Just under a year ago, Yoon Suk-yeol was serenading guests at a White House state dinner with a rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” On Friday, South Korea’s former President was forced to eat the humble variety after his impeachment over an earlier martial law declaration was unanimously confirmed by the nation’s Constitutional Court. Yoon is the first President in South Korean history to be detained on criminal charges while still in office.
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In delivering the verdict, acting Chief Justice Moon Hyung-bae said Yoon “violated his duty as the nation’s commander-in-chief” when he sent troops to the National Assembly in December. In response, Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) said it “humbly” accepted the decision.
What appeared to many outsiders like an open-and-shut case dragged on for 15 weeks—the longest ever deliberation in a country with a remarkable record of presidential impeachments—amid mass protests and a political inertia that has proven especially debilitating as U.S. President Donald Trump launches a worldwide trade war.
On Thursday, Washington imposed 25% tariffs on South Korean exports to the U.S., prompting acting President Han Duck-soo to vow an “all-out” response. Last year, South Korea exported cars worth $34.74 billion to the U.S., accounting for 49% of all its auto exports. The country must now hold an election within 60 days, and diffusing trade tensions will no doubt be top of the new leader’s in-tray.
How Asia’s fourth-largest economy got to this point still has many scratching their heads. On Dec. 3, President Yoon declared martial law, calling the opposition-controlled National Assembly a “monster” that was infiltrated by anti-state elements allied to North Korea and had “paralyzed” his government. The move sparked turmoil as 190 out of a total of 300 lawmakers battled through cordons of special forces to enter parliament and vote to repeal the declaration just six hours later. In the streets outside, tens of thousands of ordinary South Koreans demanded Yoon’s resignation. Although Yoon’s PPP blocked the parliament’s first impeachment attempt, a second on Dec. 14 was successful.
To this day, Koreans still aren’t sure what Yoon was trying to achieve. A self-styled populist, the former prosecutor general had been struggling to enact his agenda owing to a minority government that made it difficult to push through legislation including a budget. His already precarious position was rendered shakier still by a relentless series of scandals engulfing his wife, first lady Kim Keon-hee, including allegedly accepting a luxury Dior handbag as a gift and stock manipulation.
Then, in September, accusations broke that Myung Tae-kyun, a political broker who ran a polling company, had forged deals with Yoon, his wife, and party colleagues to allegedly publish unverified polls and unlawfully influence elections. The allegations echoed the earlier influence-peddling scandal surrounding disgraced former President Park Geun-hye, which led to nationwide protests in 2017 and the impeachment of South Korea’s first female President. Although Yoon steadfastly denies any impropriety, mass protests erupted to demand accountability and his ouster.
The embattled Yoon then sprung the ultimate political Hail Mary: an autogolpe, or self-coup, to seize power he ostensibly already wielded by imposing martial law. After that gambit failed, the authorities first attempted to detain him on Jan. 3 but aborted when he refused to leave his fortified residence ringed by armed guards. He finally surrendered on Jan. 15 when prosecutors visited again with even more police officers. But he was released from detention on March 8 and appeared defiant to supporters, saying through his lawyers that he “appreciates the courage and decision by the Seoul Central District Court to correct illegality.”
The entire episode was simply bizarre to outsiders to whom South Korea embodies democratic values and technological prowess—not to mention zeitgeist-defining cultural exports from K-pop to Squid Game—when compared to the Stalinist North. But to a young democracy that had only thrown off the shackles of military rule in 1987, it was a harrowing reminder of a not so distant era of state violence, shattering the illusion that political freedoms were beyond jeopardy.
Then again, Koreans can take solace that checks and balances did ultimately carry the day. Parliament swiftly lifted martial law, and law enforcement institutions including military, police, and security services avoided potential bloodshed by exercising restraint despite tense stand-offs. Although the initial inability of the national anti-corruption bureau to arrest Yoon was widely criticized, it could with some justification point to the bigger goal of avoiding an escalation and widespread casualties. Lastly, the Constitutional Court deliberated at length and came to its decision—even if a large section of the nation of 50 million disagrees with it as evidenced by the crowds thronging Seoul’s streets.
“A lot of the young male voters who are demonstrating feel their interests are at stake,” says Naomi Chi, a professor focusing on the Korean Peninsula at Hokkaido University.
How the country now heals is another matter. Yoon came to power by a gossamer-thin margin in part by weaponizing antifeminist rhetoric to gain support from disenfranchised young men, even vowing at the stump to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality (he didn’t.) South Koreans aged 18-30 face some of the worst relative poverty rates among OECD countries and the perception among young men is that 18-month compulsory national service puts them at a marked disadvantage to their female peers, who are exempt. While Yoon’s failure to deliver noticeable economic gains estranged this cohort, the manner of his removal still enrages his base, which has been galvanized by the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories on right-wing blogs and social media.
South Korea’s likely next President is Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, who Yoon defeated by less than 1% in 2022 and who led the impeachment charge. When martial law was first imposed, Lee livestreamed himself climbing the National Assembly fence to bypass the military blockade on his YouTube channel. Lee, who was stabbed in the neck by a political opponent in January 2024, had his path to the nation’s top job cleared when a conviction of violating South Korea’s election law that barred him from public office for five years was overturned by a higher court on March 26.
“When Lee stood in the presidential election last time, there were a lot of objectors,” says Youngmi Kim, a senior lecturer in the department of Asian studies at Edinburgh University. “But now I think his support is broader than ever before.”
Political paralysis is a problem anytime but doubly so when tensions are raised on the peninsula. In recent months, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has deployed troops to aid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine while also ramping up missile tests.
“It’s a dangerous situation,” says Chi. “With this chaos they’re not able to have any dialog with Trump and they don’t have any dialog with Japan. Korea must straighten things out soon for regional stability.”
But elections alone are no panacea. Since democratization, South Korean politics have been ideologically divided largely along Cold War lines, with the conservatives lauding the achievements of the former military regime and accusing their detractors of being pro-Pyongyang. Their progressive opponents, meanwhile, accuse the conservatives of being anti-democratic and riding roughshod over human-rights.
With little commonality between the two factions, politics has metastasized into a winner-takes-all where, ultimately, both sides lose. Since democratization, four South Korean Presidents have been imprisoned, one committed suicide amid a corruption investigation, and three have been impeached.
“There are growing calls that the 1987 constitution is no longer fit for purpose,” Danielle Chubb, an associate professor of international relations at Deakin University, told La Trobe University’s Asia Rising podcast. “Depending on how all this plays out, we might in six months have a moment of opportunity to have … democratic reform in South Korea.”
