Bong Joon-ho, Korean Film Stars Call for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s Impeachment and Arrest

Over 2,500 film industry figures in South Korea have signed their names to a petition calling for the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol after his misbegotten declaration of martial law on Tuesday.

Many of the country’s biggest names in film and K-drama — including Parasite director and multi-Oscar winner Bong Joon-ho and A-list actors like Gang Dong-won (Peninsula), Son Ye Jin (Crash Landing on You) and Park Eun-bin (Extraordinary Attorney Woo) — signed their names to the document, as did 77 local film industry organizations, such as the Directors Guild of Korea and the Producers Guild of Korea. 

Altogether, 2,518 Korean film professionals put their names down in support of the petition, which was open for 30 hours from Thursday to Friday, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. Other high-profile names on the list were Kim Go-eun, Jun Ji-hyun and Cha Seung-won.

Korea’s entertainment business is hardly alone in calling for the president’s ouster. Tens of thousands of protesters assembled outside South Korea’s National Assembly on Saturday as local lawmakers cast their votes inside on whether to impeach him. The impeachment vote reportedly ground to a halt Saturday evening in Seoul as nearly all of the members of the president’s party fled the chamber to avoid participating in the process. The opposition, meanwhile, tried to convince members of the president’s party to return to support his removal, which requires a two-thirds majority under Korean law. 

“The emergency martial law declaration on Tuesday is something that is beyond common sense. Even when applying movie-making’s imagination, this would still be considered a delusion, but it nonetheless happened in our reality,” the film industry petition signed on Friday said. “For Koreans in the film industry, Yoon Suk Yeol is no longer the president of Korea but simply a criminal.”

South Korean politics have been in a state of crisis since Tuesday night, when Yoon took the drastic step of declaring emergency martial law, only to retract it six hours later after public outrage and a unanimous vote of withdrawal by the National Assembly. 

Earlier on Saturday, Yoon gave a brief speech in Seoul saying he was deeply sorry for the stress his actions had caused, but he declined to resign, suggesting that the decision was in his party’s hands.

For many in Korea, the deeply unpopular president’s attempt to use martial law in response to political opposition and fierce media scrutiny called to mind dark memories of South Korea’s brutal military dictatorships of the 1980s. 

The film industry statement continued: “The primary step in reclaiming Korea’s reputation in the world and overcoming this chaotic situation is suspending Yoon from serving as president. If the quickest way to do that is impeachment, he must be impeached. If there is a quicker way to oust him from office, that should be sought. This is a non-negotiable step for President Yoon Suk Yeol and those behind the martial law declaration, including the defense minister, who revealed themselves as perpetrators of treason.”