With the conservatives given a gigantic thumbs down in last week’s elections, everyone is now wondering whether the progressives might try to impeach the president.

The threat came up during the campaign, and the people making it will be taking a majority of the seats in the National Assembly, the body tasked with striking the first blow in any impeachment process. It happened seven years ago. Could it happen again?

If it does, how are we to understand it? How may we know if impeaching President Yoon Suk Yeol would be a good thing or a bad thing?

I ask this not as a lead into an opinion one way or another but rather to pre-emptively clear away some of the fog that will inevitably gather around news coverage about this as it travels overseas.

There are two sources of confusion for outsiders. One concerns the political affiliation of the parties involved. The other concerns the legality of impeachment.

People overseas who follow Korea consider the president and his People Power Party to be “conservative” and the opposition Democratic Party of Korea to be “progressive.” They do this........

© The Korea Times