The unravelling of Yoon Suk Yeol: South Korea's 'stubborn and hot-tempered' martial law president

5 minutes ago Share Save Jean Mackenzie Seoul correspondent Share Save

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On Friday, South Korea's Constitutional Court ruled Yoon Suk Yeol had abused his power by declaring martial law last December, and permanently removed him from office. Before that, South Korea was not somewhere you might expect a military takeover - a peaceful and proud democracy, admired across the globe for its K-dramas and technological innovation. So, when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, ordering his army to seize control, he stunned the country and the world. Everyone, from regular Koreans to world leaders, was left with the same burning question: What was he thinking? Yoon underestimated the resistance from the public, his military and members of parliament. He cancelled the order after just six hours. The BBC has spoken to some of those closest to the president – his friends, confidantes, and political aides - to understand what drove this once successful and principled prosecutor, famed for his belief in right and wrong, to trigger an authoritarian takeover: a decision that would upend his country, tarnish its international reputation and destroy his career.

From a young age, Yoon was "obsessed with winning", his oldest friend, Chulwoo Lee, told me in the weeks after martial law. "Once he decides something, he drives it forward in a very extreme way." Mr Lee was in the same primary school class as Yoon. The pair later went on to study law together, before Yoon became a prosecutor. At school, he was the biggest boy in the class, Mr Lee said, which meant he always sat at the back so as not block the other pupils' view. He was popular and clever, Mr Lee added, keen to counter a myth that Yoon struggled academically because it took him nine attempts to pass the bar exam.

Yoon (centre) on his primary school graduation day with this childhood friend Chulwoo Lee (bottom right)

Yoon attended college in the early 1980s, when South Korea's military dictator Chun Doo-hwan ruled the country using martial law. When the military massacred protesters in the city of Gwangju, the nation was horrified. Angry students took to the streets, but according to Lee, Yoon "didn't participate much". "He wasn't particularly interested in the student movement or politics," Lee said, but he did have "a strong belief in justice". Mr Lee remembers walking through campus one day, when they saw a girl being interrogated by two plain clothes policemen. Yoon immediately started shouting at them. "Because he was so big and angry, the officers were frightened. They practically ran away," he said. "His temper was uncontrollable."

Yoon (second on the left) on a train with his university friends in 1979

'I do not owe my loyalty to anyone'

Decades later, Mr Lee would find himself on the receiving end of his friend's temper. As a state prosecutor, Yoon cemented his reputation as an explosive character who was almost obsessively guided by an innate sense of right and wrong. But over the years, Lee worried his investigations were becoming unnecessarily aggressive. When he called Yoon to tell him so, "he threw the telephone across the room" in anger. By then, Yoon was already famous, having investigated the intelligence service in 2013 for corruption, against the orders of his boss. He was suspended from his job, but according to Mr Lee, who defended him, the public viewed him as brave for defying political pressure. When testifying, Yoon famously declared: "I do not owe my loyalty to anyone." This was evident again when he went on to prosecute and jail South Korea's impeached conservative president Park Geun-hye in 2018, making him a darling of the left. It won him the job of chief prosecutor for the left-leaning government at the time. But rather than curry favour, he launched an investigation into one of its ministers. It was then that Mr Lee phoned to warn his friend "he was crossing a bridge of no return", which incensed Yoon. The pair did not talk for over a year. But this dogged, non-partisan approach won him support. "I was rooting for him because he always did the right thing rather than what his boss told him to do. I felt there should be more people like him," said one friend, Shin*, who asked to stay anonymous. Shin, who refers to Yoon as his older brother - a term of affection in South Korea - claims he was different to many prosecutors at the time, who sold their influence by marrying into rich and powerful families. But by investigating the government, Yoon had picked a fight he couldn't win, and he was pushed out of his job as chief prosecutor. Such side-switching set him up as a hero and villain to both sides of the politician divide, giving him a unique appeal. Still, the decision to run for president was not an easy one, Shin said. The pair met regularly to brainstorm a game plan. They worried about Yoon's lack of political connections. "If you've been a politician your whole life you have people backing you. Without these allies, Yoon knew he was going to be a very lonely president," Shin said.

Lurch to the right

"I greatly regret choosing him as our candidate", Yoon's campaign strategist Kim Keun-sik admitted to me in the aftermath of martial law. Kim was initially enamoured by Yoon's principled approach to the law, but said he quickly grew concerned. "He didn't listen to any of our advice. He only did as he pleased - he was stubborn to the core." He would make decisions spontaneously, in private, preferring to take advice from the friends he went drinking with, Kim said. "We kept having to clear up his mess." Yet despite these warning signs, he was selected as the presidential candidate for South Korea's conservative People Power Party. "We knew he was a risk, but we thought he gave us the best chance of beating our opponent," Kim said.

