On April 4, South Korea’s Constitutional Court officially dismissed Yoon Suk-yeol from the presidency. The ruling came down 111 days after the National Assembly passed its impeachment motion against Yoon. The past four months have been an agonizing vigil for the country’s fate and future.
In the court’s previous presidential impeachment cases (for Roh Moo-hyun in 2004 and Park Geun-hye in 2017), the court tendered its rulings within two weeks of the final hearing. For Yoon, however, it took 38 days until the final ruling. In each case, the question of whether or not the president’s actions had constituted “grievous unconstitutionality and illegality,” the legal threshold for impeachment, was crystal clear.
Yet, as the ruling on Yoon’s case dragged on, concerns and speculation had run rampant. The bleakest theory was that, due to some right-leaning justices, the court would overrule the National Assembly’s impeachment. The conjecture that gained the most traction was that the court was struggling to persuade one or two justices unwilling to rule against Yoon. In matters of such national importance, the court has a tacit rule to hand down a unanimous verdict to minimize national division.
As it turned out, the verdict was not only unanimous but there was also no separate or dissenting opinion. The ruling’s obiter dictum – the part of the ruling that’s not legally binding but offers a caveat for future reference – merely mentioned the need to beef up procedural and evidential clarity for future impeachment cases. The uniformity and integrity of the decision suggest that the Constitutional Court’s justices must have cemented their reasoning and ruling from very early on. They must have delayed the announcement for another reason.
The court must have been aware that conservatives of all stripes – as well as the far-right and alt-right – rallied behind Yoon. That’s why approval ratings for his impeachment hovered well below a two-thirds majority. And Yoon’s supporters were agitated; they assaulted journalists and police officers. Some spots in central Seoul were paralyzed due to their presence. Talk of riots, assassination, and revolution dominated their rhetoric and the news.
And they were not just blustering. South Koreans have seen what these groups are capable of. Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, survived an assassination attempt in January 2024, and one of the courts in Seoul was ransacked in January by a horde of alt-right males following the court’s grant of Yoon’s arrest warrant.
In that context, when rabble-rousers swear to stab liberal justices to death, it has to be taken seriously.
The court must have sensed that delivering a quick verdict of impeachment would be a death knell for public order. It chose instead to tire out the marauders and mobs that were pouring onto the streets and disrupting public peace on a daily basis. Indeed, as February and March wore on, their stamina waned, as did the daily truculence and scuffles.
Even the ruling People Power Party (PPP), which had previously denounced the court for the fast-paced legal proceedings in Yoon’s case, implored for a ruling sooner rather than later as their patience tapered out. As domestic consumption and the global economy hurtled toward a catastrophe amid a massive surge in tariffs from the United States, the mood prevailed that South Korea’s impeachment crisis and political limbo had to be resolved one way or another.
When the court eventually impeached Yoon on April 4, the reaction from Yoon’s supporters was largely one of subdued resignation. Some collapsed to the ground in sobs. Some fainted. But there was none of the explosion of emotions and brutality of 2017 when Park was impeached, where dozens were injured and a few rioters died.
South Korea has emerged into the light, out of the long tunnel of what commentators dubbed “Yoon’s sorcery.” (Yoon allegedly determined national affairs by relying on shamans’ advice; one of the masterminds behind Yoon’s self-coup was a shaman.) South Korea has escaped a return to dictatorship. And it’s a good omen that the end of Yoon’s era saw little violence.
Yet Yoon marred South Korean society and gashed its polity. It’s unclear when this wound will heal, if ever. “Employing the armed forces and police, President Yoon disfigured the National Assembly’s constitutional mandate and violated the people’s fundamental human rights, thereby deserting his duty to protect the Constitution and betraying South Koreans’ faith in the republic’s sovereignty,” read the Constitutional Court’s ruling.
That a single man could trample decades of democracy overnight – and that a sizable portion of South Koreans still flocked to his side – showcased the vulnerability and enormous divide within South Korea. Yoon rekindled the long-debunked conspiracy theory of election fraud to fire up his followers. Numerous police investigations, simulations of election procedures, and court rulings have categorically found that it was impossible to rig elections. Yet, due to three years of Yoon’s brainwashing, almost a third of South Koreans and half of conservatives believe that the opposition Democratic Party controls the National Assembly as a result of election fraud.
During the short-lived self-coup, Yoon sent soldiers to lock down the National Election Commission (NEC) and detain its staff. This was a classic Yoon move – as a career prosecutor, he excelled at ordering search warrants, detaining and prosecuting people based on a hunch, rather than on credible evidence. Yoon’s supporters still applaud that he did the same to the NEC, a constitutionally independent organization that manages fair and regular elections. Yoon’s approach and the right-wing’s reaction set a deplorable precedent.
When so many people are unwilling to put faith in the election system, the bedrock of democracy, no future leader can comfortably and safely govern the country with a firm mandate.
Public trust in the military and police has also taken a drubbing. During the brief period of martial law, Yoon dispatched the 707th Special Mission Group to the National Assembly. This unit is trained in anti-terrorism operations and assassination of spies, with its nickname being “the decapitation unit.” Agents from the 1st Special Forces Brigade barged into the National Assembly building, tasked with dragging out legislators who had gathered to cancel Yoon’s martial law. The brigade was involved in two previous military coups. All the while, the police blocked every gate to the National Assembly premise.
Thanks to mandatory military service, everyone in South Korea is invested in the military. Everyone has somebody, whether friends or family, who has been or in the military. This heightened level of public attention and scrutiny has improved the military’s welfare, morale, and public confidence, all of which contributed to the South Korean military’s status as one of the most advanced in the world. South Korea’s system of maintaining public order owes its efficiency to the culture of timely reporting by the public and its cooperation with law enforcement. Yet Yoon’s self-coup has left behind a collective national trauma against uniformed personnel.
With Yoon formally removed from office, South Koreans can take heart that the worst is over. The only way forward now is to acknowledge that Yoon’s deposition isn’t a victory for the left-wing, but a victory for the country’s constitution and democracy.
