A National Assembly petition demanding the impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has surpassed 800,000 signatures. The petition was submitted to the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee last month. There’s a possibility that it will be discussed in a plenary session after a subcommittee review.
According to the National Assembly’s website on July 1, as of 10:14 AM, over 800,000 people signed the petition. The petition has been posted for about ten days. The petition met the requirement of 50,000 signatures for submission to the standing committee just three days after it was posted on June 23. It was submitted to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee, the relevant standing committee the next day.
The National Consent Petition is a system under the right to petition guaranteed by the Constitution. The submitted petition can be brought to a plenary session or discarded after a standing committee review. The Judiciary Committee’s Petition Review Subcommittee will assess the validity of the petition.
If the review subcommittee acknowledges the validity of the petition, it will be proposed at the plenary session. The petition that passes the plenary session is transferred to the government. The government must report the processing results of the petition to the National Assembly.
In 2020, the Nth Room Prevention Act (an amendment to the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Sexual Crimes) was the first legislative example of a National Assembly petition that met the agreement requirement and passed the plenary session.
In June, the petitioner cited reasons for the impeachment petition, including Yoon’s exercise of veto power on the Special Prosecution Act related to Sergeant Chae and the Kim Geon Hee Special Prosecution Act.
The number of participants has been rapidly increasing since the contents of former National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin Pyo’s memoir were revealed on June 27. As of 9:44 AM on that day, about 18,000 people were waiting on the National Assembly’s National Consent petition website, and the waiting time for access was about 2 hours and 30 minutes.