Getty Images Yoon on the presidential campaign trail after being selected by the conservative People Power Party

After being endorsed by the party, Yoon's politics lurched rapidly to the right. According to his friends, he was bombarded by very right-wing politicians and journalists who "planted ideas in his mind." He developed an extreme hostility towards the opposition party, believing it had links to North Korea. "I felt very sad, because he was changing," said Shin. "He wanted to win, and the wrong advice went to his head. He started to think he was engaged in a war." By now, Yoon's schoolfriend Lee was alarmed. "He came into politics with such a wide spectrum of support. I hoped he would unite the country. But he moved so quickly to the right and was losing support almost every day." The problem, Lee said, was that those on the far right were fanatically supportive. The more backing Yoon lost, the more he believed he had to rely on these loyalists, and the further right he slid. It was a self-defeating cycle. Yoon won the election by the narrowest margin in South Korea's history – 0.7%. After his victory, Mr Lee messaged his school friend to cut ties, concerned about the direction he would take the country. "I congratulated him and said I would see him after he had served his term."

A prosecutorial president

By the time he entered office, Yoon had not only alienated his oldest friend, but many moderate voters, and he had set himself up for a clash with the powerful opposition, that controlled the parliament. He brought his prosecutorial instincts into politics. Yet the very traits that made him a formidable prosecutor would hamper him as president. "Usually politicians with no experience listen to their aides a lot, but Yoon wanted to take the wheel," said one of his political advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The aide, who worked in the president's office, said Yoon would argue his points "loudly and forcefully", making it "uncomfortable" to voice an alternative opinion. In the early days of his presidency, most of his team pressed him to sit down with the opposition leader, to resolve their differences and find a way to govern effectively, but Yoon refused, the aide said. "He viewed the opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, as a criminal." Instead, Yoon sided with a small faction within the presidential office who wanted him to "fight the party head on". Fairly quickly, those pushing for dialogue either left or were pushed out, leaving Yoon surrounded by people who agreed with him, and lower-level bureaucrats, too scared to speak out.

Getty Images Yoon made it "uncomfortable" to voice dissenting opinions, a political aide told the BBC

This bullish leadership led him to make a strategic miscalculation – he overlooked the need to be liked by voters. He pushed ahead with unpopular policies, and refused to apologise for his wife, who had antagonised the public by accepting luxury gifts. "He didn't care enough what people thought of him; whether they thought he was doing a good job or not," said his friend Shin, who remembers struggling to convince Yoon to dress smartly in the early days of the campaign. Yoon feared that pandering to the public might prevent him achieving his goals, and hoped people would eventually recognise he was doing a good job, Shin explained. The opposite turned out to be true. Two years into his term, his party suffered a bruising defeat in parliamentary elections, handing the opposition party an even bigger majority. Yoon was left hamstrung, unable to enact his agenda. "It's arrogant to say you don't want to be popular, that you don't want approval ratings," said Shin, labelling this Yoon's "biggest mistake". "He's a funny, likeable person. He could have been a popular president."

Punishing the opposition

Perversely, Yoon seemed untroubled by his party's election defeat. "He said he could still give executive orders and accomplish a lot. He told me not to worry", said Linton, a conservative politician and one of the president's close confidantes at the time. According to various testimonies, this was about the time Yoon's martial law plot began to take shape. By now, he appeared to be fully immersed in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, peddled by influential far-right YouTubers whose content he was consuming. He believed the opposition was taking orders from North Korea, or at least those who idolised the regime, though he never presented any proof. Linton said Yoon talked repeatedly of how the opposition party was being run by Marxists, once comparing them to the Chinese Communist Party. He thought that, if in power, they would turn South Korea into an authoritarian communist state and bankrupt the country. "I got this speech at least 15 to 20 times." The stronger the opposition got, the more headstrong Yoon became, using his presidential veto to block parliament's decisions. In return the assembly slashed his budgets, impeached an unprecedented number of his political appointees, and tried to investigate his wife for corruption. According to Linton, Yoon was "livid". "They are trying to bring me down, the government down, and end our democracy - and we can't put up with it," he told him. On 3 December, he finally snapped.

Getty Images When President Yoon announced martial law, people surrounded the parliament to oppose the authoritarian takeover

Eli Lilly boss: 'Tariffs are pivotal moment and hard to come back from'

David Ricks, the Chief Executive of Eli Lilly – which is based in Indianapolis – told the BBC that whilst he understood the intentions, he was doubtful if it could succeed in both clawing back US manufacturing jobs, and raising hundreds of billions of revenue for the American government.

He also added that the UK's status as a pharmaceutical and life sciences power was in decline.

While Mr Ricks said he thought it may encourage some companies to relocate some manufacturing, he was doubtful it would also create hundreds of billions in additional revenue for the US promised by President Trump.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, David Ricks described it as a watershed moment in US economic history, "I think it's a pivot in US policy and it feels like it'll be hard to come back from here."

The boss of US pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly says there is no looking back from Donald Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from the rest of the world.

Eli Lilly is a pharmaceutical giant worth $750 billion with 50,000 employees across the US, Europe and Asia.

Because of their complex supply chains and the often life saving products they make, pharmaceutical companies along with microchip makers were temporarily exempted from the tariffs imposed on all products imported into the US.

But Mr Ricks seemed in little doubt that tariffs would eventually hit and that would have damaging consequences for investment in new medicines.

He explained that drug prices were essentially capped in Europe and the US which meant the impact of tariffs would be felt elsewhere.

"We cant breach those agreements so we have to eat the cost of the tariffs and make trade offs within our own companies. Typically that will be in reduction of staff or research and development and I predict R&D will come first. That's a disappointing outcome."

Mr Ricks said he did not support the imposition of tariffs but understood its intention and respected Mr Trump's political mandate.

"We don't support tariffs, to be clear. In pharma, about 70% of global R&D takes place in the United States. So we're creating the next generation of breakthroughs and cures. But the production is heavily weighted outside the US. And that's not unique to our industry. It happened with electronics and software and other things".

"So I think what this administration is saying is we want both. We want the means of production and we want the research and development intellectual property generation."

Eli Lilly are in the process of building a new additional £800 million facility in Limerick in Ireland where they employ over 3,000 people. Mr Ricks said that development would proceed.

"There's plenty of demand outside the US so we'd have to look at the flow of goods because we wouldn't want to have to pay tariffs if we didn't need to but I think for the moment that's fine."

But Mr Ricks said that its investment in the UK had been in decline and warned that slow regulation and poor uptake of new medicines threatened the UK's reputation as an important life sciences hub and that patients were missing out on new advances in medicine.

Mr Ricks said he delivered some "candid" comments to senior ministers including the Prime Minister, Health Secretary and Business Secretary.

"The UK's advantage is slipping. If you look at the numbers there is disinvestment in research and development. It's been on a steady decline."

So is the UK complacent when it thinks of itself as a life sciences super power?

"That's one way to put it."

Mr Ricks said countries like Germany spend nearly double of their health budget on medicines.

"The UK is not a large market. But what it could be is an exceptional market. You need three things to make our industry work. A strong intellectual property system, and the UK is quite good. You need a regulator that's timely efficient and predictable - pretty good there as well but most importantly you need a commercial market that rewards innovation - and here there's been significant backsliding".

Who might buy TikTok as ban deadline looms? Amazon joins bidders

1 hour ago Share Save Lily Jamali BBC tech correspondent, San Francisco Share Save

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President Donald Trump says he is "very close" to brokering a deal to find a buyer for TikTok, which faces a US ban if its Chinese owner does not sell the app by the weekend. A bipartisan law passed by Congress last year mandates TikTok's Chinese parent company, ByteDance, sell the app. The platform 'went dark' for a day in January in the US after the law took effect, until Trump intervened and delayed the ban until 5 April. The US government has said TikTok poses a threat to national security because Chinese authorities might access its vast trove of user data, which Beijing denies.

Who might buy TikTok?

Speaking on Air Force One on Thursday, Trump said "multiple investors" were closing in on a deal. He also suggested the US could offer a deal where China agrees to approve a TikTok sale in exchange for relief from US tariffs on Chinese imports. Several potential buyers have cropped up in reports. Amazon has put in a last-minute offer to the White House to acquire TikTok, according to the BBC's US partner CBS. Amazon declined to comment. Trump has said he would be open to selling TikTok to Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, as well as Elon Musk, although the latter said he had no intention of buying. Other potential buyers include billionaire Frank McCourt, together with Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary - a celebrity investor on Shark Tank, the US version of Dragons' Den. Alexis Ohanian, who co-founded Reddit, said in a post on X last month that he had joined Mr McCourt's bid. The biggest YouTuber in the world Jimmy Donaldson - AKA MrBeast - has also said he's looking to buy TikTok as part of a group of investors. Tim Stokely, the British founder of OnlyFans, has also to offered to buy TikTok under his recently re-launched company, Zoop. Computing giant Microsoft, private equity giant Blackstone, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and search engine Perplexity AI are also reportedly in the running for a stake. The White House has reportedly considered an option whereby ByteDance would keep ownership of TikTok's algorithm, but lease it to a new entity operating the video-sharing app within the US. Buyers circle and rumours swirl as TikTok sale deadline looms

Getty Images MrBeast is the most popular YouTuber in the world with more than 300m subscribers

If there is no deal, will TikTok be banned?

If no deal is reached by 5 April, the app could once again face a US ban and be pulled from app stores. Trump signed an executive order in January, which only delayed TikTok's ban by 75 days. His order did not overturn the ban on the app passed into law by Congress and upheld by the US Supreme Court. Trump could allow the law to stand, but ask the Department of Justice to continue to ignore it. The government would effectively be telling Apple and Google they will not be punished for allowing people to download TikTok on to their devices. TikTok returned to Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store in February, after the companies were reportedly told they would not face consequences for hosting it. Trump has also said he would "probably" extend the deadline, if needed .

Getty Images President Donald Trump has said he would "like to see TikTok remain alive".

What other platforms could TikTok users use instead?

Watch: Can young Americans live without TikTok?

'Nothing we can't do': Gladiators' first hijabi contender aims to inspire

17 minutes ago Share Save Abu Bakar Yasin BBC Newsbeat Share Save

BBC/Hungry Bear Media Ltd/David MacCormack Aneila Afsar made history as the first contender to appear on Gladiators wearing a hijab

When Aneila Afsar first appeared on Gladiators, she made history. The popular BBC One show which pits gladiators against contenders in a series of physical challenges was rebooted last year and Aneila has made it to Saturday's semi-finals. She became the first person ever to compete on the show wearing a hijab and says she gains strength from wearing it. "I love that I have the opportunity to go on this iconic show and inspire young Muslim girls, women from my community, and show them that there's nothing we can't do," the 26-year-old tells BBC Newsbeat.

Many Muslim girls and women wear the hijab, an Islamic head covering, as a symbol of modesty. Aneila hasn't always worn one, only choosing to cover her hair three years ago, and part of that was because she didn't see other hijabis within sports.

'My superpower'

The mum-of-two from Lancashire is a former taekwondo champion, winning a Commonwealth Championship in the youth category. Back then, she "didn't have the courage to embrace the scarf". "Part of that was because of not having female Muslim role models in the sport or sports in general. "It was hard adapting to wearing a headscarf while being in the fitness industry. "Going from not covering to then covering everything which includes your hair, you can feel as if people are staring, you don't feel confident," she says. But as she got older, Aneila found the confidence to be that role model herself and now she sees the hijab differently. "It's empowering, it's my superpower. I love it."

BBC / Graeme Hunter / Hungry Bear Media Ltd Aneila made it to the semi-finals as the fastest runner up after just missing out on certain victory during her last appearance

The hijab can sometimes be a controversial topic in sport and at last year's Paris Olympics, French athletes were banned from wearing one even though the International Olympic Committee allowed them to. In 2023, Moroccan footballer Nouhaila Benzina made history as the first player to wear a hijab at the Women's World Cup. They had been banned until 2014 by the game's governing body Fifa. Since first appearing on the show, Aneila says not everyone has been so positive about her hijab though. She's posted about receiving Islamophobic and racist abuse on social media, but says overall it's been heavily outweighed by the encouraging reaction. That's important to Aneila who says she wants to show "you can wear a hijab, be involved in fitness and still pursue your dreams". "I'm getting messages from girls as young as 12 telling me that I'm the reason they're taking gymnastics again and that they feel that they can now be involved in sport."

BBC/Hungry Bear Media Ltd/David MacCormack The former taekwondo champion says she's had lots of messages of support

And it's not just young girls who've been inspired by Aneila. "Since being on Gladiators, I've received messages from women in their 40s who say if there was a visible Muslim woman wearing a headscarf when they were younger, their whole journey with fitness would have been different," she says. And she hopes her journey on Gladiators will encourage her own children to feel comfortable being themselves too. "My daughter was getting older and I wanted to be a visible Muslim role model for her," she says. "I have used my children to be my inspiration. It's because of them I wanted to wear a headscarf." Aneila says the reaction she's had since first appearing on Gladiators helped her realise "we can push the barriers out, break any stereotypes". "The hijab is not a limitation."

Gladiators will air on BBC One at 17:50 on Saturday 5 April.