What next after President Yoon’s arrest?

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was arrested at his official residence in Seoul on Wednesday morning and was being questioned in the afternoon in connection with accusations he fomented an insurrection when he briefly declared martial law on December 3.

More than 3,000 police officers and members of the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO) were involved in gaining access to Yoon’s official residence. The president has been holed up behind barbed wire and barricades for weeks, protected by a security team.

The raid was the CIO’s second attempt to detain Yoon, whose legal team issued a statement from the president announcing that he would hand himself over to the authorities “to prevent unfortunate bloodshed.”

Yoon has dismissed the allegations against him and claimed after being detained that “the rule of law has completely collapsed.”

Political analysts say the turmoil that has rocked South Korean politics for over five weeks is certainly not over.

South Korea’s ongoing political turmoil

“We have been riding this rollercoaster every day since December 3. Even though most Koreans are going about their lives as if nothing is happening, they feel that both sides of the political row are as bad as each other,” said Kim Sang-woo, a former politician with the left-leaning South Korean Congress for New Politics.

The nation’s Constitutional Court is wrestling with whether Yoon can be impeached for his actions, a claim that the president has strongly refuted and has vowed to fight in court. The court convened its first hearing in the case on Tuesday, but Yoon did not attend.

He is also facing charges of promulgating civil strife by declaring martial law, a charge that the opposition Democratic Party is demanding that prosecutors vigorously apply.

“There is a great deal of confusion surrounding the entire process,” Kim told DW. “Yoon’s lawyers insist that the CIO does not have the legal authority to investigate the president, which is a legacy of the Democratic Party rewriting laws when it was last in power to transfer responsibility for investigations to the police but leaving loopholes.”

Could Yoon still lead South Korea?

Kim anticipates that if the Constitutional Court rules that Yoon cannot be impeached, he will be free to resume his role as president — although that would be highly unpopular with a public that opinion polls indicate is more than 60% in favor of impeachment.

If the court decides that impeachment was appropriate, he will have to step down, and there will be a general election within two months.

While the opposition Democratic Party is champing at the bit for the nation to go to the polls because it is convinced it will win, Kim is not so sure.

He points out that Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung only has a public support rate of around 32%, a legacy of four legal cases against him and a corruption case that he lost and is presently appealing.

Yoon’s support rating is surprisingly high, hovering around the 30% mark despite his political and legal problems, meaning that one-third of the electorate is undecided.

If Yoon is replaced by a charismatic conservative “who is objective and embraces ideas for the nation’s future, then winning an election may not be as easy as Lee and the Democratic Party assume,” said Kim.

Mason Richey, a professor of politics and international relations at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said that a “layman’s perspective might be that Yoon is trying to win his legal battle through political means” and with a strategy that looks a lot like Donald Trump in the US.

“He is trying to delegitimize the process rather than fight the legal battles, although it seems that the evidence against him is strong, and I do not think that will work,” he told DW.

South Koreans want the drama to end

Richey added that there is broad disdain among South Koreans for their political class.

“I would say that the average Korean just wish they could strap Yoon and Lee to a rocket and fire them both into the sun,” Richey said. “They just want their leaders to do a much better job of governing and to be more honest.”

“People are relieved that there were no violent clashes between the presidential protection unit and the CIO for the nation’s international reputation but also because this takes us one step closer to the entire drama coming to an end,” he said.

“People want to move on towards the future rather than being embroiled in even more political uncertainty.”

Edited by: Wesley Rahn