First sitting head of state arrested, Yoon remains silent

Imprisonment, overthrow, assassination, death sentence, suicide: before Yoon Suk Yeol, arrested Wednesday after being impeached by Parliament in mid-December, almost all South Korean presidents ended badly.

There are only Moon Jae-in (2017-2022), Kim Young-sam (1993-1998) and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), architect of a rapprochement with North Korea, to have peacefully exercised and completed their mandates.

On January 15, 2025, anti-corruption investigators and police forces stormed the presidential residence and arrested Yoon Suk Yeol, who refused to respond to court summons.

The leader, in power since 2022, must answer charges of “rebellion”, a crime theoretically punishable by death, for having attempted to establish martial law on the night of December 3 to 4 and sending the army to Parliament to muzzle it.

For this coup, Parliament voted on December 14, 2024 to dismiss Mr. Yoon and an interim president was appointed.

The impeachment procedure is currently being examined by the Constitutional Court.

On December 9, 2016, President Park Geun-hye, in power since 2013, was impeached by Parliament, then indicted and imprisoned. South Korea’s first female president, who presented herself as incorruptible, is accused of having received tens of millions of dollars from South Korean conglomerates, including Samsung, of having shared classified documents, of having put on a “blacklist” of artists critical of his policies, or even for having dismissed officials who opposed his abuse of power.

The daughter of ex-dictator Park Chung-hee is definitively sentenced in 2021 to 20 years in prison and heavy fines. But she was pardoned in December 2021 by her successor Moon Jae-in.

Yoon Suk Yeol, now in disgrace, played a key role, as Seoul prosecutor, in his dismissal and subsequent incarceration.

In power from 2008 to 2013, Lee Myung Bak was sentenced in October 2018 to 15 years in prison for corruption. He is notably found guilty of having received bribes from Samsung to pardon the president of the conglomerate, Lee Kun-hee, who had been convicted of tax evasion.

He was pardoned by President Yoon Suk Yeol in December 2022.

President from 2003 to 2008, Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide by throwing himself off a cliff in May 2009. He was the target of an investigation into the payment by a wealthy shoe manufacturer of a million dollars to his wife and of five million dollars to the husband of one of his nieces.

In March 2004, Parliament passed an unprecedented impeachment motion that suspended Mr. Roh from office, but the Constitutional Court invalidated the procedure two months later.

Roh Tae-woo, elected after the departure of the autocrat Chun Doo-Hwan whom he had helped to come to power, ruled South Korea from 1988 to 1993. In 1996, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison for corruption and betrayal. He was amnestied two years later, and died of leukemia in November 2021 at the age of 88.

Faced with pro-democracy demonstrations, Chun Doo-hwan, nicknamed the “Butcher of Gwangju” for having ordered a bloody repression in this southwestern city when he came to power in 1980, handed over to Roh Tae-woo in 1987.

In 1996, he was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison, during the same trial as that of his successor Roh. He too was amnestied in 1998 after only two years behind bars. He also died of leukemia in November 2021, a few days after his successor Roh Tae-woo.

Dictator Park Chung-hee was shot in the head in October 1979 by his top intelligence officer after a banquet. Eleven years earlier, he had escaped an assassination attempt by a North Korean commando infiltrated into Seoul.

Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, then army generals, took advantage of the political confusion that followed to foment a coup d’état in December 1979. Mr. Chun became president in 1980 after the Gwangju massacre and after obtaining the resignation of new president Choi Kyu-ha.

President Yoon Bo-sun was overthrown in 1961 by a coup d’état, led by General Park Chung-hee, father of future President Park Geun-hye.

Park kept President Yoon Bo-sun in his post temporarily, then replaced him when he resigned in March 1962. He exercised authoritarian power until his assassination in 1979.

South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, elected in 1948, was forced to resign by a popular insurrection led by students in 1960, after attempting to extend his term through rigged elections. He went into exile in Hawaii (United States), where he died in 1965.