National Assembly passes resolution urging expulsion of Rep. Lee Jin-suk over May 18 controversy

The National Assembly passed a resolution Wednesday urging the expulsion of People Power Party lawmaker Lee Jin-suk over her role in hosting a forum accused of distorting the May 18 pro-democracy movement.

The resolution cleared the plenary session with 157 votes in favor, one against and one invalid, out of 159 lawmakers present.

The People Power Party had agreed at a caucus meeting before the session to walk out if the resolution came to a floor vote, but five of its members — Cho Kyung-tae, Kim Hyeong-dong, Kim Ye-ji, Woo Jae-jun and Han Ji-a — stayed and took part in the vote.

The resolution states that Lee violated her duty to uphold the dignity of a National Assembly member and damaged the Assembly's honor and authority by co-hosting a forum with right-wing groups inside the Assembly to "re-examine" the May 18 pro-democracy movement.

At the forum, held at the National Assembly Library on Aug. 13, a speaker described the May 18 pro-democracy movement as "ten days of unrest in Gwangju in May 1980," drawing widespread condemnation.

Cheon Jun-ho, the Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker who led the resolution, said Lee had "turned the National Assembly — the hall of the people's will — into a stage for incitement to slander the May 18 pro-democracy movement and a scene of frenzy for insurrection forces bent on destroying the constitutional order."

Democratic Party floor leader Han Byung-do also expressed anger at a caucus meeting just before the plenary session. "She set up the very forum that denigrated May 18 and then calls it an 'academic re-examination' — that makes me even more furious," Han said.

Lee left the chamber without voting on the resolution and told reporters outside that "what is happening in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea is that falling out of favor with the president and the majority party in effect makes it possible to impeach a lawmaker." She added that the Assembly had become "a one-party dictatorship of the Democratic Party, just as the North Korean Workers' Party exercises single-party rule."

Lee said that when she held the May 18 forum in the Assembly, she had two goals in mind: freedom of expression and questions about state-funded merit holders. "They say they want to enshrine the spirit of May 18 in the constitutional preamble, yet they say people don't need to know about May 18," she said. "Only the actions of young people can transform the Republic of Korea into a free and democratic nation."

It is the first time in the country's constitutional history that a resolution urging the expulsion of a sitting lawmaker has passed a plenary session of the National Assembly.

However, precedents exist for related measures: a resolution urging the resignation of then-lawmaker Choi Yeon-hee, who left the Grand National Party — the predecessor of the People Power Party — amid a sexual misconduct scandal in 2006, and the expulsion of then-New Democratic Party leader Kim Young-sam under the Yushin regime in 1979.

Wednesday's vote was on a resolution of a political nature urging Lee's expulsion; for actual disciplinary action to be taken against her, a separate disciplinary motion must also clear a plenary vote.

Cheon filed that disciplinary motion against Lee on Friday and it must go through review by the Assembly's Ethics Special Committee before being brought to a plenary vote. Under current law, expelling a lawmaker requires the approval of at least two-thirds of all Assembly members.