South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has accepted the resignation of his Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun amid growing criticism over the leader\u2019s short-lived declaration of martial law. <\/p>\n
The defense ministry said South Korea\u2019s ambassador to Saudi Arabia Choi Byung-hyuk has been nominated as the new minister. <\/p>\n
Kim had submitted his resignation on Wednesday, just moments after South Korea\u2019s main opposition Democratic Party said it had filed a motion to impeach him. <\/p>\n
The chief of the president\u2019s own People Power Party had also called for the removal of the defense minister for recommending martial law. <\/p>\n
Earlier, Kim accepted responsibility for ordering troops to enact martial law, saying in a text message sent to reporters: \u201cAll soldiers who performed their duties in relation to the emergency martial law (were acting on) the order of the minister, and all responsibilities lie within myself.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the same text, Kim said he felt sorry for \u201ccausing concerns and confusion to the people.\u201d <\/p>\n
President Yoon is also facing growing calls to step down after he declared \u2013 then retracted \u2013 the martial law decree. <\/p>\n
Six opposition parties on Wednesday submitted a bill calling for Yoon\u2019s impeachment. The motion is expected to be voted on by lawmakers on either Friday at midnight or Saturday at midnight. <\/p>\n
The main opposition Democratic Party said it has begun formalizing plans for a treason charge against the president. <\/p>\n
When Yoon declared martial law in a surprise late-night address on Tuesday, he accused the main opposition party of sympathizing with North Korea and of anti-state activities, citing a motion by the opposition to impeach top prosecutors and reject a government budget proposal. <\/p>\n
Lawmakers rejected Yoon\u2019s decree just hours after he announced it, with 190 of the 300 members of parliament voting to overturn the measure. <\/p>\n
Yoon then backtracked on his short-lived decree in the early hours of Wednesday local time and withdrew the troops deployed to carry out the order. <\/p>\n
This is a breaking news story. More to come.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has accepted the resignation of his Defense Minister Kim…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}