SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s constitutional court on Tuesday ruled against a parliamentary vote to censure the interior minister over the government’s response to a deadly Halloween in the capital Seoul last year that killed more than 150 people.
While the court found that minister Lee Sang-min had made inappropriate remarks, they did not constitute grounds for impeachment, it said in a statement.
The decision was unanimous, the court said.
“This terrible incident was not caused and worsened by one reason or person,” Lee Jong-seok, a justice at the court, adding that each government agency cannot respond in a unified way to major disasters.
Minister Lee did not attend the court session and only his lawyers were present.
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Lawmakers in February voted to censure the minister, urging him to take responsibility for the poor response to a mob that killed 159 people, most of them in their 20s, in a popular nightlife district in Seoul.
President Yoon Suk Yeol rejected the opposition’s mandate to impeach Lee, and his office and ruling party criticized the Democrats and accused them of abusing their majority power to push for impeachment.
The president’s office said at the time that the facts about the incident should be established first through an investigation, without specifically stating Lee’s fate.
In June, the opposition-led National Assembly decided to fast-track a bill aimed at launching an independent investigation into the Itaewon crowd.
The Itaewon district of South Korea’s capital is known to leisure people as a place of fun, freedom and openness. But its narrow, paved streets and congested entrances proved a deadly combination for Halloween party-goers caught up in the crowd violence that left more than 150 people dead.
More than twenty relatives of the victims of the massacre distributed open letters this week urging the constitutional court to remove the minister from his position.
“We hope for a just society where those responsible apologize and step aside and preventive measures are put in place to ensure that tragedy does not happen again,” read another letter.
(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim, Ju-min Park; Editing by Ed Davies)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
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