Just six hours passed between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of a state of emergency on Tuesday night and his subsequent fall, leaving the East Asian country in political turmoil.
As a hardline chief prosecutor who served under Moon Jae-in, his leftist predecessor as president, Yoon oversaw the jailing of former conservative president Park Geun-hye and Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong after a bribery scandal he launched Park’s impeachment in 2017.
Now, however, it is Yoon who faces the possibility of impeachment and possible jail time after his failed political move left him severely isolated and apparently running out of time despite his term being formally set to run until 2027.
“He really has two options: resign or face impeachment,” said Gi-wook Shin, a professor of modern Korea at Stanford University.
Analysts described this week’s move as an act of desperation by an isolated and impulsive one-term leader beset by a slowing economy, historically low approval ratings and an opposition-controlled parliament.
Yoon’s apparent calculation that a bold declaration of martial law would rally right-wing political forces behind him appears to have backfired spectacularly, analysts said, leaving him even more politically and legally exposed than ever.
“The way this emergency declaration was implemented is emblematic of Yoon’s presidency as a whole: poorly planned and even worse executed,” said Karl Friedhoff, a Korea expert at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
“Instead of facing impeachment over a series of personal and political scandals, he will face impeachment over an attempted coup.”
Yoon’s troubled tenure and the dramatic move of his impeachment are indicative of the “politics of revenge” that dominates South Koreademocracy, a divide that has persisted even with the country’s growing economic and cultural influence.
The divisions were evident in Yoon’s invocation of the specter of North Korean influence in Seoul.
Suh Bok-kyung, a political commentator, noted that Yoon’s portrayal of opposition figures as “progressive, anti-state forces” echoed formulations adopted by former South Korean authoritarian leaders to discredit political opponents.
“By comparing them to North Korea, he treats the opposition as our external enemy just because he thinks they are disrupting our national affairs,” she said.
“He is trying to exploit South Koreans’ lingering trauma about the Korean War and the Communists, but that is wrong — he should have tried to convince the public why his policies are necessary and compete fairly with his political opponents for public support.”
This week’s events highlighted “both the vulnerability and resilience of South Korean democracy,” Shin said.
“It has exposed challenges and issues such as polarization, potential executive overreach, and weakened public trust,” she added. “But the rapid rejection of the state of emergency by the National Assembly and the public outcry demonstrated strong institutional checks, civic engagement and an opportunity to strengthen democratic safeguards.”
A political novice when he was elected in 2022 by less than one percentage point over his leftist foe, Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, Yoon brought an uncompromising approach to the presidency.
But his bruising style has gone down poorly with the South Korean public, while also alienating political allies, including his one-time political protégé and fellow ex-prosecutor Han Dong-hoon, the leader of Yoon’s conservative People Power party who has vocally opposed the president’s declaration of martial law.
“He may have been a successful prosecutor, but he entered politics without much preparation,” Shin said. “He’s completely out of touch if he thought he could lead the country through martial law.”
Yoon struggled to resolve long-term deadlocks with doctors on strike and labor unions, while his presidency has also been dogged by allegations surrounding his wife, First Lady Kim Keon Hee, including suggestions that she accepted a bribe in the form of a luxury purse from a Christian pastor, as well as involvement in stock manipulation and other wrongdoing.
Last month, Yoon vetoed the opposition’s latest attempt to launch an official investigation into Kim. In his statement to the nation, he cited opposition efforts to impeach prosecutors involved in the decisions to drop the investigation against the First Lady as justification for his decree.
“He seems to genuinely believe that he and his wife are political victims, and those who voice dissent against them are anti-state forces,” said Shin Yul, a politics professor at Myongji University in Seoul.
Critics point out that Yoon praised former strongman Chun Doo-hwan, the South Korean general who took power in 1979 and went on to oversee a series of massacres of student protesters, as “good at politics.” Until this week, Chun’s coup was the last time a state of emergency was declared in South Korea.
Friedhoff noted that since the fall of the Chun regime, South Korean democratic politics has been enmeshed in a “vengeful cycle” of endless party conflict. Of the seven presidents elected since 1987, three served prison terms, while another died by suicide while under investigation for accepting bribes.
The irony, experts say, is that a national leader thrust into the political spotlight by his leadership role this cycle, like many of his predecessors, is likely to be defined by it.
“There was a future where he could ride out the last two years of his term and maybe avoid prison,” Friedhoff said. “But that ship has sailed and he will most likely be branded a traitor to Korean democracy.”
