Yoon Suk Yeol removed as South Korea's president over short-lived martial law
The verdict capped a dramatic fall for Yoon, a former star prosecutor who became president in 2022, just a year after he entered politics.
In a nationally televised hearing, the court's acting chief Moon Hyung-bae said the eight-member bench found Yoon's actions were unconstitutional and had a grave impact.
'By declaring martial law in breach of the constitution and other laws, the defendant brought back the history of abusing state emergency decrees, shocked the people and caused confusion in the society, economy, politics, diplomacy and all other areas,' Moon said.
'Given the negative impact on constitutional order caused by the defendant's violation of laws and its ripple effects are grave, we find that the benefits of upholding the constitution by dismissing the defendant far outweigh the national losses from the dismissal of the president,' the justice concluded.
Protesters erupt in jubilation and sorrow
Anti-Yoon protesters near the court erupted into tears and danced when the verdict was announced in the late morning. Two women wept as they hugged and an old man near them leapt to his feet and screamed with joy. The crowd later marched through Seoul streets.
Outside Yoon's official residence, many supporters cried, screamed and yelled at journalists when they saw the news of the verdict on a giant TV screen. But they quickly cooled down after their organizer pleaded for calm.
'We will absolutely not be shaken!' a protest leader shouted on stage. 'Anyone who accepts this ruling and prepares for an early presidential election is our enemy.'
No major violence has been reported by late afternoon.
'Political risks related to domestic polarization and policy instability remain,' Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said. 'But the Constitutional Court's unanimous ruling has removed a major source of uncertainty. Korean government institutions have withstood a volatile mix of legislative obstruction and executive overreach that posed the greatest challenge to democracy in a generation.'
Korea faces an election with deep divisions
An election will be held within two months for a new president. But a festering divide over Yoon's impeachment could complicate South Korea's efforts to deal with crucial issues like President Donald Trump's tariffs and other 'America First' policies, observers say.
Yoon said in a statement issued via his defense team that he deeply regrets failing to live up to the public's expectations, but stopped short of explicitly accepting the verdict. There have been fears he would incite efforts to resist his removal, as he earlier vowed to fight to the end.
He added that he will pray for the country and its people. 'It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve our nation,' Yoon said.
Yoon's ruling People Power Party said it would accept the decision, but one of Yoon's lawyers, Yoon Kap-keun, called the ruling 'completely incomprehensible' and a 'pure political decision."
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country's acting leader, vowed to maintain public safety and order and ensure a smooth transition to the next administration.
Surveys show Lee Jae-myung, leader of the main liberal opposition Democratic Party, is the early favorite to win the upcoming presidential by-election, though he faces several trials for corruption and other charges.
'It will be an uphill battle for the conservative party to win a snap presidential election,' said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. 'If Lee wins, South Korea's foreign policy will likely look very different from what the U.S. and like-minded countries have enjoyed during Yoon's presidency because of the demands of the progressive base.'
Lee welcomed the ruling and credited the South Korean people for 'protecting our democratic republic.'
Crisis started with a night of chaos four months ago
Martial law lasted only six hours, but left behind a political crisis, rattling financial markets and unsettling the country's diplomatic partners.
After announcing martial law late at night on Dec. 3, Yoon, a conservative, sent hundreds of soldiers to the liberal opposition-controlled National Assembly, election offices and other sites. Special operations soldiers smashed windows at the assembly and scuffled with protesters, evoking traumatic memories of the country's past military rules among many South Koreans.
Enough lawmakers, including some from the ruling party, managed to enter the assembly to vote down Yoon's decree unanimously.
Some senior military and police officers sent to the assembly testified Yoon ordered them to drag out lawmakers to block the vote on his decree or to detain his political rivals. Yoon says the troops were deployed to the assembly simply to maintain order.
Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly on Dec. 14. The assembly accused him of violating the constitution and other laws by suppressing assembly activities, attempting to detain politicians, and undermining peace across the country.
In his final testimony at the Constitutional Court hearing, Yoon said his decree was a desperate attempt to draw public support of his fight against the 'wickedness' of the Democratic Party, which had obstructed his agenda, impeached top officials and slashed the government's budget bill. He earlier called the National Assembly 'a den of criminals' and 'anti-state forces.'
The Constitutional Court ruled Yoon infringed upon the assembly's right to demand martial law be lifted, the freedom of political party activities and the neutrality of the military. It also said Yoon's political impasse with the opposition wasn't the type of emergency situation that required martial law and that Yoon's decree lacked required legal procedures such as deliberation by a formal Cabinet meeting.
Yoon still faces criminal charges
Yoon has been indicted on charges of rebellion in connection with his decree, a charge that carries the death penalty or a life sentence if convicted. He became the first South Korean president to be arrested or indicted while in office.
