As South Korean court takes up president’s impeachment, ruling party leader resigns
Jung Yeon-je / AFP via Getty Images
(SEOUL) — As South Korea’s Constitutional Court began the process of reviewing the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol, the leader of his party, who had supported his impeachment, announced his resignation.
Han Dong Hoon, the leader of Yoon’s People Power Party, resigned Monday morning. He had wavered in his support for Yoon, the embattled president who declared a short-lived martial law earlier this month, but, in the end, announced that the party would support impeaching Yoon last week ahead of the vote this weekend.
Han faced strong backlash from his own party for openly supporting impeachment without consulting senior members of the party enough ahead of his announcement last week. The impeachment bill passed Saturday.
Han said he does “not regret supporting the impeachment,” because the emergency martial law was the wrong decision to make.
Yoon, impeached Saturday and stripped of his presidential powers and duties, briefly declared martial law on Dec. 3.
“Defending illegal martial law is a betrayal of the country, the people, the conservative spirit, and the achievements of our party that achieved industrialization and democratization,” Han said Monday.
The constitutional court has up to six months to decide whether to reinstate or formally oust Yoon. Until then, Yoon’s main constitutional powers have been transferred to Prime Minister Han Duck Soo.
(LONDON and NEW YORK) — Many Palestinian doctors who worked in the Gaza Strip are either dead, have fled the territory or are in prison, U.S. doctors told the United Nations.
Four U.S. medical doctors who have worked in the Gaza Strip for periods throughout the past 15 months spoke about their concerns and the priorities for bringing critical care needed in Gaza during a press conference at the U.N. in New York last week.
Drs. Thaer Ahmad, Ayesha Khan, Feroze Sidhwa and Mahmooda Syed met with the U.N. secretary-general and spoke last week with the press about the future of Gaza.
All four said they agreed they had never seen anything like what they saw during their time working in Gaza.
U.N. officials and nongovernmental organizations have repeatedly warned that the health care system in Gaza has collapsed and is lacking the critical resources needed to meet an overwhelming demand of injured and sick Palestinians.
With the fragile ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas that is allowing aid to flow at much higher levels than it has in the past few months, and medical evacuations set to increase, the doctors said there needs to be a plan for the immediate needs of Palestinians.
Sidhwa said rebuilding hospitals is a priority.
Only 16 of 36 hospitals in Gaza remain partially functional, the U.N. said in January, before the latest ceasefire agreement to pause fighting was reached. Most of the functioning hospitals aren’t able to treat complex injuries or chronic diseases, the U.N. said.
Israel targeted and raided multiple health facilities in Gaza, most recently the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, in what the Israeli military said were anti-terrorism operations aimed at Hamas.
As a result, much of the infrastructure has been damaged, as shown in an ABC News visual analysis of the state of several hospitals after a year of war.
But it is not just the infrastructure that needs to be replaced, Sidhwa said, but all the machines and equipment, too. “There is extreme need with minimal capacity,” he said.
While this process takes place, the immediate priority should be evacuations, the doctors said. But even those come with many complications, especially for children, who, in the words of spokesperson Tess Ingram of UNICEF, are “disproportionately wearing the scars of the war.”
Many families are worried, for example, that they will not be allowed back inside Gaza, Ahmad said, urging for the evacuated children to be relocated to the West Bank or Jerusalem instead of Egypt or the U.S.
Syed said Israel only allows one adult to accompany each child evacuated from Gaza, while many parents have more children who require their presence.
These bureaucratic hurdles slow down what the doctors say is an urgent race against time.
Khan held up a photograph of a little girl’s foot, which was badly burned. When the patient came in, the doctor said he thought the wounds were fresh, but it turned out they were months old, and she might need an amputation.
Like that girl, many children and adults in Gaza sustained wounds months ago, increasing the chances of infections and long-term disabilities, the doctors said.
A senior U.N. official told the Security Council in October 2024 that Gaza has the largest number of amputee children in modern history.
The doctors also spoke about their personal challenges and the indescribable struggles of their colleagues in Gaza.
The four doctors said they faced many obstacles and now fear retaliation for sharing the details of what they say are violations of international humanitarian law, which Israel denies.
“The white coat does not protect you,” said Ahmad, conveying what he says is a shared belief among many Palestinian doctors.
