“The whole situation just naturally evolved in a way that Yoon Suk Yeol became the symbol of this movement of freedom and liberal democracy, vis-a-vis communism, socialism, and tyranny,” said Lee Jung-hoon, a conservative legal scholar and dean at Seoul’s Yonsei University.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is in court for a hearing where his lawyers are contesting his arrest on a criminal charge alleging he was orchestrating a rebellion when he imposed martial law.

Impeached president’s lawyers argue he had ‘no intention to paralyse the country’ by imposing martial law last December