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A conservative, Mr. Yoon won the presidency in 2022 by a slim margin, promising a more confrontational stance against North Korea. He quickly became unpopular and divisive at home.
- Dec. 3, 2024, 12:58 p.m. ET
President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, who declared martial law on Tuesday night, has served a term plagued with problems and scandals following his narrow electoral win in 2022.
Mr. Yoon, a former prosecutor, won the presidency with less than half the vote, by a margin of less than 1 percent — a result that was widely viewed as a condemnation of his progressive predecessor rather than an enthusiastic endorsement of Mr. Yoon. As a candidate and in office he has allied himself with a wave of anti-feminist sentiment.
In office, the president has been in a near-constant political standoff with the opposition, which controls Parliament, ever since, while his approval rating in polls has fallen sharply.
His call for martial law, which allows him to clamp down on media and political opponents, was the first such declaration in South Korea in decades, but was foreshadowed by some of his previous actions in office. Mr. Yoon, who is seen in South Korea as a deeply divisive leader, accused the opposition of plotting an “insurgency” and “trying to overthrow the free democracy.”
Since his election, Mr. Yoon has used lawsuits, state regulators and criminal investigations to clamp down on speech that he called disinformation, efforts that were largely aimed at news organizations. The police and prosecutors repeatedly raided the homes and newsrooms of journalists whom his office has accused of spreading “fake news.”
Mr. Yoon has also been accused of using his power to advance his own interests. He was accused this year of pressuring the Defense Ministry to whitewash an investigation into the death of a South Korean marine in 2023, and vetoed a bill pushed through Parliament by the opposition calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the claim.