Ahmad worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where the director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was detained in December by Israel. He has not been heard from since, but Israeli forces have confirmed he is in their custody as a suspected Hamas operative.
Safiya is one of more than 365 health care workers being held in Israeli prison, the head of information for the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry, Zaher Al Wahidi, told ABC News in January. ABC News has reached out to Israel for comment.
“This was the hospital that he built. Those were the departments that he helped develop. And he refused to leave,” Ahmad said of the Kamal Adwan director.
“Then he watched the military raid the hospital, destroy it, getting injured in the process,” he added. “Then he had to walk up to the tank, in his white coat, and shake the hand of the military that killed his son and injured him.”
As the U.N. panel concluded, Secretary-General António Guterres posted on X: “I was deeply moved by the testimonies and impressed by the dedication of 4 American doctors that have worked in Gaza. 2,500 children must be immediately evacuated with the guarantee that they will be able to return to their families and communities.”
LONDON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hit back at President Donald Trump’s call for the country to hold fresh presidential elections following Tuesday’s historic Russia-U.S. talks in Saudi Arabia.
The U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh — to which Ukraine was not invited — represented “an important step forward” toward ending Russia’s three-year-old invasion of its neighbor, according to a State Department readout.
Hours after the talks concluded, Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago that Zelenskyy’s public approval rating was “down to 4%,” failing to provide a source for the figure. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also repeatedly framed Zelenskyy as illegitimate, citing the postponement of the country’s 2024 presidential elections due to martial law.
During a Wednesday press conference in Kyiv, Zelenskyy challenged Trump’s claim, pointing to respected recent surveys showing him polling consistently above 50% with voters and describing Trump’s assertion as Russian “disinformation.”
“If someone wants to replace me right now, then right now won’t work,” Zelenskyy said. “If we are talking about 4% then we have seen this disinformation, we understand that it comes from Russia. And we have evidence.”
The president said he would conduct opinion polls for trust ratings for world leaders, including Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Zelensky said he took Trump’s comments “calmly” and that Ukraine would help get the president out of information “isolation”.
Hours after the U.S.-Russia discussions concluded with a commitment to continue talks, Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage into Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force reported 167 drones and two Iskander ballistic missiles launched into the country, with 106 intercepted and 56 more lost in flight.
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov reported a “massive enemy strike on a densely populated area of the city” causing electricity, heating and water outages.
Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that the strike targeted “civilian energy facilities,” in keeping with longstanding Russian doctrine. “For nearly three years now, the Russian army has relentlessly used missiles and attack drones against them,” he said.
“Just yesterday, after the notorious meeting in Riyadh, it became clear that Russian representatives were once again lying, claiming they do not target Ukraine’s energy sector,” Zelenskyy continued.
“Yet, almost simultaneously, they launched another attack, with drones striking electrical transformers,” he wrote. “And this is during winter — it was minus 6 degrees Celsius at night.”
“We must never forget that Russia is ruled by pathological liars — they cannot be trusted and must be pressured,” the president said.
Kyiv’s exclusion from the Saudi talks have badly unsettled Ukraine and its European allies. Trump was unapologetic when speaking with reporters Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, just as Odesa came under attack.
“They’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that,” Trump said of Ukraine, suggesting Kyiv could have made a deal with Moscow to avoid the huge loss of lives and land.
Trump said he believes he has “the power to end this war,” while falsely claiming Ukraine started the conflict against Russia. The war began when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, a campaign that followed eight years of cross-border Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump said of U.S. efforts to end the war. “But today I heard, oh, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years — you should have never started it.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Zelenskyy criticized the Trump administration’s recent demand for a treaty that would hand over 50% of Ukraine’s natural resources to the U.S., in exchange for no security guarantees. Trump himself has repeatedly said he wants $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s rare minerals to pay back the U.S. for its support during Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskyy said such a demand was “not serious”, and corrected Trump’s claim that the U.S. has provided more money than Europe.
“There wasn’t a word there about security guarantees,” he said. “There is nothing precise there. I can’t sell the state.”
Zelenskyy said that if Ukraine cannot join NATO, it needs a strong army backed by Western weapons and air defense. He said Ukraine was looking for a troop contingent from European countries to help protect Ukraine after a ceasefire, but warned that Ukraine’s own troops needed to be backed by air defense, which only the U.S. can provide.
