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South Korea's highest court has removed the country's president from office just months after parliament voted to impeach him over a brief but shocking declaration of martial law. NPR's Anthony Kuhn has the story from Seoul.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Authorities made it clear that no violence would be tolerated, and some 14,000 police were deployed around the courthouse. But protesters on both sides have been in the streets since last December 3, and they were not about to miss this verdict. Both Yoon's opponents and supporters camped out outside the courthouse, and when the verdict was finally announced, anti-Yoon protesters erupted.
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KUHN: Twenty-one-year-old Kim Si-eun has come to Seoul every weekend to protest. She holds a light stick that fans often wave at K-pop concerts.
KIM SI-EUN: (Through interpreter) I believe we can make a better country, a better South Korea, and live in a better world. That's what kept me coming. And now that we have this result, I'll continue to hold on to hope and come out with my light stick whenever something like this happens again.
KUHN: Some Yoon supporters reacted angrily to the verdict, but the crowds melted away fairly quickly. The Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that Yoon Suk Yeol had violated the constitution by declaring martial law last December without a valid legal basis. It added that Yoon's sending troops to block lawmakers from voting down his decree was also unconstitutional. Yoon had argued that he was just trying to maintain order, but Noh Hee Bum, a lawyer and former Constitutional Court research judge, says that argument doesn't hold water.
NOH HEE BUM: (Through interpreter) For the president to say that he sent armed forces to the National Assembly to maintain order is a false argument trying to justify his unconstitutional and unsuccessful self-coup, which he staged to eradicate his political rivals.
KUHN: South Korea now has 60 days to elect a new president. But Jeffrey Robertson, an associate professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, says this is not the end of the crisis.
JEFFREY ROBERTSON: The real problem is going to be much longer-lasting, and that's the extreme polarization we have at the moment in South Korean politics. So we have individuals on the far left and individuals on the far right who will never see eye to eye.
KUHN: And that polarization, he argues, sets the stage for more political extremism and democratic backsliding.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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