At least six of the court’s eight justices need to uphold Yoon’s impeachment to remove him from office.
South Korea’s Constitutional Court has announced that it will on Friday issue its ruling on whether to permanently remove impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol from office.
The court said in a statement on Tuesday that it will hand down its ruling on Yoon, who was impeached by legislators after briefly declaring martial law late last year, at 11am (02:00 GMT) and the verdict will be broadcast live.
At least six of the court’s eight justices need to uphold Yoon’s impeachment to remove him from office.
If the court affirms Yoon’s impeachment, a presidential election will be held within 60 days.
Otherwise, Yoon, who has been suspended from his presidential duties since mid-December, will be immediately reinstated.
Yoon, a former top prosecutor, has said he issued his short-lived martial law decree to raise alarm about what he claimed was the opposition Democratic Party’s obstructionism and sympathetic stance towards North Korea.
Yoon lifted martial law within six hours after the National Assembly voted unanimously to overturn the decree.
While the declaration was short-lived and did not result in violence, it cast a pall over South Korea’s image as a vibrant, modern democracy and invoked painful memories of the country’s dictatorial past.
Yoon, who was elected in 2022 without previously having held political office, is separately facing criminal charges of insurrection over the decree.
Though several of South Korea’s democratic-era leaders have been jailed for crimes after their tenures ended, Yoon is the first president to be prosecuted while still in office.
In a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday, 60 percent of respondents said they supported Yoon’s removal.
Opinion polls show Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung as the overwhelming favourite in a snap election.
On Wednesday, an appeals court overturned Lee’s 2024 conviction for an election law violation that would have barred him from running in the next presidential election.
The Constitutional Court last week separately overturned the impeachment of Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, reinstating him as acting president while it considers the case against Yoon.
