Korea after the verdict: the election that follows

The constitutional court removed the suspended president on the first days of April, and the country that had waited through the winter for the decision began, within hours, the campaign that the removal triggers. The court’s announcement, read by the chief justice with the formality that the institution maintains, ended the suspension and the presidency at the same time, and the removal set in motion the machinery that the constitution provides: the election within sixty days, the parties reconfiguring around the new field, and the interim government conducting the state’s business while the campaign runs. The verdict closed the legal case that the martial-law night had opened, and the closing opened the political case that the election will conduct.

The court’s decision was the part of the week that the country’s two camps had been preparing for with the discipline that the winter’s waiting had taught. The supporters of the removal gathered at the squares that the country’s democratic history has made sacred, with the celebration that the decision warranted in their reading of the night; the supporters of the removed president accepted the decision with the disappointment that the legal process had left no appeal, and the acceptance, the commentators noted, was the system’s achievement: the verdict, whichever way it went, would be the end of the argument’s legal phase, and the country’s institutions had held the line that the argument required.

The political consequences of the removal are the part that the campaign has already begun to arrange. The ruling party, the party of the removed president, must now contest the election under the shadow of the night and the verdict, with the leadership in flux and the voters’ judgement shaped by the events of the past months; the opposition, the coalition that had carried the impeachment, must convert the removal into the mandate that the election will test, with the governing of the country now within reach and the voters’ attention turning from the verdict to the management of the economy and the security. The field is being set, and the setting is the campaign’s first act.

The economic dimension of the transition is the part that the markets have already begun to price. The removal resolved the uncertainty that the suspension had maintained, and the resolution released the activity that the winter’s waiting had suppressed: the investments that had been postponed, the policy decisions that had been deferred, the business planning that had been conducted around the political risk. The election campaign will now run alongside the economic management, with the interim government’s handling of the economy and the candidates’ programmes providing the material that the voters will weigh; the economic effects of the transition will be visible in the quarter’s data, and the data will be read through the lens of the campaign.

The election that the verdict has triggered will be held in early June, and the campaign will be the shortest and the most consequential of the country’s recent history. The central question of the campaign will be the one that the winter had postponed: whether the country’s politics, having removed the president for the night of martial law, can now govern itself through the challenges that the year presents, the economy, the security, the relations with the neighbours and the allies. The verdict removed the president; the election will choose the future, and the choice will be the country’s answer to the question that the night raised and the winter answered with the law. Korea after the verdict is a country running toward an election, and the running is the healthy part of the story.