The day of reckoning has arrived for Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president. The country’s National Assembly voted on December 14th to impeach him for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this month. Outside the assembly, crowds of tens of thousands erupted into cheers and applause when the results were announced; demonstrators embraced and shed tears. “Into the New World”, a hit K-pop-song-turned-protest anthem by Girls’ Generation, rang out from the speakers: “The end of wandering that I was longing for.”
The impeachment marks the end of an extraordinary ten days. Late on December 3rd, Mr Yoon declared martial law—only to pull back early the following morning in the face of opposition from the parliament, his own party and the public. Mr Yoon’s party, the People’s Power Party (PPP), boycotted a first impeachment motion on December 7th. Following that disappointing result, “I was sad, so I went drinking,” says Kim Seong-nam, an electronics-company employee who has come out to protest four times since the martial law declaration.
Mr Yoon’s defiant stance in the ensuing week turned even some in his own party against him. The PPP participated in the second impeachment proceeding, with 12 of its members voting in favour. That pushed the motion over the required two-thirds threshold, with 204 of 300 lawmakers voting to impeach the president. This time, “I am happy, so I’ll go drinking!” says Mr Kim.
Yet the turbulence is far from over. The affirmative vote in the assembly triggered Mr Yoon’s immediate suspension from office; the prime minster, Han Duck-soo, a career technocrat appointed by the PPP, has taken over as acting president. The impeachment now passes to the constitutional court, the country’s top legal body, which has up to 180 days to issue a final ruling. Given the urgency of the case, the proceedings may move more swiftly: the court took 92 days to uphold the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, a former president, in 2017; the case against Roh Moo-hyun, one of her predecessors, in 2004, took just 64, with the court overturning the impeachment. “I hope they’ll rule quickly,” Mr Kim says. “The longer the uncertainty lasts, the more damage it does for us.”
The case at the court is hardly straightforward. Following the retirement of three justices in October, only six of the nine seats are currently filled. Six affirmative votes are necessary to rule on impeachment; one of the justices is a conservative appointed directly by Mr Yoon. (The remaining seats may be filled before the case is heard.) Following the impeachment vote Mr Yoon pledged to “never give up”. Allies say he believes he did nothing illegal; he will try to argue to the court that imposing martial law was within his authority as president, and that he followed proper constitutional procedures for doing so. The president and some in his party “seem to have a different view of reality”, says Jung Bo-ram, a protester who brought her two young children to the demonstration on December 14th.
The court tends to take public opinion into account. Mr Yoon’s approval ratings have fallen to as low as 11%; some 75% of South Koreans believe he should be impeached. “The justices know where the South Korean people stand. Just look at this crowd,” says Park Song-mi, a screenwriter, gesturing to an impromptu dance party that broke out near the National Assembly in the wake of the vote. If the court does uphold the impeachment, new presidential elections must be held within two months.
Mr Yoon also faces a possible separate criminal trial for treason. Investigators have already placed him on a no-fly list and attempted to search the presidential office. Ms Park was first impeached, and then convicted on corruption and abuse of power charges. She served nearly five years of a 20-year sentence in prison, before being pardoned by Moon Jae-in, Mr Yoon’s predecessor.
For many Koreans, the sense of déjà vu is unsettling. “We didn’t quite work out the kinks last time,” Ms Park laments. Calls for more fundamental political reform are building again. When South Korea democratised in the late 1980s, the country adopted a system with a powerful president limited to a single five-year term and checked by a unicameral legislature. A more straightforward parliamentary system or introducing multiple, shorter presidential terms could help improve accountability and decentralise power. The current system “has reached the end of its lifespan”, Yoon Young-kwan, a former foreign minister, argued in a recent column in the JoongAng, a South Korean daily, noting that in the past four decades, four presidents have been imprisoned and now two impeached. “How long will we tolerate this kind of political situation?” For South Korea as a whole, the reckoning has only just begun.
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