South Korea’s Yoon: from star prosecutor to president facing arrest

South Korean’s Yoon Suk Yeol rose from public prosecutor to the nation’s highest office in just a few years, but as president he staggered from scandal to scandal before plunging the country into crisis by declaring martial law.

The lurch back to South Korea’s dark days of military rule only lasted a few hours, and after a night of protests and high drama, Yoon was forced into a U-turn.

Lawmakers voted less than two weeks later to strip him of his duties, making him the third South Korean president to be impeached by parliamentary vote. If upheld by the Constitutional Court, he would be the second to be removed from office.

Yoon is under investigation for his martial law declaration and faces criminal charges of insurrection, which could result in life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Defiantly vowing to fight “until the very last minute”, he has repeatedly ignored summons to present himself for questioning, prompting investigators to seek an arrest warrant which a court issued on Tuesday.

If arrested, Yoon would be the first president in the country’s history to be forcibly detained before the impeachment procedure is finalised.

Yoon is being investigated, among other things, for authorising the military to fire weapons if needed to enter parliament during his failed martial law bid.

Born in Seoul in 1960 months before a military coup, Yoon studied law and went on to become a star public prosecutor and anti-corruption crusader.

He played an instrumental role in Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s first female president, being impeached in 2016 and later convicted for abuse of power and imprisoned.

As the country’s top prosecutor in 2019, he also indicted a senior aide of Park’s successor, Moon Jae-in, in a fraud and bribery case.

The conservative People Power Party (PPP), in opposition at the time, liked what they saw and convinced Yoon to become their presidential candidate.

He duly won in March 2022, beating Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party, but by the narrowest margin in South Korean history.

Yoon was never much loved by the public, especially by women—he vowed on the campaign trail to abolish the ministry of gender equality—and scandals have come thick and fast.

This included his administration’s handling of a 2022 crowd crush during Halloween festivities that killed more than 150 people.

Voters have also blamed Yoon’s administration for food inflation, a lagging economy and increasing constraints on freedom of speech.

He was accused of abusing presidential vetoes, notably to strike down a bill paving the way for a special investigation into alleged stock manipulation by his wife Kim Keon Hee.

Yoon suffered further reputational damage last year when his wife was secretly filmed accepting a designer handbag worth $2,000 as a gift. Yoon insisted it would have been rude to refuse.

His mother-in-law, Choi Eun-soon, was sentenced to one year in prison for forging financial documents in a real estate deal. She was released in May 2024.

Yoon himself was the subject of a petition calling for his impeachment earlier this year, which proved so popular the parliamentary website hosting it experienced delays and crashes.

As president, Yoon has maintained a tough stance against nuclear-armed North Korea and bolstered ties with Seoul’s traditional ally, the United States.

Last year, he sang Don McLean’s “American Pie” at the White House, prompting US President Joe Biden to respond: “I had no damn idea you could sing.”

But his efforts to restore ties with South Korea’s former colonial ruler, Japan, did not sit well with many at home.

Yoon has been a lame duck president since the opposition Democratic Party won a majority in parliamentary elections this year. They recently slashed Yoon’s budget.

In his televised address declaring martial law, Yoon railed against “anti-state elements plundering people’s freedom and happiness” and his office has subsequently cast his imposition of martial law as a bid to break through legislative gridlock.

But to use his political difficulties as justification for imposing martial law for the first time in South Korea since the 1980s is absurd, said analyst Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.