“Going Back to Authoritarianism is Simply Unacceptable”

For Korean democracy, the winter of 2024 was a decisive time. On 3 December, the Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and ordered the military and police to seize control of the National Assembly. He tried in vain to prevent parliament from lifting his declaration.

Two days later, constitutional scholars began to organise. On 25 December, 110 of them from across the country formally launched the “Constitutional Scholars Council for Enhancement of Korean Constitutionalism”. In the months that followed, especially until the Constitutional Court’s unanimous judgment of 4 April 2025 upholding the President’s impeachment, the Council engaged with the public and proposed solutions to the constitutional debates. It hosted online and offline forums and public seminars on urgent constitutional questions. It also published collective opinions and nineteen press releases, which the media soon began to quote. After the new government took office in June 2025, the Council concluded its work with a white paper documenting its activities. In its opening words, co-chair Professor Kim Seon-Taek writes that the past eight months “have been a time when constitutional law and also constitutional scholars have had to prove their raison d’être”.

I interviewed Professor Jeong-In Yun of Korea University, who served as a working group member of this Council and prepared the white paper on its activities, about this “K-Scholactivism”.

1. Was the impeachment of President Yoon a legally clear-cut case, or was there any room for reasonable disagreement about the Constitutional Court’s judgement? Are there any renowned scholars who disagreed with the judgement?

Under the South Korean Constitution, impeachment demands that high-ranking officials, including the President, violate the Constitution or the law in the performance of their official duties. According to the standard established by the precedents of the Constitutional Court, the legal violation also has to have sufficient gravity. It’s a kind of proportionality test.

President Yoon’s Declaration of martial law was a clearly unconstitutional exercise of emergency power that completely broke away from the procedures and substantive requirements set by the Constitution. Apart from whether it also constitutes a crime of insurrection, the declaration of martial law itself was a constitutionally clear-cut case.

Moreover, the various measures ordered and specified in the martial law proclamation exceeded the limits of the current Martial Law Act, even prohibiting the activities of the National Assembly, local councils, and political parties, alongside all political activities by citizens. So his actions, the breach of law, was so obvious and unconstitutional, that the impeachment was a given.

In terms of your following question, yes, there were also scholars who opposed the impeachment. They argued that the declaration of martial law constituted an “acte de gouvernement” (“Regierungsakt”), similar to the political question doctrine, and so it should not be dealt with by the judiciary. Others raised various substantive and procedural objections, such as the lack of sufficient gravity in the grounds for impeachment or insufficient evidence or improper legal proceedings. They were not the majority of scholars, just a few. The most vocal among them gave media interviews very actively and also submitted written statements, amicus curiae briefs, to the Constitutional Court. Among them, the most renowned scholar was professor emeritus Huh Young. He was a prominent constitutional scholar who studied law in Germany and introduced German constitutional theories to South Korea since the 1980s. It was truly embarrassing to see a respected senior scholar make weird arguments on these critical issues.

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2. The debate on “scholactivism” deals with exactly that tension between scholarly neutrality and public engagement on politically controversial topics. How would you situate the activities of the Council within these debates? Was it a legitimate case of scholactivism or not? And what makes this case special from your point of view?

I acknowledge the arguments made by the critics of scholactivism that scholars should stay true to pursuing academic truths and avoid becoming direct actors in social phenomena, changing situations, or politics. Instead, they are required to uphold their role morality by observing situations carefully and then analysing them retrospectively after all the situations have settled down. In Korean society as well, there has been valid criticism of scholars who overly involve themselves in everyday politics and appear frequently in the media, providing partisan expertise while neglecting their core academic duties or research.

However, an event like the recent martial law crisis was on an entirely different scale. It’s not just politically controversial topics. Look, just imagine that the sitting president or chancellor in your country attempted a self-coup, deploying military forces and police to seize the parliament in midnight. It was an unimaginable crisis. It constitutes an existential threat to our constitutional order. So, consider what that situation means, and also what kind of disaster will follow if we didn’t strongly push back. It was very painfully clear from Korean past history.

In such a situation, scholars responded to this crisis as citizens. We know very well from past experiences and also from our other contemporary examples just how deeply scholarship suffers in a country where democracy has collapsed. So I think academic ethics do not conflict with remaining faithful to self-evident justice or truth, when it is seriously attacked. As an effective platform for academic response, without hesitation, we formed a temporary body and, after over half a year of intense activity, officially announced its dissolution at the end of July 2025 as we witnessed the presidential impeachment and criminal proceedings.

3. In the crucial first month of the crisis, it was somewhat uncertain if democracy would prevail after all, wasn’t it? So did the members of the council therefore not take some personal risks for their own professional careers? And if so, from where did you get the civil courage to do that?

In the early stages of the crisis, everything was, as you said, uncertain. On the night of the 3rd of December, President Yoon declared martial law and also mobilized military and police forces, which attempted to arrest politicians, including the Speaker of the National Assembly, the leaders of the ruling and opposition parties, and former Supreme Court justices. Although a majority in the National Assembly submitted an impeachment motion against the President on the following day, 4th of December, it did not pass that weekend. The first impeachment attempt failed. That meant the President who had attempted a self-coup remained in office, with the supreme command over the military still in his hands.

