can be a preferable option instead of threatening the people that used to be part of your community, but had the bad luck to be at the wrong side of the ideological fight between the US and the USSR.
That's what conservatives say, but doesn't match reality. Under the liberal president Roh Moo-Hyun, military budget increased by 8.8% per year on average. Under his conservative successor Lee Myung-Bak, 5.2% [1].
Roh also made an agreement with the US to finally take back wartime military command. It's an inconvenient secret that if war breaks out in Korea, South Korea's military command automatically transfers to the US. We don't have authority to command our own military. What kind of independent country does that? And then all the conservatives, including active and retired generals, blamed Roh for weakening our military. (According to them, having the authority to command our own military makes us less dependent on the US. But we can always trust the US: only a North Korean sympathizer would doubt that the US will be there to protect us. Therefore it's a communist plot. Or something like that.)
Incidentally, these generals' argument prompted Roh to utter the now famous phrase, "부끄러운 줄 알아야지!" (Know your shame!)
His successor Lee asked US to please take back the command. Wartime military command is still in the hands of the US.
[1] http://ppss.kr/archives/9256 (in Korean, sorry)
This is different from how it works in USG where Congress elects a new President themselves from within Congress. At least that's what my understanding is from googling around, no President has been convicted in an impeachment trial.
Edit: As later comments have pointed out I'm wrong here, instead the normal line of succession applies.
No US president has been convicted in an impeachment trial, but when Nixon resigned, the normal rules of succession applied. Congress did appoint Gerald Ford as VP before Nixon resigned, but they were only able to do that because Nixon's previous VP had himself resigned, because he was a crook too. That is probably a source of confusion for a lot of people.
http://fsmsupremecourt.org/fsm/code/title02/T02_Ch01.htm
But it includes the line:
> If both the President and Vice President die, resign, or are impeached, the Speaker of the Congress shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the President as Acting President, and the Congress shall within thirty days of the last vacancy elect a President and Vice President, convening for that purpose if not in session, and declare vacancies in the Congress. If the Office of the Speaker is vacant, or if the Speaker dies or resigns from Congress during said thirty-day period, the Vice Speaker shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the President as Acting President.
Which seems to suggest that if VP is also impeached then the Speaker of the House is only temporarily President and Congress convenes a special election.
...asking for a friend.
That does not seem like an alternative most people -even educated or above median IQ would favor.
I'm curious, have there been any known attempts to condition the right to vote on passing some kind of IQ, education, or rational thinking test? If so, how did they work out?
If the votes end up being noise, it comes out in the wash. And we already have protections against compelling people to vote one way or another, so carrot-sticking children for votes would (continue to be) a serious crime.
It might even grow our children into a less apathetic public.
Our laws and attitude towards "age discrimination" in this country are bizarre and flagrantly hypocritical. The ADEA forbids age discrimination, but only for those 40 or older. This would be analogous to forbidding racial discrimination, but only against some one particular race. Kind of takes away the moral high ground.
We all have to live with one another, and to make a system of government work with peaceful transitions of power, everyone must feel as if they have a voice.
High IQ, high education, high wealth, and other social advantages can be leveraged into making side-channels in the political system (e.g. lobbying), or by shaping the discussion the general electorate sees (e.g. overton window) in order to direct it towards ones goals.
Democracies have all been implemented with specific factors to make them viable in today's society, not some idealised society.
2) Get 2% of the population participating in a peaceful protest & demonstration to put pressure on congress.
3) ???
4) profit!!
We're hooped.
I also think the other cultural difference is that education and science is still highly respected as institutions while confidence in these institutions has been attacked and subsequently declined for decades. This makes a lot of national discourse for what should be otherwise simple discussions much, much harder. This, at the moment Obama's commentary as he exited office is about right - emotion has triumphed over reason and facts.
Any successful politician has the traits of a good actor, but actors can claim they're not "really" politicians, even while running for political office, and using the same political tricks as their rivals. It's a weird "Mr. Smith goes to Washington" complex that Americans seem to fall prey to constantly.
Given the nature of the last few Presidential elections in the US, it doesn't seem as if voters want partisan lines crossed, rather, they want those lines maintained and defended with razor wire and snipers.
Now we have four major parties, one minor party, and a bunch of independents who all hate one another. It's going to be fun! At least I hope this will bring some much-needed diversity to Korean politics. Two parties are boring and too easily devolve into an ideological staredown.
Hell, just look at the US[0].
[0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/purple-america-has-all-...