The verdict is finally in. Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s impeached conservative president, was sentenced to life in prison on February 19 by a Seoul court for insurrection.
The court’s decision came 443 days after Yoon’s abrupt attempt to overthrow the constitutional order in a December 2024 self-coup. The effort collapsed within six hours as a unanimous legislature rejected it, and spontaneous protests erupted across Seoul.
Justice nevertheless remains incomplete, as the ruling is entangled with simmering political tensions that had been engulfing the country long before Yoon’s failed power grab.
For the global left, what has been unfolding is deeply significant. South Korea is the only advanced economy to date that has been attempting to defeat a far-right surge through a combination of mass protests and electoral power even amid a regrouping of far-right forces.
The deepening political rift was inscribed in the language of the verdict handed down by Ji Gwi-yeon, the presiding judge who had briefly released Yoon from detention on a technicality in July 2025. Drawing on a broad range of historical precedents, from the execution of Charles I in seventeenth-century England to Charles de Gaulle’s French constitution, judge Ji appeared to vacillate between the imperatives of the rule of law and the prerogatives of a strong presidency. He stopped short of defining Yoon’s declaration of martial law as part of the attempt at insurrection, appearing to acknowledge Yoon’s own reasoning before the court.
Yoon maintained that his imposition of martial law was meant to be an ‘enlightening’ warning to the public.
Yoon maintained that his imposition of martial law was meant to be an “enlightening” warning to the public about what he depicted as the rising threats from the Left and foreign (Chinese) interference in the country’s voting system. Yoon even coined a term for it, calling his martial law declaration “gyemongryung,” a portmanteau blending…
Auteur: Kap Seol
