SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office Friday, when the country’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld a parliamentary vote to impeach him over his effort in December to impose martial law.
The court said Yoon had undermined the authority of the National Assembly and other democratic institutions, and had “gravely violated” his duties to the people and as commander in chief when he mobilized troops to try to seize political control of the legislature.
“By reenacting history, he shocked the people and caused chaos in all areas including society, economy, politics, diplomacy and so on,” said Moon Hyung-bae, the acting president of the Constitutional Court, reading the decision on behalf of the eight justices. “He violated his duty to unite the society as the president of all the people, beyond just his own supporters.”
Yoon was not in court for the decision and did not immediately comment. But Kwon Young-se of Yoon’s conservative People Power Party released a statement saying the party takes the court’s decision “seriously and humbly accepts it.”
The ruling closes out Yoon’s short-lived political career but is unlikely to spell the end of the chaos that has roiled South Korea for months, analysts say. His removal immediately angered his supporters, who have been staging enormous protests throughout the country demanding his reinstatement. Local media reported that some Yoon supporters attacked police buses set up to wall off the court in the wake of the decision.
South Korea must now hold an election within 60 days to choose a new president. The head of the liberal Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, is the front-runner, while the People Power Party has no clear candidate to succeed Yoon.
Acting president Han Duck-soo pledged to hold the new election “in accordance with the will of the sovereign people” and said that, until then, he would maintain “a strong security posture to ensure there are no gaps in national security and diplomacy.”
The months of political limbo have coincided with Donald Trump’s return to the White House and his imposition of sweeping new tariffs that threaten to destabilize South Korea’s key industries.
Trump has also criticized the amount of money Washington pays to station U.S. troops in South Korea, but interim leaders in Seoul have struggled to offer a convincing riposte — or to get face time with the U.S. president.
The court’s decision Friday marks another resounding rejection of Yoon’s Dec. 3 attempt to seize political control by declaring martial law for the first time since South Korea democratized in 1987. First the public protested it. Then legislators voted to overturn it. Now, the judiciary has upheld Yoon’s removal.
“Thankfully, we didn’t have to spill blood on the street and we were able to actually rely on the constitutional processes to hold him accountable and also remove him from the office,” said Cho Hee-kyoung, law professor at Hongik University in Seoul. “That is a really, really significant achievement.”
Yoon still faces a separate criminal trial, which begins April 14. He was indicted and charged with leading an insurrection when he declared martial law.
The flurry of impeachments, legal actions and mass protests in the past four months has been astonishing even by the standards of South Korea, where divisive and rancorous politics are the norm.
Tensions have been running high for weeks as the Constitutional Court’s deliberations dragged on. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered for large-scale demonstrations every weekend in Seoul and other cities. Yoon’s opponents have been on a hunger strike, and his supporters have been shaving their heads to protest his potential removal.
But there has been a noticeable shift in the composition of the conservative movement supporting Yoon, with the emergence of a far-right bloc whose supporters have at times been combative during recent protests, said Paik Wooyeal, political science professor at Yonsei University in Seoul.
This far-right movement has been spurred on by extreme religious groups and commentators on YouTube opposing Yoon’s removal, Paik said — and they don’t appear to be going away.
“Even if the impeachment is upheld, the disarray will continue with this so-called far-right bloc that has now emerged,” he said.
Ahead of Friday’s ruling, law enforcement agencies were preparing for worst-case scenarios, dispatching police and installing barbed wire on the walls around the court. Schools and businesses in the area were closed on Friday because of safety concerns.
Yoon is the third South Korean president to be impeached and the second to be removed from power. The Constitutional Court upheld Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in 2017 over her role in a corruption and influence-peddling scandal. But in 2004, the Constitutional Court rejected the charges against Roh Moo-hyun, accused of illegal campaigning, and reinstated him.
The removal is a remarkable turn of events for Yoon, who built his public persona as the nation’s top prosecutor who helped imprison Park, and sold himself as someone who would uphold the law.
Although nearly every president since South Korea’s democratization has become embroiled in scandals involving corruption, bribery, embezzlement or abuse of power, Yoon was the first to declare martial law.
In doing so, Yoon “really tried to overthrow the existing, agreed-upon pact with regard to how our institutions should be organized,” said Cho, the law professor, making it “a different kind of impeachment” compared with the corruption cases.
That’s in part because Yoon became the first sitting president to face a criminal investigation. South Korean presidents are immune from prosecution except on insurrection charges, which Yoon faces over his move to impose martial law on Dec. 3. Less than two weeks later, on Dec. 14, the National Assembly impeached him and suspended his powers as president.
He was detained on Jan. 15 as part of a criminal investigation into his actions and then indicted Jan. 26 on charges of leading an insurrection. He was released on March 8 after the court agreed with his lawyers that there was a procedural error with his detention.
In their ruling, the justices found that Yoon did not follow the proper procedures for declaring martial law and was not justified in issuing such a decree.
His late-night decree, made in a televised address, prompted thousands of protesters to gather outside the National Assembly and decry his effort to impose martial law. As soldiers and police surrounded the National Assembly complex, lawmakers scaled the walls to bypass them and vote to reverse Yoon’s decision. Yoon lifted his order six hours later.
Yoon has stood firmly by his decision, blaming the opposition-controlled National Assembly for a “parliamentary dictatorship” and for paralyzing his administration with repeated efforts to impeach top officials.
He also cited unfounded theories that North Korea and China rigged last year’s parliamentary elections, during which his party suffered a big loss, and claimed that he needed to declare martial law to get to the bottom of election interference.
His supporters have latched on to these theories, rallying around anti-communist messages and false claims about election fraud, even adopting the “Stop the Steal” slogan from Trump supporters who deny the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
During his short time in office, Yoon made his mark on foreign policy by hewing closely to Washington and setting aside colonial-era hostilities with Japan to work with Tokyo and Washington to counter the military and economic rise of China and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Yoon also forged closer ties with NATO member countries, especially as the military cooperation between Russia and North Korea intensified in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But South Korea’s foreign policy is likely to change course if the new president hails from the left-leaning Democratic Party, like the current front-runner, Lee.
Lee and his party advocate a more “balanced” approach to the nation’s relations with the United States, which it depends on for its security, and China, which is its largest trading partner. That approach gained new momentum this week with Trump’s decision to impose a 25 percent tariff on all products from South Korea.
Yoon’s 2022 presidential campaign was his first bid at public office. He won by less than one percentage point over Lee.
