When Yoon Suk Yeol ran for president, he That the word “king” wrote on the palm of his hand. The South Koreans rejected him – and ridiculed – as a shamanic ritual that reflected his desire for the top government office.

But after his inauguration in May 2022, it did not take long to see the authoritarian string in Mr. Yoon.

In the short term, he moved the presidential office from a graceful blue house to a military building. When he turned 63 in December 2023, his security team sang songs Respecting him as a “president sent from heaven” and describing his “845,280 minutes” on duty to “Time Blessed”. Two months later, a student who protested against the decision of Mr. Yoon to reduce government budgets for scientific research was tangled and withdrawn by the president’s bodyguards. When journalists posted what he called “False News”, Prosecutors made the reservoir of their homes and newsrooms to collect evidence.

Mr. Yoon constantly pushed the envelope until he did not make a fatal mistake: December 3 declared a martial arts, Threatening deeply gentle part of the life of the South Korean life: democracy.

South Koreans, democracy has never been something given; He fought and won over the decades of fight against authoritarian leaders at the cost of torture, prison and bloodshed. All the main political turning point in South Korea – the end of dictatorship, the introduction of free elections, the overthrow of the abuse leaders – they were achieved after the citizens went out to the streets.

So when people saw the troops that Mr. Yoon sent storms to the national assembly to force the legislation by force, their answer was direct. But unlike those who fought against the state repression of the 1950s through the 1980s, the South Koreans who protested in recent months have had democratic institutions on their side.

The current Constitution, written in 1987, after a huge uprising of the pro-democracy, gave the national assembly the authority to vote for war law and presidents. The Constitutional Court, created according to the Constitution, had to decide whether to remove or return the Imperative President. And the leaders closed the democratically chosen to that constitution those who had previously assumed the power of military force.

Younger generations, including parachutes sent by Mr. Yoon to seize the assembly in December, grew up learning about that history through Movies affected by cash registers And novelists like Nobel Laureately Han Kang.

On December 3, the troops hesitated before the angry citizens blocked them with their bare hands, allowing the time for legislators, including some members of their own party Mr. Yoon, to gather and vote to raise a decree for war law. The assembly then distracted him, December 14th.

And on Friday, eight judges of the Constitutional Court, including those appointed by Mr. Yon or his party, unanimously supported that imperial, stopping his military rebellion.

To one observer, these events were the victories of democratic institutions created in the late 1980s. “The response to Yoon’s attempt at a state strike showed the maturity of the Korean democracy – above all, the resistance of civil society, which immediately and massively responded to opposition to the coup, the most prominent with the passion of the Korean youth who was not alive in the 1980s and experienced that in today’s autocratic rule, Daniel said,” Daniel said Autocratic rule, and once was autocratic rule, and Daniel, Daniel, “Stanford University.

“The fact that it was a unanimous decision by the Constitutional Court, with the conservative named united by the decision, was a very important expression not only by the clarity of the case, but also the ability to overcome ideological polarization,” said Mr. Sneider.

Mr. Yoon’s power also revealed the vulnerability of democracy in South Korea. If something like that can happen in a nation that has long considered a exemplary case of democratization in Asia, Scientists warnedThis can happen elsewhere.

Despite its removal, the deep polarization that led to Mr. Yoon’s Declaration is still. The partisan struggle between the left and the right is likely to intensify in the next two months as the country approaches the presidential election.

But for the last four months, they have also shown the resistance of South Korean democracy.

As long as Mr. Yon did not come, a little South Korean thought that a return to military rule was possible in their country, a peaceful democracy that is globally known for their cars, smartphones and k-dramas. Many of those who have joined the protests who have been calling for Mr. Yoon’s overthrowing in recent weeks that they have been more proud of their democracy than their cultural exports such as the Boy Band BTS or Netflix hit “Squid Game”.

When Mr. Yoon hurt that pride, he chose a fight he couldn’t beat. During the gatherings, people shared a video clip of the former president Kim Dae-Jung, an iconic figure in the fight for democratization of South Korea.

“Democracy is not free,” Mr. Kim said In the clip. “You have to shed blood, sweat and tears for that.”

If the Constitutional Court voted for the re-establishment of Mr. Yoon, South Korea would see “Second Wave of Democratization Movement” and “Second Gwangju”, said Cho Gab, a distinguished South Korean journalist who has covered the political evolution of the nation since 1971, referring to the brutally suppressed stimuli Southern city of Gwangju 1980.

“We had a part of the martial arts, but Yoon Suk Yeol was the first president to send armed troops to Parliament,” Mr. Cho said.

Mr. Yon was once a hero among the South Koreans. He built his national image as an uncompromising prosecutor when he helped close two former presidents for corruption. But he proved catastrophic as a politician – unable to get involved in giving and taking compromises with opposition, which controlled the National Assembly.

He was accused of fulfilling his presidential staff with officials too timid to speak. It called him “Mr. 59 minutes,” because it had been saying for a long time to speak during the hourly rate. He rarely apologized for his The scandals of the wife or even for Deadly disasters. He used his power of veto for killing proportional accounts. The opposition reduced its budgets and inserted an unprecedented number of political appointed political named in its government.

“The player is busy playing on the field does not look at the electronic table,” Mr. Yon said once when asked about his terrible grades of approval.

Such an attitude allowed him to encourage unpopular efforts, like Improvement of connections with Japan and It grows drastically Number of doctors. But not many who sympathized with his fight against the opposition saw that a martial arts were coming.

“The Koreans do not want the 1980s option, when the martial arts and tear gas who were forcibly disappeared by people painful with so many families,” said Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. “Yoon and his advisers missed the sign of the reading of present -day South Korea in many obvious ways.”