South Korea is teetering on the edge of a constitutional crisis as the fate of President Yoon Suk Yeol hangs in the balance. Impeached by the National Assembly over his controversial declaration of martial law earlier this month, Yoon now faces a six-month wait for the Constitutional Court’s ruling on whether he will be reinstated or formally removed from office. As the country grapples with political instability, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo has stepped in as interim leader. With protests and public outrage intensifying, the court’s decision will determine the future direction of South Korea’s embattled government.
The impeachment was the latest twist in a turbulent term that began in 2022, when Mr. Yoon narrowly won the election on a conservative, business-friendly platform. His tenure has been marked by near-constant protests and political deadlock.
On Dec. 3, Mr. Yoon declared martial law, accusing the opposition of paralyzing his government, and soldiers were sent to the National Assembly. An officer who led the soldiers later said that their orders had been to forcibly remove lawmakers so they would not reach the 150 votes needed to overturn martial law.
It was the first time a South Korean president had declared martial law since military dictatorship ended in the country in the late 1980s. Images of soldiers with assault rifles streaming out of military helicopters and then trying to take over the National Assembly building caused widespread shock and outrage.
The opposition managed to vote down the declaration, however, prompting Mr. Yoon to rescind his order within hours.
Despite Mr. Yoon’s retreat and later apology, his failed maneuver further emboldened the opposition, which accused him of leading an insurrection and began efforts to impeach him. There was also fury in a wide segment of South Koreans, who marched in the tens of thousands to call for Mr. Yoon’s removal from office.
With the support of his People Power Party, Mr. Yoon survived an impeachment vote in the National Assembly on Dec. 7.
But pressure on Mr. Yoon continued to grow by the day, as did confusion about who was running South Korea. Mr. Yoon’s party said he had been “excluded” from running state affairs, including diplomacy, and suggested that he would soon step down.
Mr. Yoon had initially stayed quiet for several days, but he lashed out on Thursday in an unexpected speech defending his martial law decree and vowing to “fight to the end” to stay in office. He indicated that he would fight his removal at the Constitutional Court if he were impeached.
The fallout from the short-lived declaration of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol has heaped another worry onto South Korea’s economy, which was already teetering from slowing growth and fears about damage to exports from a shift in U.S. trade policy.
Even before the political turmoil, South Korea’s economy was facing grim prospects. The country’s stock market is one of the worst-performing in the world this year, its currency has weakened more against the U.S. dollar than other major Asian currencies and the economy has largely stagnated.
The election of Donald J. Trump, with his pledge of across-the-board tariffs, has added to the unease for South Korea’s major exporters, which underpin the economy. It is especially unsettling because South Korea now sells more to the United States than China for the first time in more than two decades, a consequence of Washington’s export controls limiting sales of advanced semiconductors and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms.
Officials at South Korea’s central bank unexpectedly cut interest rates last week, citing “heightened uncertainties surrounding growth and inflation, driven by the new U.S. administration’s policies.”
In the third quarter, the country’s economy grew only 0.1 percent from the previous three months, after shrinking by 0.2 percent in the second quarter.
In surveys of public opinion, dissatisfaction over Mr. Yoon’s handling of the economy has regularly ranked among the biggest complaints during his increasingly unpopular presidency. On Friday, the head of Mr. Yoon’s own party said that he supported the impeachment of the president, in a vote scheduled for Saturday.
In the immediate aftermath of the martial law decree, South Korean stocks and the country’s currency plunged, before recovering somewhat after a quick reversal by Mr. Yoon.
In the days since, South Korea’s finance minister, central bank governor and senior regulators have promised “unlimited” support to markets and pledged to hold “emergency” meetings every morning until conditions stabilize. In statements, they have said that investors should not be “overly anxious” and, on Friday, that market conditions were “generally stable.”
The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said the brief imposition of martial law was “very unexpected” for a country with the third-highest level of credit worthiness. It may take a while for investor confidence to return, the agency said, but it did not expect the decline in sentiment to warrant a change in rating in the short term.
President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea was elected in March 2022 by a margin of just 0.8 percentage points, a victory seen more as a rejection of his liberal predecessor than as an endorsement of him or his campaign.
Since then, Mr. Yoon’s approval ratings have slumped amid a series of crises and scandals, culminating in his attempt to impose martial law on Tuesday in response to government gridlock. Mr. Yoon quickly backed down Wednesday morning, but the move prompted South Korea’s political opposition to begin impeachment proceedings against him.
Here are some of the most high-profile controversies of his tenure:
An insult goes viral
Within four months of Mr. Yoon’s taking office, five of his cabinet-level appointees had resigned amid accusations of ethical lapses.
Then, in September 2022, he was caught on a hot mic and seen on camera apparently insulting U.S. lawmakers after meeting President Biden in New York. A spokeswoman for Mr. Yoon said he had been talking about South Korean lawmakers, not Americans. But many of Mr. Yoon’s critics rejected that assertion.
A Halloween crowd crush kills dozens
On Oct. 29, 2022, a crowd crush at a Halloween celebration in one of Seoul’s most popular nightlife districts killed 158 people. Official documents and parliamentary testimony showed that the South Korean authorities had ignored or missed several opportunities to prevent the disaster.
The Seoul metropolitan police chief at the time, Kim Kwang-ho, told Parliament that the force had been “significantly focused” on the government’s antidrug efforts when asked whether that campaign had distracted officials from ensuring crowd safety. Mr. Yoon, facing calls to resign, blamed the police and other agencies for failing to predict the crush.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the government insisted it was not responsible for ensuring public safety on the streets. Mr. Yoon ignored demands from victims’ families to fire top safety officials. He also dismissed requests for a meeting with the relatives of the dead and refused to issue an apology.
The first lady accepts a Dior pouch
Hidden camera footage released by local news media in late 2023 showed Mr. Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, accepting a $2,200 Dior pouch as a gift, apparently violating a ban on government officials and their spouses accepting gifts worth more than $750.
In a survey in December 2023, a majority of South Koreans said they thought it was inappropriate for Ms. Kim to have accepted the gift. Ms. Kim appeared to deny claims of wrongdoing, according to local news media. Some officials from Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party called the incident a “trap” designed to influence parliamentary elections in April. Prosecutors decided not to charge Ms. Kim over the gift in October, local media reported.
A marine’s death is scrutinized.
Earlier this year, after a 20-year-old member of the South Korean Marine Corps was killed during a rescue mission, a military officer accused the Defense Ministry of whitewashing the inquiry under pressure from Mr. Yoon.
The marine, Lance Corporal Chae Su-geun, died while looking for missing residents in waist-high floodwaters in 2023, and the inquiry found that his team was ill-equipped for the task.
The accusation was the first major political crisis for Mr. Yoon since his party’s major defeat in parliamentary elections in April and raised the possibility that the president could face impeachment proceedings. In July, Mr. Yoon vetoed a bill that would have mandated a special counsel investigation into the allegations that his office and senior military officials interfered in the inquiry, calling it politically motivated.
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