A Resignation Too Late

As South Korea's presidential election approaches on June 3, former President Yoon Suk Yeol formally left the conservative People Power Party on Saturday and urged voters to rally behind the party's embattled presidential candidate, Kim Moon-soo.

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Yoon's departure came not from a moment of clarity or political integrity but from growing unrest within the People Power Party, which has struggled to reconcile its democratic image with a former leader tainted by constitutional disgrace.

On April 4, Yoon was removed from office by the Constitutional Court for his role in the Dec. 3 martial law declaration fiasco. His departure from the People Power Party, if it was ever appropriate, should have followed that verdict immediately. Instead, it came only after internal calls for his expulsion grew impossible to ignore. Even then, it was not the party but Yoon himself who announced his resignation – a decision that appears more like a tactical retreat than a moral reckoning.