April 2, 2025
SEOUL – The Constitutional Court of Korea announced Tuesday that it will deliver its verdict on suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment Friday at 11 a.m., bringing an end to weeks of deliberations that have divided the nation and fueled anxiety over the constitutionality of his martial law declaration on Dec. 3.
The eight-member court has been deliberating for five weeks since concluding 11 rounds of hearings on Yoon’s case on Feb. 25, marking the longest period of deliberations for a presidential impeachment trial since the Constitutional Court began hearing cases in 1988.
If the court upholds Yoon’s impeachment on Friday, he will be immediately removed from office, leading to an early presidential election which must take place within 60 days or by June 3.
If the court votes down or dismisses the impeachment, Yoon will be reinstated and finish the rest of his term, which is slated to end May 10, 2027.
The ruling takes legal effect from the moment the judge delivers the court’s decision.
In the two previous presidential impeachment rulings, the chief justice took 20 minutes to read the verdict and announced the decision about 30 seconds before concluding the reading. Taking this into consideration, it is likely that Yoon’s fate will be revealed at around 11:30 a.m. on Friday.
While the court said they would allow live broadcasting and public attendance during the ruling, all eyes are on how the court will announce its verdict and whether the court will read the details of it out loud on Friday.
In 2004, the court only read the majority opinion part of former President Roh Moo-hyun’s 61-page impeachment verdict, leaving the minority opinion undisclosed. In 2017, the court, which voted unanimously to uphold ex-Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, had then-acting Chief Justice Lee Jung-mi read aloud a historic line at the end of the verdict: “We hereby dismiss the respondent, President Park Geun-hye, from office.”
The court’s delivery of Yoon’s verdict will come 111 days after the impeachment motion was passed by the National Assembly, Dec. 14.
During the trial, the National Assembly argued that Yoon declared martial law to ban all political activities, even though South Korea was not at war or under a comparable national emergency, as required by the Constitution. It also argued Yoon’s declaration violated procedural rules, citing a “flawed” Cabinet meeting and Yoon’s failure to notify the parliament of his martial law decree without delay.
Additionally, the parliament accused Yoon of ordering the deployment of martial law troops and police to blockade and storm the National Assembly in order to paralyze the legislature, including the arrests of a list of political figures and critics.
The court has spent 35 days deliberating — versus the 11 days and 14 days it spent deliberating over Roh and Park, respectively — fueling anxiety across the political and social spheres. The prolonged deliberations have heightened uncertainty over whether Yoon’s imposition of martial law was an attempted self-coup or an act of self-defense against the opposition-led National Assembly, escalating the political turmoil further.
South Korea’s Constitutional Court, the hard-won legacy of the pro-democracy movement, is now facing one of the most pivotal moments in its 37-year history with the case against Yoon. Established in the wake of the 1987 uprising that ended decades of military rule, the court has issued landmark rulings over the years — ranging from decriminalizing abortion to ruling emergency decrees made in 1972 by then-President Park Chung-hee unconstitutional — that have profoundly shaped modern Korean law and society.
Considering that the previous rulings on presidential impeachments were issued within two weeks of the final hearings, some critics have interpreted the court’s five weeks of silence as an “abdication of its responsibility.”
With daily protests taking place outside and nearby the court’s heavily guarded premises, a recent survey by Korea Research and more conducted March 24-26 showed that 40 percent of citizens now distrust the Constitutional Court, a striking reversal from the traditionally high degree of trust shown to the institution.
The poll surveyed 1,001 men and women aged 18 and older nationwide through telephone interviews. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level, with a response rate of 32 percent.
There are even some in the political circle who have proposed removing the Constitutional Court’s authority over impeachment trials altogether, with these people arguing that the final decision on impeachment motions passed by the National Assembly should instead be made through a nationwide referendum.
Currently, Austria, Romania and Slovakia decide on the impeachment of their leaders through public referenda.