Checking suspicions

President Yoon Suk Yeol appeared before the Constitutional Court of Korea for his impeachment trial.

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Yoon told justices, "Before the martial law was declared, there were already doubts about the fairness of elections. (So sending troops to the National Election Commission on Dec. 3) was not to uncover election fraud itself, but we wanted to see if we could check what system was being operated."

This was a denial of the National Assembly's position that election fraud is a conspiracy theory put forward as a retrospective justification for the martial law declaration. The need to resolve suspicions about the election system was one of the two main justifications for the martial law decree that he set out in a statement to the nation on Dec. 12.

The other was an effective paralysis of state administration caused by the main opposition party's abusive use of legislation, impeachment and special counsel bills, and its excessive cut in the budget for Yoon's agenda and discretionary spending for things like undercover investigations.