After stunning his country and the world by declaring martial law late Tuesday night—before lifting it hours later, after protests against military rule broke out and parliament stepped in to invalidate the move—South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol may not have much of a political future left.
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Yoon, of the conservative People Power Party, was already a lame-duck President after the opposition Democratic Party won a legislative majority in elections earlier this year. His scandal-ridden five-year term was set to end in 2027. But now, opposition lawmakers are looking to impeach the leader if he doesn’t step down himself over the failed gambit that observers have described as an “inept semi-coup.”
“This was a politically catastrophic decision,” says Gi-Wook Shin, a sociology professor at Stanford University. Kang Won-taek, a political science professor at Seoul National University, believes Yoon is “politically cornered.” Sean O’Malley, an international studies professor at Dongseo University in Seoul, says that Yoon is unlikely to resign but that his presidency is “effectively dead” already, whether or not he is removed from office.
Impeaching a President in South Korea requires the assent of two-thirds of the 300-member National Assembly, followed by two-thirds of the nine-member Constitutional Court. Whether or not it happens, largely comes down to politics, as it would require some lawmakers to cross party lines. It’s happened before, when in 2016 then-President Park Geun-hye, the country’s first woman President, was impeached by a 243-56 vote in the legislature (including 28 members of her own Saenuri Party voting in favor), ratified unanimously by the Constitutional Court, after her involvement in a corruption scandal.
Of the 300 current National Assembly members, 101 could block an impeachment, and Yoon’s People Power Party has 108. But 18 of those joined the majority in the 190-0 vote to overturn the martial law declaration earlier this week. And party leader Han Dong-hoon was among Yoon’s critics, calling the martial law declaration “wrong” and “unconstitutional.”
“Rather than protecting President Yoon,” who already faced poor approval ratings, says Seoul National University’s Kang, the People Power Party “will have to calculate the political situation and election prospects after that.” That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll throw Yoon under the bus. Shin, of Stanford University, tells TIME: “There is a difference between voting to stop martial law and voting in favor of an impeachment that would likely guarantee an opposition victory in the snap election to follow.”
Dongseo University’s O’Malley suggests Yoon’s political misfortune doesn’t necessarily guarantee a shoo-in for the Democratic Party. “Both parties are seen as two of the most untrustworthy institutions in the country,” he says.
Yoon, in his speech calling for martial law, alluded to opposition lawmakers, who have pursued impeachments of a number of government officials in recent months, as “anti-state forces” who have “paralyzed” state affairs. Indeed, the Democratic Party has faced criticisms of “exploiting its majority to play party politics,” as the Korea Times summarized in a report just last week.
“Political polarisation has become deeply entrenched, with the opposing camps viewing each other as mortal enemies,” the Economist summarized this week. “The latest fiasco,” it added, “could fuel further division and enmity.”
But it’s not only domestic politics that is in turmoil. The sudden martial law declaration rattled financial markets amid the political uncertainty in Asia’s fourth largest economy, which the government is scrambling to stabilize. And the country’s international reputation was bruised as allies were taken by surprise. South Korea comes off looking like an “immature” democracy, O’Malley tells TIME.
But other experts think the response by the majority of South Korea’s people, many of whom took to the streets to oppose the prospect of authoritarian rule, as well as the country’s politicians, who swiftly organized to address the issue through legal mechanisms, demonstrates the opposite takeaway: “All democracies are subject to challenge,” says Kang. “This incident has proven that Korean democracy is resilient.”
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