SEOUL — A paradox in the four-month-long drama that began with Yoon Suk-yeol’s attempt at imposing martial law over South Korea and ended with his ouster as president is that his People Power Party gained popularity.

By the time the court upheld Mr. Yoon’s impeachment after more than two months of hearings plus a month-long delay while the eight judges are believed to have wrangled on whether to make it unanimous, 44 percent of those polled by Korea’s National Benchmark Survey said, no, they would not respect a ruling against Mr. Yoon.

Yes, that left a majority who would respect whatever the court decreed. But the fact that so many Koreans are unhappy shows the deep divisions among them. “The judges should be tried for treason,” shouted a speaker high on a sound truck addressing thousands of right-wingers crowding the main avenue through central Seoul the day after the ruling. “The judges are criminals.” 

Far from dying down with the downfall of Mr. Yoon, emotions are flaring as he, along with a number of other former members of his regime, faces trial for “insurrection.” That’s for attempting to repress the left-leaning Democratic Party, or Minju, by shutting down the assembly and investigating election “cheating.”

Mr. Yoon’s martial law decree, which the Minju-dominated assembly quickly voted down despite soldiers and police blocking the doors, cost him the presidency and may send him to prison if a lower district court finds him guilty.  In the rough topsy-turvy world of Korean politics, however, Mr. Yoon may go down as a hero and a martyr in the eyes of rightist extremists who view the Minju legislators as leftists in the thrall of “Chinese” and eager for a deal with North Korea that would expose the South to attack by the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un,

 “The real problem is going to be much longer lasting, and that’s the extreme polarization we have at the moment in South Korean politics,” said a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, Jeffrey Robertson  in an interview with Anthony Kuhn of NPR. “So we have individuals on the far left and individuals on the far right who will never see eye to eye.” 

In the aftermath of the constitutional court decision, Minju adherents are reveling in what they see as the victory of good over evil, the salvation of the democratic system that emerged in 1987. That’s when Korea adopted its “democracy constitution” that provided for the election by popular vote of a new president every five years. 

“If such a hallowed institution fails to bring to justice a president who desecrated our laws and Constitution and betrayed the public’s trust, its days will be numbered,” thundered an editorial writer, Park Hyun, in the leftist newspaper Hankyoreh.  “To let a man like that return to power would be the ultimate betrayal of Korea’s democracy. Korea stands at a crossroads between backsliding to the days of dictatorship and pressing forward to a stronger democracy.” 

With a snap election for a new president coming up by June 3, the obvious front-runner is the Minju leader, Lee Jae-myung, who lost to Mr. Yoon by less than one percent in the 2022 election. Mr Lee, however, is a flawed figure, involved in political and business scandals as a province governor and city mayor.

Against him, the People Power Party must choose among a number of aspirants ranging from the mayor of Seoul to members of the cabinet appointed by Mr. Yoon. A National Benchmark Survey, conducted before the court ruled on Mr. Yoon’s ouister,  showed 37 percent saying they would choose the Minju candidate versus 36 percent for the People Power Party’s candidate and 21 percent undecided.