Yoon was released from jail in March after a Seoul district court cancelled his arrest. That allows him to stand trial without detention.
His removal from office also costs Yoon the presidential immunity that protected him from most criminal prosecutions. This means he could face other criminal charges, such as abuse of power, in connection with his martial law decree, some observers say.
___
Associated Press writer Foster Klug contributed to this report.
Hyung-jin Kim And Kim Tong-hyung, The Associated Press
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey resigns to take a top FBI position
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who has been an ardent backer of President Donald Trump, said Monday that he is resigning to take a leadership position at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The move is the latest in a series of changes at the FBI under Director Kash Patel. Numerous senior officials, including top agents in charge of big-city field offices, have been pushed out of their jobs, and Justice Department officials have sought the names of agents who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bailey said he is stepping down effective Sept. 8 to serve as the FBI's co-deputy director, alongside Dan Bongino. Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe is to announce a new appointee as attorney general on Tuesday. 'My life has been defined by a call to service, and I am once again answering that call, this time at the national level,' Bailey said in a statement. In a little over two-and-a-half years in the job, Bailey pursued numerous lawsuits challenging former President Joe Biden's administration on an array of policies, including immigration actions,student loan forgiveness,environmental rules,gun safety initiatives and transgender rights measures. He also threatened legal action against private gyms over bathroom policies, demanded that public schools ban drag shows and sued New York state, claiming that Trump's 2024 hush money criminal trial was 'overt meddling' in the 2024 election that limited Missouri voters' information. Most recently, Bailey's office has defended the state's anti-abortion regulations in the face of a voter-approved constitutional amendment establishing a state right to abortion. Earlier this year, Bailey's office won a $24.5 billion award against China for the COVID-19 pandemic in a case that originally was filed by his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, who won election to the U.S. Senate in 2022. Bailey was serving as general counsel to Republican Gov. Mike Parson when his boss appointed him to replace Schmitt. An Army veteran, Bailey won a full four-year term as attorney general last November.
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Jules Witcover, reporter best known for ‘Politics Today' column, dies at 98
WASHINGTON — Jules Witcover, who cowrote one of the nation's leading political columns for nearly three decades, died Saturday at the age of 98, his daughter Amy Witcover-Sandford said. Witcover's widely syndicated daily column, written jointly for 24 years with the late Jack Germond, gave him an outlet to register strong opinions, leaving little doubt which politicians he admired or despised. 'Politics Today' began at The Washington Star and then moved to The Baltimore Sun, and he continued writing it solo for another five years at The Sun after his partner retired in 2001. Witcover also covered the political beat for the Newhouse News Service, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, in books and in several magazines, including The New Republic, Saturday Review and The Nation. Political columnist Jules Witcover has passed away at the age of 98. AP Through his long career, Witcover had a remarkable front seat to history, some of it tragic. He watched Robert F. Kennedy steady first lady Jackie at President John F. Kennedy's grave in 1963. Five years later, in 1968, he pushed his way through a crowded hotel kitchen in Los Angeles after hearing shots and saw Robert F. Kennedy bleeding on the floor. He would later write of RFK's brief presidential campaign in the book '85 Days.' Witcover described himself and the curmudgeonly Germond as 'friendly rivals laboring for obscure newspaper chains' who enjoyed long, booze-soaked dinners on the campaign trail, a culture that was chronicled in Timothy Crouse's classic account of reporters covering the 1972 presidential election, 'Boys on the Bus.' When Witcover and Germond began co-writing their column in 1977, 'we often played the good cop/bad cop routine, each of us able to blame the other guy when a column one of us wrote caused a politician to complain. But sometimes, too, one of us would take the bullet for the other when it unjustly came our way. That was the nature of playing duet pianos in the house of ill repute called political writing,' Witcover wrote in The Sun after Germond's death in 2013. At its peak, the syndicated column ran five times a week and appeared in about 140 newspapers. In his final years as a columnist, Witcover relentlessly hammered President George W. Bush over the Iraq war, calling it 'the most wrong-headed foreign policy in my lifetime and the most dangerous.' But he did not blame that view for The Sun's dropping his column. Editorially, the newspaper also opposed the war, although less vigorously. Witcover co-wrote the 'Politics Today' column for 24 years. AP 'The war was a colossal mistake from the start and has disintegrated into a calamity, damaging not only the people of Iraq but the international reputation of this country, not to mention the terrible cost in American lives and treasure,' he wrote for the Poynter Institute's blog. Witcover was born in Union City, New Jersey, to a Jewish father and Catholic mother. He was raised Catholic and showed an early interest in writing. He wrote in his memoirs that he and a cousin produced a one-page family newspaper on Thanksgiving that they sold for a nickel. A classmate on his high school basketball team persuaded him to apply to Columbia, which he attended for a semester before joining the Navy. He then re-enrolled in the college after the war ended and obtained a master's degree at Columbia's graduate school of journalism. Years later, he told a reporter that he thought his ship had come in when a newspaper in the Boston area offered him a starting job covering the Boston Braves in spring training. Before he could get started the team decided to move its franchise to Milwaukee and the opportunity died. By 1962, 11 years after graduation, he had become a senior correspondent and the chief political writer for the Newhouse News Service. Witcover lived in Washington with his second wife, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, a biographer of the journalist H.L. Mencken. His first marriage, of nearly four decades, to Marian Laverty, ended in divorce. 'Jules was the hardest working newsman I ever knew,' said Walter Mears, who as the chief political writer for The Associated Press traveled extensively with Witcover. 'On the road, you could hear him banging the typewriter before dawn, working on one of his books. He never stopped writing columns and political histories long after most of us had retired.'
