(3rd LD) Constitutional Court unanimously rejects impeachment of interior minister

▲ Interior Minister Lee Sang-min (Yonhap)

(3rd LD) interior minister-court

(3rd LD) Constitutional Court unanimously rejects impeachment of interior minister

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By Park Boram

SEOUL, July 25 (Yonhap) -- The Constitutional Court on Tuesday unanimously rejected the National Assembly's impeachment of Interior Minister Lee Sang-min over last year's deadly crowd crush in Seoul, a decision that immediately reinstated him as minister.

The nine-member court reached the decision, 167 days after the opposition Democratic Party-controlled National Assembly passed the impeachment motion to hold him accountable for October's crowd crush that left 159 people dead in Seoul's Itaewon district.

Lee, whose duties were suspended following the Feb. 8 impeachment, was immediately put back into office.

The main focus of the court's deliberations on the case had been whether Lee fulfilled his duty as interior minister in charge of public safety to take steps to prevent the tragedy and whether the government's response was appropriate.

The court said it is impossible to conclude that Lee failed to fulfill his constitutional duties to protect people or violated the disaster and safety management act, adding the Itaewon tragedy was the result of many factors, not a specific one.

"It is not that the Itaewon tragedy happened and was aggravated due to any one reason or any specific person," the court said. "It was the result of (many) elements collectively working, including that each government agency failed to develop capabilities to respond to large-scale disasters. Therefore, it is difficult to pass the responsibility on to the defendant."

It also said Lee made inappropriate remarks after the tragedy but it was not serious enough for impeachment.

Lee had come under criticism from the opposition and the public for saying a day after the tragedy that the crowd at Itaewon was not worryingly huge compared with previous years, and that the disaster would not have been prevented even if police personnel had been deployed in advance.

"Holding the interior minister responsible for inadequate disaster response does not correspond with the essential purpose of an impeachment trial even if the defendant failed to come up with the optimal decision or response in the disaster management process," the court said.

After the court's decision, Lee offered an apology for causing concerns to the public and said the country should "stop a partisan dispute over the crowd crush and unite together to prevent a recurrence of such pain."

"As interior minister, I will do my utmost with an indefinite sense of responsibility to overhaul the disaster management and response systems dealing with natural and new types of disasters, and open up an era of balanced national development," the minister said.

The office of President Yoon Suk Yeol said the main opposition party abused its impeachment powers.

"The impeachment system is aimed at defending the liberal democratic constitutional order," a senior presidential official told Yonhap News Agency after the ruling was announced. "This was an abuse of impeachment powers by the large opposition, which did not meet the purpose and conditions."

The official added, "Such anti-constitutional conduct will face the people's stern judgment."

Lee was the first Cabinet minister ever to be impeached.

In the past, two presidents -- Roh Moo-hyun and Park Geun-hye -- were impeached by the National Assembly in 2004 and 2016, respectively. The Constitutional Court rejected Roh's impeachment, but endorsed Park's and ousted her from office.

In the latest case, the Constitutional Court held four rounds of public hearings on the case to hear from officials from the interior ministry, the national police and firefighting agencies, and the bereaved families of the crowd crush victims.

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