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  • February 18, 2025
South Korea’s Yoon: Embittered survivor reels after impeachment vote

South Korea’s Yoon: Embittered survivor reels after impeachment vote

SEOUL – South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces the biggest challenge of his short but eventful political career: despite surviving a painful impeachment challengewhen members of his own party called for him to resign over the imposition of martial law.

Considered a tough political survivor, Mr. Yoon became increasingly isolated, dogged by personal scandals and conflicts, an unyielding opposition and divisions within his own party.

After narrowly winning the 2022 election, his recent battles have made him increasingly bitter and revealed a recklessness that one former rival said was his defining characteristic.

By the time Mr. Yoon tried to impose martial law on December 3, he was politically bruised.

An impeachment motion against him failed on December 7 when members of his ruling party boycotted the National Assembly session, but even some of them said he was ineligible for office and should resign.

The opposition vowed to try again, while Yoon’s party said it would find a “more orderly, responsible” way to resolve the crisis.

Some analysts said Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor who had never held elected office before his presidential run, showed signs of being in “extreme anger” when martial law took effect. parliament that had clashed with him.

A top spy agency official told a parliament intelligence committee that Mr. Yoon said, “Grab them all and collect them,” panelist Kim Byung-kee said.

Scandals overshadow success abroad

Mr. Ihn Yohan, a doctor and lawmaker from Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party and considered an ally of the president, said the martial law decree was “extreme” but not entirely unjustified given the endless political attacks on Yoon.

“I hope we remember how the opposition party incredibly and viciously cornered the president and his family with threats of special prosecutors and impeachment,” he said at a party meeting on December 5.

The last year of Yoon’s presidency was heavily overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife, who was accused of improperly expensive Christian Dior handbagg as a gift and his stubborn refusal to fully acknowledge it.

Only after the scandal was cited as a major reason for his party’s crushing parliamentary election defeat in April did he apologize. But he continued to reject calls for an investigation into the scandal and an accusation of stock price manipulation involving his wife and her mother.

The prosecutor’s office that investigated the allegations decided not to file charges against the first lady.

Mr Yoon’s struggles at home have overshadowed the relative success he has had on the international stage.

His bold attempt to reverse a decades-long diplomatic feud with neighboring Japan and join Tokyo in a three-way security partnership with the United States is widely seen as his signature foreign policy legacy.

Mr. Yoon’s ability to connect on a personal level, seen as the trait that brought him his early success, was on full display at a White House event last year, when Mr. Yoon took the stage and performed pop song American Pie to a surprised look. President Joe Biden and a rapt audience.

Shamans, high school friends

Born into a wealthy family in Seoul, Mr. Yoon was an easy-going boy who excelled in school. He entered the elite Seoul National University to study law, but his penchant for partying caused him to repeatedly fail the bar exam before passing on the ninth attempt.

Mr. Yoon, who turns 64 on Dec. 18, rose to national prominence in 2016 when, as the lead investigator investigating then-President Park Geun-hye’s corruption investigation, he told a reporter that prosecutors are not gangsters when asked if he was after corruption. revenge.

Three years earlier, Mr. Park had suspended and then fired Mr. Yoon from a team investigating a high-profile case against the spy agency. That move was widely seen as punishment for challenging her authority.

His role in jailing the sitting president and his dramatic comeback as head of the powerful prosecutor’s office in Seoul’s central district marked the beginning of a dizzying rise to power.

Two years later, he became attorney general and led a corruption investigation against a close ally of the next president, Mr. Moon Jae-in. That made him a darling of conservatives frustrated by Moon’s liberal policies, which made him a candidate for president in 2022.

Yoon defeated Lee Jae-myung, the current opposition leader who led the impeachment proceedings against him, by a margin of less than 1 percent.

But Yoon’s presidency got off to a rocky start as he continued to move the presidential office from the Blue House complex to a new location, questioning whether it was due to a feng shui belief that the old presidential complex was cursed . At the time, Mr. Yoon denied any involvement by himself or his wife with a shaman.

When Yoon refused to fire top officials after a disaster on Halloween night in 2022 that left 159 people dead in a crowd in Seoul’s Itaewon entertainment district, he was accused of protecting “yes men.”

One of them was Security Minister Lee Sang-min, a close confidant and fellow high school graduate of Mr. Yoon.

Another alumnus of Seoul’s Choongam High School was Mr. Kim Yong-hyun, the man who led the move to presidential office, then became Presidential Security Officer and was appointed Defense Minister in September.

Mr. Kim was one of two people who advised Yoon to declare martial law, a senior military official said. According to local media reports, Mr Lee was the other. REUTERS