South Korea is more polarised than ever

This past week, eagle-eyed observers of South Korean politics – not to mention the South Korean public – were supposed to have been put out of their respective miseries. The fate of the embattled South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, would be made known, and South Korea could regroup and plan its next steps at a time of regional and global instability.

Instead, we are still waiting for the country’s constitutional court to decide the President’s destiny. Swiftness has certainly not been a priority for the eight judges. As protests in support of and against Yoon continue to line the streets of Seoul, one thing can be said with certainty: whatever the outcome, the political polarisation within South Korean society isn’t going away anytime soon.

For a country that only became a full-fledged democracy in 1987, political factionalism, present in pre-democracy South Korea for so long, remained rife even after its democratic transition.