South Korea’s suspended president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been removed from office after the country’s constitutional court voted to uphold parliament’s decision to impeach over his ill-fated declaration of martial law in December.
After weeks of deliberations and rising concern about the future of South Korean democracy, the court voted to strip Yoon of his presidential powers.
The ruling means that the acting president, Han Duck-soo, will remain in office until South Koreans elect a new president within 60 days.
The long-awaited decision on Yoon’s late-night order to impose martial law in early December has exposed deep divisions in South Korean society and alarmed the US and other allies.
His opponents and supporters have held large rallies in recent days, although an unprecedented police presence meant protesters were unable to access the immediate vicinity of the court building on Friday. Reports said that 14,000 police officers had been deployed in the capital in anticipation of possible violence, irrespective of which way the court ruled.
Yoon’s supporters and lawyers believe the impeachment proceedings are illegal and that he should be immediately returned to office, three years after the conservative populist was voted to lead Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.
A Gallup Korea poll released last week showed 60% of South Koreans believe he should be permanently removed from office. His opponents have accused the former prosecutor of abusing his presidential powers in an attempt to suspend democratic institutions and take the country back into its dark authoritarian past.
The opposition-controlled national assembly voted to impeach Yoon in mid-December, a fortnight after he imposed martial law in an attempt, he claimed, to prevent “anti-state” opposition forces with North Korean sympathies from destroying the country.
Yoon was forced to lift the edict after only six hours, however, after lawmakers defied efforts by security forces to seal off parliament and voted to reject it. Yoon has claimed he never intended to fully impose emergency military rule and has tried to downplay the chaos, pointing out that no one was killed or injured.
Yoon, who became the second South Korean president to be removed from office through impeachment after Park Geun-hye in 2017, also faces a separate criminal trial on insurrection charges. That crime carries a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty, although South Korea has not carried out an execution since the late 1990s.