Do we like Yoon Suk Yeol?
Our score: 1 out of 10. A life sentence for leading an insurrection (under appeal), a final seven-year term, a long run of election-fraud claims, and no verified good deeds to set against it.
Yoon won the March 2022 presidential election as the People Power Party's candidate, and one of his big campaign pledges was to abolish the gender equality ministry. In 2024 he accepted the minister's resignation and left the job vacant, saying the ministry had done its job. Women's groups accused him of pandering to young male voters who resent feminism, and the opposition blocked the legal change needed to scrap it.
The story everyone knows: at 10.27pm on 3 December 2024 he declared martial law, and the National Assembly voted to rescind it within hours. On 19 February 2026 the Seoul Central District Court convicted him of leading an insurrection and sentenced him to life. The judges said sending troops into the Assembly amounted to “rioting”, and they weighed that he showed no remorse.
That wasn't his only conviction. In January 2026 a court sentenced him to five years for obstructing his arrest, fabricating official documents and skipping the legal process for martial law. After the sentence was raised on appeal, the Supreme Court upheld seven years on 9 July 2026, which makes it final. A separate election-law case brought an 18-month suspended sentence in July that is now on appeal.
On the harm test, the pattern is election conspiracy. Yoon said the election commission's systems could be manipulated and made that a reason for martial law, and the commission's chair said election fraud is impossible under the system and called the troop deployment unconstitutional. In his 2025 impeachment defence he repeated a claim that North Korea interfered in elections, and the reporting says no supporting evidence has emerged. Add the push to scrap the gender ministry, and a university fact-check centre found 75 per cent of his disputed statements were falsehoods or half-truths.
The recent chapter is the appeal. Prosecutors renewed their demand for the death penalty on 29 October, arguing his actions threatened democracy. His lawyers say he meant to warn an opposition-controlled parliament, not to set up authoritarian rule, and Yoon reportedly denied seeking a long-term dictatorship. Where you land depends on whether you read it as a warning or a power grab, and the first court has already chosen.
The good-stuff list is honestly thin. Nothing we opened shows charity work, kind acts or standing up for others at a cost to himself, and his defenders' case is simply that martial law was a short alarm bell, a line the courts have so far rejected. Supporters can point to policy wins in their own telling, but that isn't the same as treating people well.