Yoon walked out. Will he survive impeachment?

Looks like there’s nothing on my bingo card. So don’t ask me about whether President Yoon walking out of custody before the court ruling was on it.

The sight of an impeached president—charged with declaring martial law—returning to his official residence while waving to cheering crowds was so surreal that I felt compelled to create a “Directed by David Lynch” generator just to make these images feel more realistic.

However, Mr Yoon’s release has less to do with the core allegations behind his impeachment and more with procedural sloppiness resulting from Minjoo’s prosecutor reforms. From the outset, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) was questioned about its jurisdiction over insurrection charges, as this crime isn’t explicitly mentioned in its founding legislation. The CIO argued it could investigate under “associated crimes” of authority abuse.

Well, the court disagreed.

“It is appropriate to cancel the detention to ensure procedural clarity and eliminate doubts about the investigation’s legality,” the court said. “If criminal proceedings continued with these unresolved issues, it could become grounds for reversal in higher courts.”

Could this lead to Mr Yoon’s victory at the Constitutional Court? The silver lining is that the CIO was so incompetent that there’s been little investigation done by them. The police and prosecutors, who have clearer jurisdiction over insurrection charges, did most of the investigative work.

Thus I still believe the Constitutional Court will uphold Mr Yoon’s impeachment.

The irony, however, is striking. Minjoo claimed they wanted to limit prosecutors’ power, yet the Moon administration wielded that power so extensively that its top prosecutor became the conservatives’ favorite candidate. As the Moon administration ended, Minjoo rushed to finally “reform” the prosecution service. Critics warned the haphazard reforms would create legal loopholes, but Minjoo proceeded anyway. The CIO was born as a result—its legal fiascos, too.

I suspected Minjoo was preemptively undermining potential investigations by the next administration. If that was truly their intention, it worked brilliantly.

But none of them could have anticipated that Mr Yoon would be the first major beneficiary.