South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment verdict could be pushed to April

SEOUL - The Constitutional Court of Korea, which has been deliberating suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment for more than a month, following the end of hearing on Feb 25, could potentially push its verdict announcement to April, according to a Korean-language report in News1 on March 26.

The eight justices have been holding deliberation meetings almost daily, but have pushed off announcing the verdict unprecedentedly.

Of the six impeachment verdicts made by the court since Mr Yoon’s impeachment case was also delivered to them on Dec 14, the court has made four unanimous decisions.

In the court’s impeachment

verdict on Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on March 24,

five justices voted down the parliamentary motion to impeach him, while one voted to uphold it and two justices voted to throw out the motion entirely. It was the first ruling on an impeachment case directly related to

Mr Yoon’s Dec 3 martial law declaration

.

As of March 26 2pm local time, the court has yet to given any sign of when it will announce its ruling on whether Mr Yoon will be removed. In the past, the court has typically announced the date it will issue the ruling two to three days in advance for security and preparation reasons.

For the fourth week straight, March 28 was seen as the most probable date if the court was to move forward with delivering the verdict this week.

The court had initially promised to prioritise Mr Yoon’s case over any other on Dec 16.

However, now, 40 other constitutional complaints have been scheduled for rulings on March 27, so whether the court will handle its most important case on March 28 is uncertain.

According to the News1 report, it would be rare to see if the court were to decide to announce three verdicts within a week. On March 24, the court dismissed Mr Han’s impeachment case.

The last time the Constitutional Court delivered verdicts on consecutive days was in 1995.

There is speculation that a ruling could come after the April 2 by-elections in certain regions, possibly on April 3 or 4, considering that the timeline is extremely tight for two of the justices on the nine-member bench, which continues to lack its ninth justice.

Acting Chief Justice Moon Hyung-bae and Justice Lee Mi-son end their terms on April 18.

In 2017, the impeachment ruling on former president Park Geun-hye came just three days before the acting chief justice’s retirement. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK