South Korea’s Acting President Han Duck-soo Courts Controversy

With degrees in economics from the Seoul National University and Harvard, Han Duck-soo, South Korea’s acting president, has led a comfortable high-ranking government official’s life since 1970. Prominent among his numerous positions were stints as prime minister under former presidents Roh Moo-hyun and Yoon Suk-yeol. He was never conspicuous – nobody knew of his political leanings, and he never found himself at the receiving end of public opprobrium. He always quietly worked for the government regardless of who was governing – two dictators, and numerous presidents, both liberal and conservative, afterward.

Yet Han has been in quite a pickle lately. He’s under police investigations for allegedly having prior knowledge of Yoon’s unconstitutional declaration of martial law. Han denies the allegation, but if he really did know, he could be complicit if he was in a position to prevent or at least try to persuade Yoon to reconsider the martial law declaration. He has also come under much public limelight and scrutiny and criticism for his behavior following Yoon’s impeachment in December.

When the National Assembly (NA) passed the impeachment motion against Yoon on December 14, 2024, Han, as the prime minister, took over the helm. He himself, however, was impeached two weeks later for refusing to confirm the three Constitutional Court justices nominated by the legislature and for his alleged involvement in Yoon’s self-coup. Presidential confirmation of the National Assembly’s nominees is just a procedural formality, always automatically done. But Han maintained that he shouldn’t be freely exercising presidential authority as acting president.

This statement, isolated from context, is correct: the acting president was never elected and should therefore exercise restraint, acting just maintain the status quo, instead of exercising powers they were never given by an electoral mandate. In terms of the National Assembly’s nominations, however, Han’s refusal was not only unprecedented but also unjustifiable as he deliberately thwarted the legislature’s constitutional right to appoint a third of the Constitutional Court justices. It seemed obvious that he just didn’t want the incoming left-leaning justices to rule in favor of Yoon’s impeachment. (Han’s temporary successor as acting president, Choi Sang-mok, approved of two of the three nominees, leaving the most liberal-leaning justice off the bench.)

In late February, the Constitutional Court ruled that withholding confirmation by the president, let alone the acting president, of the National Assembly nominations was unconstitutional.

Still, on March 24, the court dismissed the impeachment of Han for lack of evidence on his alleged part in Yoon’s self-coup. It also ruled that, although Han’s refusal to confirm the National Assembly-nominated justices infringed upon the legislature’s constitutional right, this didn’t constitute a “grievous unconstitutionality” – a threshold that must be met for impeachment.

The controversy over judicial nominations didn’t end there. When Yoon was officially dismissed from the presidency by the Constitutional Court on April 4, Han backtracked on his previous stance of not abusing the acting president’s authority. He appointed two justices to replace those who terms ended on April 18. Han’s position had changed: “There is no distinction between what acting presidents or elected presidents can do,” he told the Financial Times in an interview published on April 19.

There were two issues with Han’s appointment. First, there is a legal problem. It was the president’s turn to fill those seats, but the elected president was impeached and then deposed for his crimes, thereby losing the popular trust and mandate. But Han is still carrying out Yoon’s will as his personal delegate. Han’s appointment was meant to tilt the Constitutional Court, which now has a balanced political spectrum, rightward.

Legal scholars denounced Han’s move as potentially amounting to a second insurrection by usurping power that nobody has (for now) and illegally packing the nation’s highest court. On April 16, the Constitutional Court suspended Han’s appointment of the justices.

Second, there were serious questions over the merits of Han’s picks – to be precise, Yoon’s picks. Lee Wan-kyu is Yoon’s old friend and a fellow career prosecutor. Yoon appointed Lee as minister of government legislation, where Lee bent over backwards in supplying distorted interpretations of statutes to justify the Yoon administration’s various shenanigans. He evacuated his family to the United States shortly before Yoon’s declaration of martial law, and he met up with other ministers shortly after to discuss how to shield themselves from the consequences of the failed self-coup.

Lee has never been a judge, and he is an extension of Yoon. Giving him a seat on the Constitutional Court is an affront to the effort South Korea has put into restoring its democracy and rule of law.

Han’s other pick, Ham Sang-hoon, also raised eyebrows. Ham has a record of outrageous legal reasoning and rulings. For instance, he demoted a prison sentence to a fine for a pedophile who lured a 15-year-old girl and tried to rape her. He also overturned university dismissals of professors for their sexual harassment of female students.

Lee’s and Ham’s appointments serve no public good. Instead, they will stack the organ of the country’s highest legal interpretation with Yoon’s allies.

At first, nobody expected Han to harbor any personal allegiance toward Yoon. That’s why the National Assembly initially approved Yoon’s appointment of Han as prime minister. While Yoon was busy packing his Cabinet with former prosecutors and friends, the legislature welcomed Yoon’s nomination of Han, who had proven himself to be a qualified, neutral bureaucrat.

But now it’s clear that he’s staunchly pro-Yoon. His adherence to Yoon’s legacy, even after the former president was disgraced and impeached, may say more about Han’s spiritual rather than his political faith. Those who know Han and his wife on a personal level say that they frequently pay visits to shamans for their advice – which Yoon and his wife did a lot, too. This commonality could have been the source of the Yoon-Han bond, which defies political and practical considerations.

Thanks to Han’s loyalty to Yoon, the ruling People Power Party (PPP) wanted Han to run in the PPP primary for the upcoming June presidential election. Han was leading in some polls as the most desirable PPP candidate for president. Han kept mum about his possibility of running for the PPP nomination, and the window for registering came and went without him tossing his hat in the ring.

However, his office leaked part of Han’s phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on April 8. Trump asked Han if he was running for the presidency, and Han said he was debating it. In the Financial Times interview, Han gave a similar answer, saying he had “not yet” made a decision on whether to run.

If Han does want to run for president, the most likely scenario would be for him to enter the race as an independent candidate and gather up as many of his fans as possible. He’s been in the government for over 50 years, making him one of South Korea’s longest-serving government officials. He’s a household name. This should be enough to rally some voters to his fold, especially those who dislike the PPP’s eventual candidate (to be selected on May 3) and Lee Jae-myung, the opposition Democratic Party leader, but are willing to trust Han as someone with deep knowledge of the government.

Han could then merge his camp with a PPP candidate closer to election day in order to maximize the synergy effect of combining mild conservatives and swing voters on Han’s part with right-wing and far-right voters on the PPP’s part. The PPP has suggested it’s open to this approach, with several high-ranking party members floating the idea of a unity ticket to defeat Lee Jae-myung.

But from the perspective of the national interest, Han had better focus on governing the country as acting president for the next month and a half, rather than resigning to campaign for presidency – and disrupting the relative political stability that has followed Yoon’s removal from office.