Yoon’s supporters, ruling party ramp up attacks on Constitutional Court judge

As President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment trial enters its final stage, his supporters and the ruling People Power Party are intensifying their attacks on acting Constitutional Court President Moon Hyung-bae.

Yoon’s supporters have been bombarding Moon with text messages, while the ruling party accuses him of a left-leaning bias and leading the trial proceedings in a way that could undermine its outcome.

The latest attack on Moon, who was appointed by the former liberal President Moon Jae-in, involves sexually explicit materials found on the online community for the justice's high school alumi.

The conservative ruling People Power Party lawmaker Bae Hyun-jin demanded the justice's resignation over them. In a Facebook post Wednesday, she wrote “A judge of the Constitutional Court, the de facto final arbiter of South Korea’s constitutional order, allegedly turned a blind eye to the postings and distribution of as many as 2,000 illegal, obscene items.”

Over 2,000 posts with illegal content were uploaded to the Daea High School alumni forum between 2009 and 2021, the lawmaker claimed.

She called for the justice Moon to take ethical responsibility and resign immediately, describing him as a “perverse, double-faced individual” unfit to preside over the impeachment hearing of a sitting president.

As of Thursday morning, more than 10,000 posts had been uploaded to the Constitutional Court’s free bulletin board, demanding Moon’s resignation.

On Thursday, the court said that it had asked police to consider investigating the alumni's online community.

Die-hard supporters of the embattled President Yoon have engaged in an apparent mudsligining campaign against Moon as well as other left-leaning justices of the currently eight-member top court.

Screenshots of text messages sent to Moon, many containing insults and profanity, have been widely shared online. The individual who first shared his number claimed to have found it in his mother’s death notice on the alumni forum.

On Wednesday, People Power Party floor leader Kwon Seong-dong visited the court in protest, saying, “If a Constitutional Court justice arbitrarily interprets the law and infringes on human rights, that is not the rule of law but merely the rule of acting Chief Justice Moon Hyung-bae.”

President Yoon, who belongs to the PPP, was impeached by the opposition-led paraliament in December over his short-lived martial law. His eighth impeachment hearing took place at the Constitutional Court on Thursday.