Impeachment verdicts that sealed South Korean presidents’ fates

March 13, 2025

SEOUL – South Korea has seen three presidents face trial for impeachment, including current President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached in a Dec. 14 National Assembly vote on charges of leading a self-coup.

So far, between the other two impeached former presidents, Roh Moo-hyun and Park Geun-hye, the Constitutional Court upheld only Park’s impeachment motion.

The difference between the two court verdicts lies in whether the presidents had an active intention to go against the constitutional order. The Constitutional Court in 2004 did not recognize Roh’s constitutional breach as something that carried an active intention. However, in Park’s case, the court found that she did have the active intention to violate the Constitution in 2017. The court’s assessment also diverged over the seriousness of the former two presidents’ violations of the Constitution.

Below are the courts’ findings that led to different verdicts for the two former presidents.

The 2004 verdict recognized liberal former President Roh’s violation of the Constitution, as he was impeached on charges of violating the Public Official Election Act, abetting his close aides’ corruption and failing to address the economic downturn.

Of these charges, Roh’s election law violation was the center of the controversy. The parliament accused him of failing to abide by his duty as a public official to remain neutral, as he had said in response to reporters during a press conference in February 2004 that he had expected people to “overwhelmingly support (his party)” and that he had “hoped to do anything legal as the president to help his party win more votes.”

These remarks, however, did not indicate that Roh had actively intended to violate the Constitution by attempting to use his power to intervene with government authority through state institutions, but that his violations were committed passively and incidentally in the form of answers to reporters’ questions, according to the ruling that overturned his impeachment.

“Ultimately, considering the overall effect of the president’s law violation of the constitutional order, (the court) cannot acknowledge the president had (the) active intention to go against the constitutional order through his violation of the law,” read the verdict in May 2004.

The verdict also read that Roh’s violation “would not require the court’s decision to remove Roh from the presidency in order to safeguard the Constitution and restore the constitutional order.”

A president’s violation of the law must have “intent” to constitute grounds for impeachment, meaning a president “cannot be impeached for a mistake or a policy failure,” Cha Jin-a, professor of law who specializes in constitutional law at Korea University, told The Korea Herald.

The verdict did not disclose how many of the court justices were in favor of Roh’s impeachment or against it out of the nine-member bench.

Unlike in the case of Roh, the Constitutional Court ruled that Park had indeed committed “serious violations” of the law, her duty to serve the public interest and to safeguard and comply with the Constitution.

The verdict on ex-conservative president, implicated in a sweeping corruption scandal involving her close confidante, Choi Soon-sil — who held no official position — emphasized that protecting and complying with the Constitution outweighed any potential harm to national interests caused by removing her as the elected president. Choi has since changed her name to Choi Seo-won.

Park also deserved impeachment for “serious violations,” as she committed abuses of power to favor Choi and breached South Korean conglomerates’ rights of property by coercing them to provide special favors to Choi, the verdict showed.

Park and her office’s moves to conceal the fact that she had leaked confidential information to a person who does not hold any official position, and to condemn those who raised suspicions that Park had been doing so, are acts that “betray people’s trust,” read the verdict io March 2017.

Moreover, the court found that Park failed to safeguard and comply with the Constitution, due to Park’s refusal to cooperate with the prosecution by failing to appear for questioning or to grant the investigative authorities permission to conduct search operations in the Cheong Wa Dae, which was then the official presidential office and residence.

One point of contention in impeachment trials has been whether the president “betrayed people’s trust by violating the principles of liberal democracy and rule of law,” said Kwon Hyung-dun, professor of law at Kongju National University, who also specializes in constitutional law.

Park’s 2017 impeachment verdict was a unanimous 8-0 ruling as one seat on the nine-member bench remained vacant.

Questions linger over whether these past two presidential impeachment verdicts indicate anything about the likelihood that Yoon will be removed from his post in the upcoming verdict over his case.

All eyes are on whether the court, which wrapped up its impeachment trial hearings on Feb. 25 after 11 sessions, will rule that any part of Yoon’s Dec. 3 martial law declaration was done with “active intention” and was a “serious” constitutional violation.

The National Assembly, which voted to impeach Yoon on Dec. 14, has argued the following: Yoon’s declaration of martial law to ban all political activities including the Assembly itself was imposed although South Korea was not at war or under a comparable national emergency; Yoon declared martial law through a flawed Cabinet meeting; Yoon failed to notify the parliament of his martial law decree without delay; and Yoon ordered the arrest of his political opponents to paralyze the parliament.

Unlike in Park’s case, the impeachment trial hearings revealed seeming contradictions between suspended President Yoon’s testimony and whistleblowers’ statements regarding whether an arrest order had actually been issued. However, the trial concluded without further verification of these conflicting claims, an expert noted.

“The court should have taken additional steps, such as holding further hearings, to avoid being drawn into disputes over procedural fairness,” according to Cha. In his view, “regardless of what the Constitutional Court decides now, whether it is impeachment or dismissal, there are aspects of this that are now quite difficult to accept.”

Procedural fairness refers to the principles ensuring that legal and administrative processes are conducted fairly, transparently and impartially.

According to Kwon, however, Yoon’s violation should be deemed serious for his martial law imposition, regardless of whether Yoon had ordered the arrest of politicians.

“South Korea’s history shows that the imposition of martial law has often been exploited as a means of authoritarianism through military coup,” Kwon said. “South Korea’s Constitution places great importance on democratic control against any unconstitutional and illegal exercise of law when devising a system for the declaration of a national emergency.”

He added that were the court to fail to rule that Yoon’s martial law imposition was a serious violation, that would “signal that a president’s martial law declaration could be tolerated on a regular basis.”