What Next For South Korea After Court Removes Yoon Suk Yeol From Office

After months of political turmoil triggered by his botched declaration of martial law, South Korea's Constitutional Court stripped president Yoon Suk Yeol of office Friday, triggering fresh elections.

AFP takes a look at what will happen next:

What happens to Yoon?

The Constitutional Court verdict immediately strips Yoon of all powers and privileges -- including his security detail -- and he is obliged to leave the presidential compound.

He loses executive immunity and has to face a long, complex criminal trial on insurrection charges, with jail time or even the death penalty if found guilty.

While in office, Yoon vetoed multiple efforts by lawmakers to probe his wife Kim Keon Hee over a series of scandals.

"With Yoon out of power, the prosecution is set to investigate not only him but Kim thoroughly," said Yoo Jung-hoon, an attorney and political commentator.

When are elections?

A presidential election must be held within 60 days.

The first week of June is most likely, according to local media, and authorities will announce the exact date in the coming days.

Unlike a regular poll, where a president-elect has a two-month transition period, the winner will be inaugurated the following day.

For the time being, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is running the government as the acting president, a job he resumed last week after the Constitutional Court threw out his own impeachment.

Who is the front-runner?

Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung will "likely (be) the next president", said Karl Friedhoff at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs told AFP, echoing other experts.

As the head of the Democratic Party, Lee has a 34 percent support rating according to the latest Gallup poll.

His party already controls the National Assembly. If Lee wins, his party will "be able to pursue and pass all of the reforms and laws it wishes", Friedhoff said.

A former child factory worker who suffered an industrial accident and dropped out of school as a teenager, Lee built his career on his rags-to-riches story.

He narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election but staged a political comeback as leader of the main opposition, despite a career shadowed by legal troubles, including ongoing trials.

But he gained fresh momentum last week when an appeals court overturned an election law conviction against him, which has given Lee "a significant advantage", said Lee Jun-han, a politics professor at Incheon National University.

Anyone else running?

In distinct second place is Labour Minister Kim Moon-soo.

Polling around nine percent, he leads a pack of challengers from Yoon's People Power Party, which also includes former party chief Han Dong-hoon.

Kim shot to public attention in the aftermath of Yoon's martial law debacle, when he declined to bow to the public for failing to prevent the attempted suspension of civilian rule.

The gesture earned him praise from conservatives as a "principled and strong" politician.

Kim, 73, began his career as a leftist student activist and labour organiser during South Korea's authoritarian era.

But he has said "the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the miserable realities of those regimes revealed how inhumane and anti-social their system was", inspiring him to join the conservatives.

What's next?

Despite his disgrace, Yoon "did succeed in mobilising a coherent political base, particularly among far-right groups," Ji Yeon Hong, a political science professor at University of Michigan, told AFP.

"This movement... is more structural and ideological," she said, warning that this aspect of Yoon's legacy might outlast him.

Besides healing deep political divides at home, South Korea's next president will face a raft of challenges -- from reviving a sluggish economy to engaging with US President Donald Trump's administration.

"One of the most pressing issues will be how to maintain a strong alliance with the US and uphold the trilateral alliance with the US and Japan," Gi-wook Shin, a sociology professor at Stanford University said.

Trump has also proven himself willing to upend Washington's traditional approach to the nuclear-armed North.

In his first term, he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for high-profile summits, which ultimately collapsed.

"Relations with North Korea must not be neglected," said Vladimir Tikhonov, a Korea studies professor at the University of Oslo.

"For the newly elected South Korean president, navigating these complex diplomatic challenges will be a top priority."

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