It was later revealed that a memo pad of a former military officer who was heavily involved in designing and planning the martial law scheme contained chilling details, like plans to arrest a lot of people, hundreds and thousands of people, lock them up in specially prepared facilities, prisons, and also apply extreme measures or torture them. In addition, the planners of martial law referenced the past, but the proclamation itself was even harsher than those issued during the past authoritarian era (of President Park, 1961-1979, and President Chun, 1980-1987), when dissidents were arrested, detained, tortured, and even killed. One of the tragic and very well-known cases was Professor Jong-gil Choi, the Seoul National University professor. He reportedly died during an interrogation by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, the Korean CIA, under highly suspicious circumstances. It’s very horrific. All of these things remain a stark reminder of the past.

So, what I want to say is that the risks faced by scholars during the 2024 Martial Law Crisis were not merely a matter of risks for their career or of professional disadvantages. It was a direct threat to our lives and physical safety, a question of life or death. Therefore, deciding whether or not to resist was a profound decision concerning the whole person, an existential decision. We put our lives at risk.

4. This is very impressive. So when you say it is an existential decision, this takes even more courage, doesn’t it? In parallel situations in history, many people would have decided not to take the risks and try to save themselves or stay silent and not oppose those brutal forces that threaten to torture and imprison them.

Yes, it’s a matter of life and death, so it’s understandable and we cannot blame others. But we did it because we cannot live without democracy. I vividly remember receiving a phone call from a colleague on my way home that night, breaking the news of the martial law declaration. At first, I thought – and desperately hoped – it wasn’t true. But upon confirming it through the news, a deep sense of despair came over me. As a constitutional scholar, my honest initial thought was, “We are ruined.” I immediately began talking with other colleagues, and someone suggested rushing to the National Assembly. What should we do? Should we stay silent, or dive in and risk everything? In the past authoritarian eras, many scholars remained silent or collaborated with the regime. Two days after martial law was declared, senior constitutional law professors contacted me. They wanted to form a body of scholars and asked me to join the working group of five young professors. I felt deeply honored and grateful to serve.

There’s a strong belief within the Korean society. Citizens who rushed to the National Assembly on that night also confessed that they had no choice but to take action to restore democracy. I know of a professor who, upon hearing the news, left his house immediately, to head straight to the National Assembly. He told his wife that he might not be able to return home for a while. Under martial law, resisting it meant you might never come back at all. They risked their lives, running to the National Assembly to resist, because they cannot live under authoritarianism or dictatorship. It’s a way of proving their dignity. We thought that our dignity could only be sustained within a democracy that allows us to determine our own lives. That is why we did it.

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5. Thank you for those powerful statements. I will put one last question to you. Your Council was part of an astonishingly broad and strong movement, as you just said. There were millions of people on the streets, and continuous demonstrations for weeks and months going on, with K-pop glow sticks and demonstrating nuns and all that. Why do you think the will to defend democracy and the Constitution was so strong?

I believe there are two primary reasons, among others.

First, modern Korean history has condensed an extraordinary range of severe political hardships into a remarkably short period. As you know, the Korean peninsula is located at a volatile geopolitical crossroads, where major powers collide. So, the nation, the Korean peninsula was divided, and it still is. And Korea experienced a very tragic civil war after national division, a military coup, an ensuing military dictatorship, an executive self-coup, military insurrection, and several times of martial law. During that period, people resisted, got some victories, but those collapsed repeatedly. There was a vicious cycle of resistance and authoritarian turn. South Korea only managed to successfully transition to democracy toward the end of the 1980s. Through the entire trajectory, citizens got to have vivid experiences and memories. We remembered everything we had to suffer. So going back to authoritarianism is simply unacceptable. I think that’s the first reason.

The second reason, which is related to the first one, is that for the contemporary Korean people democracy is not taken for granted as a pre-existing condition of daily life. It was hard-won through struggle and blood, immense sacrifice, at every juncture. Democracy remains something that can be lost as well. So having a clear awareness of the misery that accompanies its loss, the Korean people naturally feel the need to stay constantly alert to defend democracy. However, at the same time, through the power of national resistance that brought about the end of authoritarianism and democratisation in 1987, and the experience of leading the presidential impeachment of 2017 against an executive power that betrayed the public trust, the Korean people also came to hold the memory of victory and a firm conviction that to protect the democratic constitutional order, citizens can and must take action.

Of course, this era is suffering from political polarisation and extreme politics, all over the world. Social tension and partisan conflicts are formidable, in Korea as well. However, one thing appears in common across all factions and divisions in Korean society now. In the past, political conflicts spoke only the language of power. However, today all political actors share a desire for democracy and an aversion to anti-democratic alternatives, using the language of constitutional democracy. Perhaps that is why we, as constitutional scholars, believed that we ourselves bear the responsibility to share a proper understanding of the Constitution with both the citizens and state institutions, at least in times of crucial constitutional crisis, and we collectively acted.

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Yours,

the Verfassungsblog Team

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