“Only the Americans, President Donald Trump, have this protection, this air defense, it’s exclusively from them, and that’s what’s important,” Zelenskyy said. “We have a map that shows us this, but we are ready for dialogue, for discussion, about what quantity, how much is needed. We’ve calculated everything; we’ve figured it all out. So this is essentially the main point of what we are requesting.”
Zelenskyy suggested on Tuesday that the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh merely revived ultimatums issued by Moscow in the early stages of its invasion.
“I have the impression that there are now some negotiations happening and they have the same mood, but between Russia and the United States,” Zelenskyy said during a visit to Turkey.
“Again, about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he added. “It’s interesting, if Ukraine didn’t yield to ultimatums in the most difficult moment, where does the feeling come from that Ukraine will agree to this now?”
“I never intended to yield to Russia’s ultimatums and I don’t intend to now,” Zelenskyy added.
In Riyadh, the U.S. and Russia agreed to appoint as-yet unnamed special representatives to continue peace talks, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Addressing the Russian parliament on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — who led Moscow’s team in Riyadh — told lawmakers that “the atmosphere is positive, the intentions are correct, we will see how the situation develops further, what decisions will be made.”
He added, “The main thing is to meet, listen and hear, make decisions that will be realistic.”
Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told the state-controlled Channel One television channel that Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy — Keith Kellogg — would negotiate a settlement with Kyiv and European nations.
Kellogg arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday morning, where he is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian leaders.
Kellogg told reporters his “mission is to sit and listen” and then report back to Trump. He parried questions about whether Trump is siding with Putin, saying that Trump wants to end the war because “he understands the human suffering” it is causing.
Kellogg added that he agrees with Trump that the war would never have begun if he had been president at the time.
ABC News’ Fidel Pavlenko, Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — Ukraine’s intelligence services released new information Tuesday about the conduct of North Korean troops now fighting alongside Russian forces in the western Russian region of Kursk, which since August has been a key front of Moscow’s war on its neighbor.
U.S. and Ukrainian estimates suggest there are between 10,000 and 12,000 North Korean troops currently inside Russia, with their focus on the Kursk region. Ukrainian and American officials now say North Korean forces are actively engaged in fighting and taking casualties.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) this week reported at least 30 North Korean troops killed and wounded in Kursk.
On Tuesday, the GUR said North Korean forces were taking additional security measures to try to blunt the threat of drone strikes.
“After serious losses, North Korean units began setting up additional observation posts to detect drones of the security and defense forces of Ukraine,” the GUR wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel.
The directorate said North Korean troops gather in groups of between 20 and 30 soldiers before launching attacks, moving “to the concentration area in small groups of up to six servicemen” and using red tape for identification.
“The constant accumulation of assault groups by the personnel of the DPRK army in the Kursk region indicates that Moscow does not want to lose the pace of offensive actions,” the GUR added, using an acronym for the country’s official name of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Security Service of Ukraine, meanwhile, claimed on Tuesday to have intercepted a phone call between a nurse at a hospital near Moscow and her husband — a soldier fighting at the front.
In two days, the nurse said, more than 200 wounded North Korean servicemen were brought to one of the Russian hospitals near Moscow.
“Are they elite, these Koreans?” the nurse asked in the purported recording, which ABC News cannot independently verify. “We are freeing up certain wards for them.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told a Tuesday briefing that the U.S. assesses “that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat in Kursk alongside Russian forces.”
“We do have indications that they have suffered casualties, both killed and wounded,” he added, though declined to provide specific numbers.
“I would say certainly in the realm of dozens, several dozens,” Kirby added when pressed. The North Korean forces are now also moving “from the second line to the front line,” Kirby said.
An unnamed senior U.S. official, meanwhile, told the Associated Press that a couple hundred North Korean troops had been killed or wounded while fighting in Kursk.
The North Korean deployment followed more than two years of closer ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, a relationship that previously saw North Korean munitions sent westwards to support Russian operations in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s foreign partners have condemned what White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby called a “dramatic move.”
Both the U.S. and European Union this week introduced additional sanctions on individuals and entities they said are involved in North Korean military assistance to Russia.
