PPP lawmaker Ihn Yohan resigns, urges nation to move past botched martial law bid

Ihn Yohan, lawmaker of the main opposition People Power Party, holds a press conference at the National Assembly in Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap

Rep. Ihn Yohan of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) announced his resignation on Wednesday, calling for the nation to overcome "unfortunate events" following a failed martial law bid by former President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The sudden resignation of Ihn, who won a proportional seat in the April 10 general elections last year, came as the PPP has been divided over the aftermath of martial law.

"I wish to wrap up my year and a half of parliamentary activities and return to my original profession," Ihn, the first foreigner to pass the country's medical licensing examination and the first special naturalized citizen, told reporters.

"Starting with myself, I am giving up all my vested interests and returning to my field to contribute to national unity and development," he added.

Ihn, who had been closely aligned with Yoon, said South Korea must work to overcome the "unfortunate events" that have unfolded since Yoon's failed martial law bid last December.

Yoon's martial law attempt and his subsequent impeachment have left the PPP in disarray, triggering internal divisions and weakening its stature as the main opposition party.

"Politics driven solely by partisanship exhausts the public and is an obstacle to national progress," he said, stressing that "true national unity is achieved only when we break away from black-and-white thinking."

PPP leader Jang Dong-hyeok had attempted to dissuade the physician-turner-lawmaker, but Ihn appears to have felt "frustration and a sense of helplessness as he could not pursue the politics he envisioned," according to PPP lawmaker Shin Dong-wook.

With Ihn's departure, Rep. Lee So-hee, who is next in line on the proportional representation list, will take over the parliamentary seat.

Ihn was appointed head of the PPP's innovation committee in October 2023 under the Yoon administration but stepped down just 42 days later.

Fluent in Korean, using the dialect of the Jeolla region in the southern part of the country, Ihn, also known by his English name John A. Linton, was granted South Korean citizenship as a "foreign special contributor" in 2012.

A great-grandson of American missionary Eugene Bell, Ihn was born in 1959 in Suncheon, 290 kilometers south of Seoul, in South Jeolla Province, a traditional stronghold of the progressive bloc.

After graduating from Yonsei University College of Medicine, he obtained a medical license in 1987. Prior to entering politics, he had served as the chairman of Severance Hospital International Health Care Center in Seoul since 1991.

His grandfather, William Linton, was a missionary who devoted most of his life to exposing Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula to the outside world.

Ihn's father, Hugh Linton, was a U.S. Navy officer who participated in the Incheon Landing Operation that saved South Korea from the brink of defeat and decisively turned the tide of the 1950-53 Korean War. The war ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, leaving the peninsula still technically in a state of conflict.