hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol appears at the tenth hearing for oral arguments in his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court of Korea on Feb. 20, 2025. (pool photo)

During the last witness examination in his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court on Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol once again passed off responsibility for his attempted insurrection onto his subordinates. 

Regarding a request made by Yeo In-hyeong, former chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, to track the locations of key politicians, Yoon said it was because Yeo “had no concept of how investigations are conducted.” Regarding Hong Jang-won, the former first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, Yoon spoke of a “conspiracy” to have him framed for insurrection and impeachment by connecting him to an order to arrest major political figures. 

Even though all evidence points to Yoon being the ringleader of an insurrection, he insists on keeping up this pathetic charade. Was he bluffing when he vowed to “confidently face both the impeachment proceedings and the investigation”?  

Yoon used the time granted to him following Hong’s testimony on Thursday to disparage the former intelligence official. The president said that Hong had twisted his phone call to provide encouragement and assurance to Hong directly after the martial law declaration, and “made up the arrest orders.” Yoon’s leaps of logic fall flat as Hong is far from the only witness to have attested to the existence of orders to arrest key political figures that night.

Yoon thoroughly shielded himself against all matters that disadvantaged his position. Regarding the revelation that first lady Kim Keon-hee texted NIS Director Cho Tae-yong the day before martial law, Yoon said that he too was “also curious as to what call log was being spoken of” considering that their phones had all been replaced. 

Additional grounds for Yoon’s removal from office emerged during Thursday’s hearing as well. In response to a question about whether Yoon said that “martial law would be rescinded within a matter of hours,” Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said that he “did not remember hearing anything like that.” This contradicts Yoon’s claim that he planned on a short-lived martial law designed to “warn” the opposition parties. 

Regarding the Cabinet meeting convened just before the president’s declaration of martial law, Han said that it “wasn’t a normal Cabinet meeting,” adding that “there were certain procedural and practical shortcomings.” 

Again, this contradicts Yoon’s claim that his martial law proposal went through a Cabinet deliberation. Not even the prime minister seems to have agreed with the president’s martial law declaration. As if expecting this scenario, Yoon left his seat before the court’s examination of Han. 

Throughout the 10 hearings of the trial so far, Yoon has presented forced arguments about investigators “chasing around the reflection of the moon on the surface of a lake,” “nothing even happening,” and “agents, not lawmakers,” and emphasized the procedural aspects of the impeachment trial while blurring its essence. He also went after the acting president of the Constitutional Court, Justice Moon Hyung-bae. This was an attempt to call into question the fairness of the Constitutional Court. 

The people of Korea have already seen armed soldiers raiding the National Assembly and the National Election Commission, as well as police barricading both sites. The grounds for removing Yoon from office are abundant and overflowing, so there is nothing left to confirm in the impeachment trial. To save the country and its people, the Constitutional Court needs to make a unanimous decision to remove Yoon from office.  

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]