The Hill
3 hours ago
- The Hill
North Korean leader slams South Korea-US military drills while inspecting his most powerful warship
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned South Korean-U.S. military drills and vowed a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces to counter rivals, state media said Tuesday, as he inspected his most advanced warship being fitted with nuclear-capable systems. Kim's visit to the western port of Nampo on Monday came as the South Korean and U.S. militaries kicked off their annual large-scale summertime exercise to bolster readiness against growing North Korean threats. The 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield, which the allies describe as defensive, will mobilize 21,000 troops, including 18,000 South Koreans, for computer-simulated command post operations and field training. North Korea has long denounced the allies' joint drills as invasion rehearsals and Kim has often used them to justify his own military displays and testing activities aimed at expanding his nuclear weapons program. The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war, divided by the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea and South Korea. While inspecting the warship Choe Hyon, a 5,000-ton-class destroyer first unveiled in April, Kim said the allies' joint military drills show hostility and their supposed 'will to ignite a war,' the North's Korean Central News Agency said. He claimed that the exercises have grown more provocative than before by incorporating a 'nuclear element,' requiring the North to respond with 'proactive and overwhelming' countermeasures. 'The security environment around the DPRK is getting more serious day by day and the prevailing situation requires us to make a radical and swift change in the existing military theory and practice and rapid expansion of nuclearization,' KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying, using the initials of North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The government of South Korea's new liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who has expressed a willingness to repair ties and resume dialogue with the North, did not immediately respond to Kim's comments. South Korea's Defense Ministry said it had no immediate new assessments to share regarding the North Korean warship's capabilities. South Korean and U.S. military officials say Ulchi Freedom Shield will focus on countering North Korea's advancing nuclear and missile threat and will include training to deter North Korean nuclear use and respond to its missile attacks. The exercise will also incorporate lessons from recent conflicts, including Russia's war in Ukraine and the clash between Israel and Iran, and address threats from drones, GPS jamming and cyberattacks. Kim sees destroyer as key to nuclear-capable navy Kim has hailed the development of his naval destroyer, Choe Hyon, as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military. State media said the destroyer, which is being prepared to enter active duty next year, is designed to handle various weapons systems, including antiair and anti-naval weapons, as well as nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles. The North unveiled a second destroyer of the same class in May, but the vessel was damaged during a botched launching ceremony at the northeastern port of Chongjin, prompting an angry reaction from Kim, who called the failure 'criminal.' The North has said the new destroyer, named Kang Kon, was relaunched in June after repair, but some outside experts have questioned whether the ship is fully operational. During Monday's visit to Nampo, Kim also reviewed North Korean efforts to complete a third destroyer by October, KCNA said. While inspecting Choe Hyon, Kim expressed satisfaction with the progress of the warship's weapons tests and its integrated operations system, saying the navy's modernization and move toward nuclear-capable capabilities are proceeding as planned. He instructed officials to carry out performance tests in October, KCNA said. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have worsened in recent years as Kim accelerated his military nuclear program and deepened alignment with Moscow following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. His government has repeatedly dismissed calls by Washington and Seoul to revive negotiations aimed at winding down his nuclear and missile programs, which derailed in 2019 following a collapsed summit with U.S. President Donald Trump during his first term. In his latest message to Pyongyang on Friday, Lee, who took office in June, said he would seek to restore a 2018-inter-Korean military agreement designed to reduce border tensions and called for North Korea to respond to the South's efforts to rebuild trust and revive talks. The 2018 military agreement, reached during a brief period of diplomacy between the Koreas, created buffer zones on land and sea and no-fly zones above the border to prevent clashes. But South Korea suspended the deal in 2024, citing tensions over North Korea's launches of trash-laden balloons toward the South, and moved to resume front line military activities and propaganda campaigns. The step came after North Korea had already declared it would no longer abide by the agreement.
