The impeachment trial that Korea watched in silence

The constitutional court in Seoul continued its deliberations on the impeachment of the suspended president, and the country watched the proceedings with the particular patience that the procedure demands. The arguments were filed, the witnesses were heard, and the televised sessions drew the audiences that the daytime programming of the networks never expected, with the ratings peaking at the moments that the legal correspondents had learned to flag. The case is legal in form and political in substance, and the country’s silence around it, the absence of the mass mobilisations that the past decades of Korean politics would have produced, is the loudest part of the story.

The legal mechanics of the case are the part that the coverage outside the country has struggled to explain, because the mechanics are particular to the country’s constitution. The impeachment of the president requires the vote of the national assembly and the confirmation of the constitutional court, with the court required to decide within a fixed period and the suspension taking effect immediately upon the assembly’s vote; the suspended president has spent the months since the vote outside the presidential residence, and the court’s deliberations have proceeded through the winter with the formality that the institution’s reputation demands. The court’s decision, when it comes, will be final, and the finality is the feature that the country’s politics have been organized around since the vote.

The political context of the case is the part that the court cannot see and cannot ignore. The martial law declaration that produced the impeachment was the most dramatic moment in the country’s recent political history, the night that the president ordered the military into the streets and the assembly voted, within hours, to reject the order and to begin the process of removing him; the aftermath has been conducted in the language of the law, and the language has contained the country’s divisions, which remain as deep as they were in the hours after the declaration. The court’s decision will be read, by both sides, as the verdict on the night itself, and the reading will be the court’s burden.

The public mood around the case is the part that the foreign coverage has found most surprising. The rallies that the country’s politics usually produce have been smaller than the precedents would suggest, and the surveys show the country divided without the intensity that the division would once have generated; the explanation offered by the commentators is the exhaustion of the years of crisis, the familiarity with the constitutional procedures, and the confidence, surprising in its own way, that the institutions will do the work. The confidence is the unusual part, and the confidence, the pollsters note, is the product of the country’s long experience with constitutional politics, which has trained the public to wait for the court rather than to demand the outcome.

The court’s decision will arrive in the spring, within the period that the constitution requires, and the arrival will be the largest event of the Korean political year regardless of the outcome. The restoration of the suspended president would produce one set of consequences; the removal would produce another, the election within sixty days, the reorganisation of the parties, the new campaign that the country would run in the summer. The country has watched the trial in silence, and the silence is the recognition that the case’s resolution will be followed by the arguments that the resolution will not settle; the court will decide the legal question, and the political questions, the questions about the night of the declaration and the direction of the country, will be decided by the politics that the decision will open. The silence is the waiting, and the waiting is nearly over.