South Korea’s Yoon: Embittered survivor staggers on after impeachment vote

SEOUL - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces the greatest challenge of his brief but chequered political career,

despite surviving a bruising impeachment challenge

, as members of his own party called for him to resign for imposing martial law.

Mr Yoon was regarded as a tough political survivor but became increasingly isolated, dogged by personal scandals and strife, an unyielding opposition and rifts within his own party.

After he narrowly won election in 2022, his recent battles have left him increasingly bitter and drawn out a recklessness that a former rival said was his defining trait.

By the time Mr Yoon attempted to impose martial law on Dec 3, he was badly bruised politically.

An impeachment motion against him failed late on Dec 7 when members of his ruling party boycotted the National Assembly session, but even some of them said he was unqualified for office and should resign.

The opposition vowed to try again, while Mr Yoon’s party said it would find a “more orderly, responsible” way to resolve the crisis.

Some analysts said Mr Yoon, a former prosecutor who had never held elected office before his presidential election, showed signs of being in “extreme rage” when martial law was in effect, citing the language he allegedly used to order the arrests of some MPs who had clashed with him.

A top spy agency official told a Parliament intelligence committee that Mr Yoon said, “Grab them all and round them up”, according to panel member Kim Byung-kee.

Scandals overshadow success abroad

Mr Ihn Yohan, a physician and MP from Mr Yoon’s People Power Party who is considered an ally of the President, said the martial law decree was “extreme” but not entirely unjustified, given the endless political attacks against Mr Yoon.

“I hope we remember how the opposition party has incredibly and viciously pushed the President and his family into a corner with threats of special prosecutors and impeachment,” he said at a party meeting on Dec 5.

The past year of Mr Yoon’s presidency has been heavily overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife, who was accused of inappropriately accepting a

pricey Christian Dior handba

g as a gift, and his stubborn refusal to fully own up to it.

Only after the scandal was blamed as a major reason for a crushing parliamentary election defeat that his party suffered in April did Mr Yoon apologise. But he continued to reject calls for a probe into the scandal and into an allegation of stock price manipulation involving his wife and her mother.

The prosecutors’ office that investigated the allegations decided not to press charges against the First Lady.

Mr Yoon’s struggles at home have overshadowed the relative success he has had on the international stage.

His bold push to reverse a decades-long diplomatic row with neighbouring Japan and join Tokyo in a three-way security cooperation with the United States are widely seen as his signature foreign policy legacies.

Mr Yoon’s ability to bond on a personal level, seen as the trait that gave him his early success, was on full display at a White House event in 2023, when he took the stage and belted out the pop song American Pie for an astounded President Joe Biden and a delighted crowd.

Shamans, high school buddies

Born to an affluent family in Seoul, Mr Yoon was an easygoing youth who excelled at school. He entered the elite Seoul National University to study law, but his penchant for partying led him to repeatedly fail the Bar exam before passing on the ninth try.

Mr Yoon, who turns 64 on Dec 18, shot to national fame in 2016 when, as the chief investigator probing then President Park Geun-hye for corruption, he told a reporter that prosecutors are not gangsters, when asked if he was out for revenge.

Three years earlier, Park had suspended Mr Yoon, then fired him from a team investigating a high-profile case against the spy agency. That move was widely considered punishment for challenging her authority.

The role he played in jailing the sitting president and his dramatic comeback as head of the powerful Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office marked the start of a dizzying rise to power.

Two years later, he became prosecutor-general and spearheaded a corruption probe against a close ally of the next president, Mr Moon Jae-in. That made him a darling of conservatives frustrated with Mr Moon’s liberal policies, setting him up to be a candidate for the presidency in 2022.

Mr Yoon beat Mr Lee Jae-myung, the current opposition leader who led the impeachment move against him, by a margin of less than 1 per cent.

But Mr Yoon’s presidency got off to a rocky start when he pushed ahead with moving the presidential office out of the Blue House compound to a new site, facing questions of whether it was because of a feng shui belief that the old presidential compound was cursed. Mr Yoon at the time denied any involvement by himself or his wife with a shaman.

When Mr Yoon refused to fire top officials after a 2022 Halloween night disaster, in which 159 people were killed in a crowd crush in Seoul’s night-life district of Itaewon, he was accused of protecting “yes men”. One of them was Safety Minister Lee Sang-min, a close confidant and fellow graduate of Mr Yoon’s high school.

Another alumnus of Choongam High School in Seoul was Mr Kim Yong-hyun, the man who spearheaded the presidential office move, then became head of the presidential security service, and in September was appointed defence minister.

Mr Kim was one of the two people who recommended that Mr Yoon declare martial law, a senior military official said. Mr Lee was the other, according to local media reports. REUTERS