Seminar: Constitutional Questions and Responses to Recent Martial Law Crisis in South Korea

Emergency martial law declared by the South Korean President on 3 December 2024 was lifted within six hours following a swift response by the National Assembly, but it brought the country back into an unpredicted, but not unfamiliar constitutional crisis. As a prompt response, the President has since been facing impeachment trial and charges of insurrection, which seems that the rule of law works, and the crisis is coped well. On the other hand, however, it has posed various constitutional questions not only about interpretive and institutional matters but also on how to defend constitutional democracy against outright disrespect for it. In this seminar, these questions will be introduced and discussed together.

Jeong-In Yun has expertise in constitutional law, specifically in South Korea. Yun is a Research Professor at the Legal Research Institute, Korea University and a Distinguished Senior Research Fellow at the Constitutional Studies program, the University of Texas Austin. She is affiliated with the Party Law Research Center at KU and serves as an editor for recognised domestic and international journals. Her research interests mostly lie in constitutional law & politics, constitutional theory, and comparative constitutional law. She is a contributor to the Hart series ‘Asian Comparative Constitutional Law’ and a co-editor of the book ‘The Language of Comparative Constitutional Law – Questioning Hegemonies’ forthcoming in 2025.