S. Korean President Removed from Office: Yoon Pays Heavy Price for Trying to Find Way Out with Martial Law

Editorial

15:35 JST, April 5, 2025

The turmoil in South Korea triggered by the declaration of martial law in December last year has resulted in a serious situation where the president has been removed from office. The impact on South Korea and countries it has ties with, including Japan, will be immeasurable.

South Korea’s Constitutional Court declared that President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached over the martial law declaration, should be removed from office. All eight justices agreed. Yoon lost his post as president with about two years left in his term, and the next presidential election will be held within 60 days.

The Constitutional Court noted that, when Yoon declared martial law, it was not a time of war, incident or other equivalent national emergency — the requirement needed to declare martial law as stipulated by the Constitution. The court found that the declaration was an unacceptable, serious violation of law.

Yoon’s side had explained that he had declared martial law to inform the public that the left-leaning opposition forces, which hold the majority in the National Assembly, were “paralyzing national politics” by filing a series of impeachment motions against senior government officials.

However, it must be said that Yoon clearly went too far in abruptly imposing martial law and taking the hard line of sending the military into the National Assembly building on the grounds of trying to break the deadlock in domestic politics.

South Korea in particular has a history of martial law being imposed, and democratic movements were suppressed during the period of military dictatorship. It is quite natural that the Constitutional Court made the extremely weighty decision to remove Yoon from office.

Yoon is the second South Korean president to be removed from office by a court decision, following Park Geun-hye in 2017. In South Korea, there have been more than a few cases of presidents being arrested after completing one five-year term in office. Each time this has happened, the conflict between conservatives and leftists has intensified.

This time, too, the leftists, who were calling for Yoon’s removal from office, and the conservatives, who supported Yoon, have been engaged in a daily battle of criticism on the streets and elsewhere. Restraint is needed on both sides to prevent the division of society from deepening further and causing unforeseen clashes.

During his tenure, Yoon significantly improved relations between Japan and South Korea by working out a solution to the issue of lawsuits regarding former wartime requisitioned workers from the Korean Peninsula, which had been the biggest pending issue between the two countries. He also realized a mechanism for the immediate sharing of information on North Korean missile launches among the three countries of Japan, the United States and South Korea.

The security environment in East Asia is deteriorating. North Korea is advancing its nuclear and missile development programs and has been participating in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine by deploying its troops to Russia. A situation must be avoided in which the turmoil in South Korea becomes prolonged and has a negative impact on Japan-South Korea and Japan-U.S.-South Korea cooperation.

In the upcoming presidential election, Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the largest left-leaning opposition party, who has made anti-Japanese statements, is far ahead in the race in terms of approval ratings. The election campaign will be held amidst a turbulent regional situation caused by the high tariff policy and disregard for alliances by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. It is necessary to keep a close eye on whether the election will lead to the stable relations between Japan and South Korea being maintained.

(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, April 5, 2025)