SEOUL, Dec. 9 (UPI) — South Korea is instituting a 24-hour emergency response system to ensure the world’s 11th largest economy is not hobbled by the recent impeachment of President Park Geun-hye.
A meeting on a joint emergency economic response was held Saturday, local news service Money Today reported.
Officials from Seoul’s financial services commission, the Bank of Korea, and the trade and transportation ministries were among those who attended the ministry of strategy and finance meeting.
The meeting is taking place as concern is growing among experts on South Korea that the country may be hampered by the recent removal of Park from office.
Although a parliamentary decision culminated in the impeachment of Park on Friday with the national assembly voting 234 to 56 to impeach the president, interim president Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn is not mandated to make decisions on sensitive government matters, according to Scott Snyder, a senior fellow in Korea studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Deputy Prime Minister Yoo Il-ho agreed to strengthen cooperation among Seoul’s network of ministries in order to mitigate any economic impact of the recent political situation. Yoo promptly launched a joint emergency response team that can monitor local financial markets on a 24-hour basis.
On Friday the country’s main stock index, the KOSPI, slid 0.3 percent after the impeachment was confirmed.
Seoul is expected to assure reporters on Sunday that “there is no gap in the national economy,” according to the report.
Park’s impeachment comes after six weeks of peaceful demonstrations by South Koreans who called for her to step down after allegations surfaced an influential friend intervened illicitly in government affairs.
Experts are concerned, however, that a power vacuum could threaten stability.
Aidan Foster-Carter, a senior research fellow at Britain’s Leeds University, writes “Months of government paralysis” may be around the corner, owing to possible delays that could take as much as six months in Korea’s constitutional court on a final impeachment decision.
“The outcome is far from certain, given the court’s conservative bias,” Foster-Carter writes, adding if impeachment fails Park could return to finish her five-year term as president.
