South Korea’s Yoon impeached: Embittered survivor succumbs to martial law reaction.

News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 14th December 2024

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces the most serious threat to his brief but eventful political career, with his destiny in the hands of judges after some of his allies turned against him and voted to impeach him on Saturday for allegedly orchestrating an insurrection.
He is seen as a strong political survivor but is becoming increasingly isolated, plagued by personal scandals and strife, a steadfast opposition, and schisms within his own party.After narrowly winning election in 2022, his latest conflicts have made him increasingly resentful, bringing out a recklessness that a former competitor described as his defining characteristic.
Yoon’s political reputation had been severely harmed by the time he declared martial law on December 3.

Instead, the 29-minute speech raised concerns that he had grown unstable, his sense of judgment so harmed that he was now a threat to the global industrial superpower and one of the most powerful success stories of democratic resilience. According to Shin Yul, a political science professor at Myongji University, Yoon was most likely listening to the wrong people, such as right-wing radicals and YouTube stars, and “still thinks he did the right thing.”Yoon’s speech was described as a “display of extreme delusion” by an opposition Democratic Party member. Even others who were more sympathetic claimed he had collapsed under intense pressure from incessant political attacks, some of which he most likely took personally.

Yoon’s president has been greatly overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife, who was suspected of accepting a high-end Christian Dior handbag as a gift and refusing to fully admit it. Yoon finally apologised after the issue was blamed for his party’s catastrophic defeat in the April parliamentary elections. However, he continued to resist calls for an investigation into the issue and an allegation of stock price manipulation involving his wife and her mother. The prosecutors’ office, which reviewed the allegations, decided not to file charges against the first lady.

Yoon’s problems at home have obscured his relative success on the international stage.His brave efforts to end a decades-long diplomatic spat with neighboring Japan and to join Tokyo in a three-way security cooperation with the United States are largely regarded as his signature foreign policy legacy.
Yoon’s ability to bond on a human level, which was credited with his early success, was on full show at a White House event last year, when he took the stage and sang out the pop song “American Pie” for an astounded US President Joe Biden and a pleased audience.