On the evening of December 3, 2024, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law stunned most South Koreans and the international community alike. Thousands of protestors gathered in the vicinity of Parliament to try to prevent the military from taking control. The determined crowd enabled 190 members of parliament to force their way past the military and vote to rescind martial law just hours after it was declared. Eight weeks later, it appears that the presidential "moment of madness" was anything but. Yoon had not only tested this idea on several occasions over the course of more than a year but had also appointed people close to him to key positions to ensure his plan would go through. Court proceedings and parliamentary investigations have brought to light the details of this plan.

Yoon, who was indicted on Sunday, January 26, on charges of insurrection, has certainly had a reputation for authoritarianism. His beliefs place him in the hard right and a nostalgia for the dictatorship. They are both clear in his past statements, his accession to the presidency and the move toward martial law. One thing is certain: His statements contradict his January 21 declaration before the Constitutional Court, where he professed his belief in liberal democracy. Many examples of his far-right positions exist. "If I had been a military man, I would have carried out a coup d'état," he said at a dinner when he was head of the Supreme Prosecutor's Office between 2019 and 2021, according to a former inspector of the judicial institution. Before adding: "The history of the prosecutor's office is the history of the fight against the reds." During the same period, in October 2021, Yoon eagerly honored the memory of former dictator Chun Doo-hwan (1980 to 1987), calling him a "good politician."

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