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South Korea’s Ongoing Political Crisis
Photo: JUNG YEON-JE/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
Last week was an eventful one in South Korea’s ongoing political crisis. On March 24, the Constitutional Court of Korea ruled to reinstate Prime Minister Han Duck-soo as acting president and acquitted him of impeachment charges. Two days later, the Seoul appellate court cleared Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung of election fraud charges. The final act of this South Korean political crisis trilogy is yet to play out with the Constitutional Court’s impending decision on President Yoon’s impeachment. However, the verdict, while critical, will not arrest the political storm that the country has weathered for over 17 weeks. A decision to acquit or to impeach will not end the crisis; rather, it will merely propel the country to another stage of deepened political polarization.
Q1: What is the significance of the Seoul appellate court’s decision to clear Lee Jae-myung of election fraud charges?
A1: The court’s decision to clear Lee of election law violations allegedly committed during the 2022 presidential campaign paves the way for lawmakers to run for the presidency if a snap election is called in the coming months. Lee currently polls at 34 percent, which is 26 points higher than the top People’s Power Party (PPP) ruling party candidate, Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Moon-soo (8 percent). The party will likely coalesce behind Lee, and this will remove any threat of splinter candidates running as independents that would split the progressive vote. Lee’s preparation for the presidential election is evident in his “right-clicking,” that is, tacking to the political center in order to supplement his progressive base of support with moderates and undecided votes so crucial for an electoral victory. Lee gave a series of interviews to the Western press in recent weeks in order to portray a more centrist agenda on foreign policy. For example, he disavowed any concerns that his presidency would reverse Yoon’s reconciliation efforts with Japan and the trilateral allied cooperation among Yoon, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Biden. Whether such moderate policies will actually inform a Lee presidency remains to be seen.
The large gap in the polls does not ensure Lee’s win. First, we will not have a true sense of the PPP’s chances until a presidential candidate is selected, because only then will we see whether the dispersed support around 4–5 figures will coalesce around a single candidate. Second, Lee is undeniably a polarizing figure, and there is a strong “anti-Lee” sentiment that has not yet crystallized in polling numbers in support of the as-yet-unnamed PPP candidate.
Q2: What are the other legal cases against Lee?
A2: Also held in the balance over the election are an additional four criminal charges against Lee (See Table 1). There is a legal debate over whether Lee’s election win would give him presidential immunity from prosecution or whether the cases would still need to be adjudicated since the alleged violations took place before the presidency.
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Ellen Kim
Former Senior Fellow, Korea Chair
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Q3: Will the Constitutional Court decision—either reinstating Yoon or impeaching him—finally end the 17-week political crisis in South Korea?
A3: Unfortunately, no. A Constitutional Court decision that absolves Yoon of impeachment charges will allow him to return to office, but this will only deepen the political polarization rather than normalize the political environment.
The DPK and other opposition forces will direct all of their energy previously focused on impeachment to (1) impeding Yoon’s ability to rule and (2) pursuing the criminal charges of treason against Yoon, which are due to start on April 14. Public outrage at the court’s decision will explode, and anti-Yoon demonstrations will only grow more. The DPK-led National Assembly will block all of the administration’s legislation, including the budget. The opposition will likely continue to pursue investigations and charges against First Lady Kim Keon Hee. There will be no peace and little political space for Yoon in his remaining time in office. Despite his reinstatement, Yoon’s party may still see him as badly damaged and may render him a lame-duck status, focusing instead on finding the next conservative candidate for the 2027 election.
Should Yoon be impeached, the political crisis in South Korea will not be resolved either. Instead, the frenetic and divisive energy will move to the snap election, with DPK and PPP sides scrambling to campaign for the 60-day period. The opposition political forces will still pursue the criminal charges against Yoon as well.
For the PPP, Yoon’s impeachment will propel hardcore Yoon supporters to the streets to protest the court decision as unjust. But the PPP’s future would be unclear. The party could collapse from internal fighting after an impeachment, or it could hang together, in which case lawmakers would likely abandon the disgraced president and focus on fielding their candidate for the snap election. Unity will be difficult to maintain, however, and this could lead to independent candidacies, which would almost certainly cement a progressive victory with a unified candidate.
Q4: What are the implications of this protracted political crisis?
A4: In the two past cases of impeachment in South Korea (2004 and 2016–2017), the economy managed to weather the protracted political uncertainty as the stock market, investor confidence, and growth soon recovered. But as I have argued elsewhere, a number of external factors helped the post-impeachment recovery, including China’s economic growth (in 2004) and the boom in semiconductor exports (in 2017). In 2025, however, the external environment is markedly different with developments—war, reciprocal tariffs, 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada, steel and aluminum tariffs, and foreign car tariffs—that do not help South Korea’s economic recovery.
Perhaps the most significant concern is the impact of this protracted political crisis on the U.S.–South Korea alliance. A government in stasis in Seoul, in combination with a new Trump administration that is moving rapidly to implement new policies, is fomenting a “quiet crisis” in the alliance. While Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Shigeru Ishiba, and other world leaders have met with Donald Trump, the absence of a South Korean president has meant the leader-to-leader interaction that is so critical to dealmaking with Trump has not happened. Instead, South Korea has been hit with a bevy of U.S. tariffs, including on steel, cars, chips, and other items. Two working-level attempts at winning exemptions for the interim South Korean government have failed. The listing of South Korea on the Department of Energy’s “sensitive country” list came as a surprise to Seoul and provides a bad optic for the alliance. Trump talks more about meeting with Kim Jong-un than he does about meeting with the next South Korean president. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped Seoul on his first trip to the Indo-Pacific because, with limited time, it made no sense to meet with a counterpart who would not likely occupy the seat in a couple of months. In addition, once the Trump administration focuses on alliance issues with South Korea, Seoul will have to deal with U.S. demands for more cost-sharing, more defense spending, and potential changes to the U.S. force structure on the peninsula. None of these conversations can take place in earnest while South Koreans are fighting internally for their political future. And the most important conversations at the leader-level will not take place until the summer, at which point the United States may have already made policy decisions about the alliance and about North Korea without Seoul’s consultation.
Victor Cha is president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Ellen Kim is senior fellow of the Korea Chair at CSIS.