The South Koreans celebrate Yoon’s impeachment, but the saga is far from over | South Korea

It had been a long and sometimes intolerable wait. But Friday the decision of the South Korean Constitutional Court of Oust Yoon Suk Yeol From the office it may have restored the faith of the public in their democracy.

For 22 minutes, millions of South Koreans retained their breath while the main judge of the Constitutional Court, Moon Hyung-Bae, began to provide the court verdict on Yoon’s impeachment on his Chaotic declaration of martial law In December.

With every harmful declaration, Moon raised the hopes of the crowd outside who had asked for the permanent removal of the president suspended from the office.

Yoon’s actions, he said, had constituted “a serious challenge to democracy”, adding that the 64 -year -old conservative populist had “committed a serious betrayal of the people’s trust” in bringing to the worst political crisis of South Korea since he became a democracy in the late 1980s.

When Moon eventually pronounced the words: “The president of the defendant Yoon Suk Yeol is removed from the charge”, the crowd broke out with applause.

The sentence sets in motion a 60-day countdown to elect a new leader, the date to be confirmed within 10 days of the interim president, Han Duck-Soo.

Political parties are already climbing to select candidates, with the Lee Ja-myung of the Democratic-A long-standing Nemesis of Yoon-which currently leads the polls. The Power People People People People of Yoon, in the meantime, has the non -enviable task of selecting a candidate not contaminated by the association with the bankrupt administration of Yoon.

The first vote of impeachment of the National Assembly in December was an opportunity for the party to distance yourself from Yoon. Instead, the parliamentarians of the power of people have doubled, boycotting the vote and continuing to support their mercantito leader.

They therefore amplified what many believe to be the unfounded statements of Yoon that the previous elections, including one vote of the national assembly at the beginning of the year, had been bogged down in the voting fraud. The conspiracy theories found fertile ground among the supporters of Yoon, who have adopted Trump style slogan as “stops theft” while they took to the street.

By invoking the language of the Cold War on “Korean and anti-state anti-Motene forces” to describe his political opponents, Yoon analysts said deepened the political division in an already polarized country.

Anyone who becomes president by the end of the year must face the non -enviable task of healing those divisions and reconstructing trust in democratic institutions that Yoon has undermined so casually.

The sentence marked the end of a tumultuous three years for the conservative populist. The former Senior prosecutor who had guided the case for the impeachment against the then president, Park Geun-hye In 2017, he now has the same postscript ignominious for his presidency.

Having won the elections of 2022-lesing the liberal lee with the thinnest margins-yoon was initially admired as a assertive and strong-willed leader, until these qualities have been exposed as a reluctance to compromise or accept criticism.

While struggling to implement budgets and key policies in the national assembly controlled by the opposition, Yoon grew more and more irritable, targeting critical journalists, facing affected doctors, blocking attempts to investigate the accusations of corruption with North Koroae.

Human rights activists welcomed Friday verdict. In a statement, Human Rights Watch said that Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law “represented a serious threat to human rights and the rule of law”.

He added: “If the martial law had been maintained, the South Koreans would have faced the risk of arrest and detention without trial, as well as serious restrictions on their freedom of expression and assembly, among other violations of human rights. The sentence of the Constitutional Court was a decisive step to support human rights protections and democratic values”.

Some characterize the removal of Yoon as the beginning of a process to restore public trust in South Korea as liberal democracy with a successful economy and a culture admired all over the world.

Leif-Eric Easley, professor at the Ewha University of Soul, said that the Court’s verdict has “removed one of the main sources of uncertainty. And not a moment too early, given how the next administration in Soul must navigate on the military threats of North Korea, the diplomatic pressure of China and the commercial tariffs of Trump”.

It is a feeling shared by anti-yoon demonstrators who had gathered outdoors to look at a live broadcast of the verdict. When his removal was announced, they applauded, danced and crying. “When the dismissal was finally declared, the applause were so noisy that it seemed that the event was swept away,” said Kim Min-Ji, a 25-year-old manifesting. “We cried tears and shouted that we, the citizens, had won!”

But the saga is far from over. Few believe that candidates and voters in the next presidential elections will be able to put the acrimony of the last four months behind them, while Yoon has to face a separate criminal trial on charges of insurrection – a crime that involves a maximum mandate of life sentence or a death penalty.

“If people begin to refuse to accept any electoral result that is unfavorable for them, the other part will begin to do the same,” said Kim Tae-Hyung, professor at the University of Soongsil in Seoul. “If that cycle continues, confidence in democracy will collapse completely.”