Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English SEOUL — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of martial law in December involved special forces storming the National Assembly and National Election Commission, was officially removed from office Friday after the country’s Constitutional Court voted to uphold the impeachment motion passed by lawmakers late last year.The court’s verdict, by a vote of 8 to 0, means South Korea will hold an election to choose a new president within 60 days. Separately, Yoon, 64, will also be tried on criminal insurrection charges.In reading out the court’s ruling, acting chief justice Moon Hyung-bae said that Yoon had defied the constitutional order and “comprehensively violated South Koreans’ basic rights,” adding that it was only the “resistance of the citizenry and the passive operational conduct of police and soldiers” that allowed legislators to cancel the martial law declaration with a vote.Yoon, who was halfway into a single five-year term, is the second South Korean president to be impeached. Park Geun-hye, another conservative, was removed from office in 2017 after a corruption scandal.The court’s decision marks the end of what has been a turbulent presidency.Yoon was elected in 2022, beating his liberal opponent, Lee Jae-myung, by just 0.73 of a percentage point, or 247,077 votes, beginning his term on what many viewed as a weak public mandate. Supporters of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol rally in Seoul on Dec. 7, 2024. (Lee Jin-man / Associated Press) Although Yoon was welcomed by the Biden administration for bringing South Korea into a three-way military pact with Japan, aligning it with the United States’ broader push to constrain China’s ambitions in the region, his track record of scandals, diplomatic gaffes and flashes of authoritarian governance made him deeply unpopular at home.During his tenure, Yoon and his allies were criticized for trying to muzzle adversarial media outlets and journalists as well as a government-funded cartoon competition that awarded its top prize to a work lampooning Yoon.As part of his martial law order, Yoon banned all political activity and placed the media under military control.His wife, Kim Keon-hee, was trailed by myriad controversies of her own, including revelations that she plagiarized her master’s thesis.Yoon remained defiant at his impeachment trial, claiming that he was being framed for insurrection by his political enemies — and that his declaration of martial law was intended as a plea for public attention. Since December, he has attempted to justify his declaration of martial law with accusations that members of the liberal opposition party — which holds 192 of the legislature’s 300 seats — were North Korea sympathizers who used their “legislative tyranny” to paralyze his government. It was an echo of the anti-communist rhetoric that past military dictators and subsequent conservative leaders have frequently invoked against South Korean liberals, who have long been defined by their support for reconciliation with Pyongyang.In defending his decision to deploy troops to the election commission, Yoon has cited a widely debunked conspiracy theory that last year’s general elections, which resulted in his conservative People Power Party suffering a crushing defeat by the liberals, were compromised by voter fraud.“The declaration of emergency martial law on Dec. 3 was intended to announce that the country is currently facing an existential crisis, and to desperately appeal to the public so that they would become aware of this situation and give their support in overcoming it,” Yoon told the Constitutional Court in early March.But in their testimonies to the court and prosecutors, many of the military and government officials once under Yoon’s command contradicted his version of events, recalling orders to arrest Yoon’s political opponents — and to prevent the National Assembly from exercising its constitutionally guaranteed right to lift martial law with a vote, as it did hours after the president’s declaration. Demonstrators cheer after a South Korean court issued a warrant on Jan. 19, 2025, for President Yoon’s arrest. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press) Lt. Gen. Lee Jin-woo, the chief of the Capital Defense Command, one of the military units mobilized during martial law, reportedly told investigators that Yoon called him that night and said: “What are you doing? Break down the door and drag them out even if you have to fire your weapons.”The commander of the military’s special forces, Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-keun, also testified that Yoon told him to remove lawmakers from the National Assembly before they could vote to overturn the martial law declaration.Both generals have also been indicted on insurrection charges.Yoon, a former prosecutor, chose to defend himself in court, a move that many consider a monumental mistake.“He made so many blunders during his defense and essentially exposed his own lack of knowledge of the constitution,” said Cho Gab-je, a conservative pundit. “It was a total comedy.”Cho noted that Yoon acknowledged sending troops to occupy the country’s election commission, an independent constitutional institution that does not fall under the scope of martial law.“It was basically a confession,” he said.The trial has also stirred concerns that South Korea is seeing the resurgence of an authoritarian far right.Despite widespread public fury at Yoon’s martial law declaration, his party has defended him, with some conservative lawmakers calling for the “destruction” of the Constitutional Court.Opposition lawmakers have accused Yoon of inciting his most extreme followers to violence, after a pro-Yoon mob stormed and defaced the courthouse that issued his arrest warrant in January.“Yoon’s party needs to cut ties with him, but they can’t because they’re conscious of his supporters,” Cho said. “I estimate that a third of people still believe the election fraud conspiracy theory.”Yoon’s ouster will probably lead to a fresh rethinking of South Korea’s political system, which has seen four of its eight presidents either jailed or impeached since the nation became a democracy in 1987 after decades of authoritarian rule.Many have argued that the president wields far too much power under the current constitution and that greater checks and balances are needed.“The fact that president after president is being impeached or jailed tells us that we need to take this as an opportunity to begin discussing how to change South Korea’s governance structure,” said Ha Sang-eung, a political scientist at Sogang University. Ha pointed to the fact that the constitution allows lawmakers to hold Cabinet positions without giving up their seat in the National Assembly — one of several features that he argues undermines the legislature’s checks on executive power.“Ruling party lawmakers know that they could be called up to the Cabinet anytime, which means they try not to run afoul of the president,” he said.“It’s not something that we can just fix by electing a new president.”
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