South Korea's impeached president Yoon faces final court hearing

Soo-Hyang Choi, Bloomberg News on Feb 24, 2025

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SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol will get his last chance to defend himself before judges as they wrap up a trial to decide whether to permanently remove him from office for his ill-fated martial law declaration.

Yoon is set to deliver his final arguments at the Constitutional Court on Tuesday afternoon, wrapping up a six-week trial focused on whether he breached the constitution by declaring martial law. The judges will then decide whether to uphold parliament’s decision to impeach him in December.

“The president is preparing his final testimony,” one of Yoon’s lawyers, Yoon Kab-keun, told reporters in a text message Sunday.

If the court backs parliament’s motion, Yoon will be immediately removed from power, triggering a presidential election within 60 days. If the motion is rejected, Yoon would be restored to the presidency but his legal travails would still be far from over, as the president faces a separate criminal case on charges of insurrection.

In past presidential impeachment cases, the court delivered its verdict within two weeks of the final hearing.

Yoon’s decision to declare martial law has plunged South Korea into its worst constitutional crisis in decades. Shortly after his impeachment, the prime minister was also suspended, leaving Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok in charge. This leadership vacuum has weakened the export-reliant nation’s ability to negotiate effectively with President Donald Trump, who is threatening to impose tariffs.

Over the course of 10 hearings, Yoon denied wrongdoing and branded himself as a firm believer in democracy. Yoon, 64, also disputed testimonies made by his military commanders that he ordered troops to remove lawmakers gathered at the parliament to vote on scrapping the martial law.

Yoon was impeached by the opposition-controlled parliament in December after briefly imposing martial law — the first such order in South Korea in over 40 years. The martial law decree was a high-stakes gamble that Yoon said was aimed at preventing the main opposition Democratic Party from trying to paralyze his administration.

Recent polls show the DP’s leader, Lee Jae-myung, as the front-runner if a snap election is held, while several members of Yoon’s People Power Party are competing to be their party’s presidential candidate.

However, Lee faces legal troubles of his own, with an appeals court set to hold a final hearing this week on his election law violation case. He faces the risk of being ruled out of any presidential election if a conviction at a lower court is upheld in the coming months.

A weekly Gallup opinion poll last Friday showed 60% of respondents supporting Yoon’s impeachment with 34% against it.