SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s opposition-controlled parliament on Wednesday voted to question the nation’s inside and security minister, Lee Sang-min, holding him chargeable for authorities failures in catastrophe planning and the response that probably contributed to the excessive dying toll in a crowd crush that killed almost 160 folks in October.

The impeachment suspends Lee from his duties and the nation’s Constitutional Court docket has 180 days to rule on whether or not to unseat him for good or give him again the job.

Vice Minister Han Chang-seob will step in as appearing minister till the Constitutional Court docket decides on Lee’s destiny.

Lee is seen as a key ally of conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose workplace issued an irritated response to his impeachment, accusing opposition lawmakers of abandoning legislative rules and creating “shameful historical past.”

Lee issued an announcement expressing remorse after lawmakers voted 179-109 in favor of impeaching him and stated he would defend his case within the Constitutional Court docket.

“(I) hope that the vacuum in public security (administration) created by this unprecedented scenario could be minimized,” Lee stated.

Lee is the primary ever South Korean Cupboard minister to be impeached by the Nationwide Meeting. Lawmakers had beforehand impeached former conservative President Park Geun-hye in December 2016. Three months later she was formally faraway from workplace by the Constitutional Court docket and arrested over an enormous corruption scandal.

Lee’s impeachment highlights the rising deadlock Yoon faces in a parliament managed by his liberal opponents and will additional intensify the nation’s partisan political preventing that has fueled a nationwide divide.

Lee’s impeachment got here weeks after police introduced they’re looking for prison prices, together with involuntary manslaughter and negligence, in opposition to 23 officers, about half of them regulation enforcement officers, for a scarcity of security measures they stated have been chargeable for the gang crush in Itaewon, a serious nightlife district in Seoul.

Following a 74-day inquiry into the incident, a particular investigation group led by the Nationwide Police Company concluded that police and public officers in Seoul’s Yongsan district did not make use of significant crowd management measures regardless of anticipating enormous gatherings of Halloween revelers. Additionally they ignored pedestrian calls positioned to police hotlines that warned of a swelling crowd hours earlier than the surge turned lethal on Oct. 28.

Officers additionally botched their response as soon as folks started getting toppled over and crushed in a slim alley clogged with partygoers close to Hamilton Resort round 10 p.m., failing to determine efficient management of the scene and permit rescue staff to succeed in the injured in time.

Nonetheless, opposition politicians claimed that police investigators went comfortable on greater members of Yoon’s authorities, together with Lee and Nationwide Police Company Commissioner Basic Yoon Hee-keun, who have been going through calls to resign.

The police investigators stated they’d closed their probes on Lee’s ministry and the Nationwide Police Company earlier than handing over the case to prosecutors, saying it was tough to determine the direct accountability of these workplaces.

Lee confronted enormous criticism shortly after the gang crush after he insisted that having extra police and emergency personnel on the bottom nonetheless wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy in Itaewon, in what was seen as an try to sidestep questions concerning the lack of preventive measures.

Regardless of anticipating a crowd of greater than 100,000, Seoul police had assigned 137 officers to Itaewon on the day of the crush. These officers have been targeted on monitoring narcotics use and violent crimes, which consultants say left few sources for pedestrian security.

Some consultants have known as the crush in Itaewon a “artifical catastrophe” that would have been prevented with pretty easy steps, equivalent to using extra police and public staff to observe bottleneck factors, imposing one-way stroll lanes and blocking slim pathways or briefly closing Itaewon’s subway station to forestall giant numbers of individuals shifting in the identical course.