*

Yoon's presidency marred by scandals and internal party

rifts

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Foreign policy successes overshadowed by domestic

struggles

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Increasingly isolated, Yoon's judgment questioned by some

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Career prosecutor previously investigated impeached

president

Park

By Jack Kim

SEOUL, Dec 14 (Reuters) - South Korean President Yoon

Suk Yeol faces the greatest threat to his brief but chequered

political career, with his fate in the hands of judges after

some of his allies turned from him and voted to impeach him on

Saturday for allegedly leading an insurrection.

Regarded as a tough political survivor but increasingly

isolated, he has been dogged by personal scandals and strife, an

unyielding opposition and rifts within his own party.

After he narrowly won election in 2022, his recent battles

have left him increasingly bitter and have drawn out a

recklessness that a former rival said was his defining trait.

By the time Yoon imposed a short-lived martial law on Dec.

3, he was badly bruised politically.

This week, his appeal that he had acted only out of "burning

patriotism" to save the country from destruction and defiance to

"fight to the end" did little to ensure continued support from

those who earlier were not convinced he had committed an

impeachable crime.

Instead, the 29-minute address drew alarm that he may have

become unhinged, his sense of judgment so badly damaged that he

was now a danger to the global industrial powerhouse and one of

the most powerful success stories of democratic resilience.

Shin Yul, Myongji University political science professor,

said Yoon was likely listening to the wrong people such as

right-wing extremists, YouTube personalities, and probably

"still thinks he did the right thing."

An opposition Democratic Party member said Yoon's address

was a "display of extreme delusion".

Even those who were more sympathetic said he had buckled

under extreme pressure under endless political attacks, some of

which he probably took personally.

"I hope we remember how the opposition party has incredibly

and viciously pushed the president and his family into the

corner with threats of special prosecutors and impeachment," Ihn

Yohan, a physician and member of parliament for Yoon's People

Power Party (PPP), said.

SCANDALS, THREATS OF PROSECUTION, 'AMERICAN PIE'

The past year of Yoon's presidency has been heavily

overshadowed by a scandal involving his wife, who was accused of

inappropriately accepting a pricey Christian Dior handbag as a

gift and his stubborn refusal to fully own up to it.

Yoon only apologised after the scandal was blamed as a major

reason for a crushing parliamentary election defeat his party

suffered in April. But he continued to reject calls for a probe

into the scandal and into an allegation of stock price

manipulation involving his wife and her mother.

The prosecutors office that investigated the allegations

decided not to press charges against the first lady.

Yoon's struggles at home have overshadowed the relative

success he has had on the international stage.

His bold push to reverse a decades-long diplomatic row with

neighbouring Japan and join Tokyo in a three-way security

cooperation with the United States are widely seen as his

signature foreign policy legacies.

Yoon's ability to bond on a personal level, seen as the

trait that gave him his early success, was on full display at a

White House event last year, when Yoon took the stage and belted

out the pop song "American Pie" for an astounded U.S. President

Joe Biden and a delighted crowd.

SHAMANS, HIGH SCHOOL BUDDIES

Born to an affluent family in Seoul, Yoon was an easygoing

youth who excelled at school. He entered the elite Seoul

National University to study law, but his penchant for partying

led him to repeatedly fail the bar exam before passing on the

ninth try.

Yoon, who turns 64 on Dec. 18, shot to national fame in 2016

when, as the chief investigator probing then-President Park

Geun-hye for corruption, he told a reporter that prosecutors are

not gangsters, when asked if he was out for revenge.

Three years earlier, Park had suspended Yoon, then fired him

from a team investigating a high-profile case against the spy

agency. That move was widely considered punishment for

challenging her authority.

The role he played in jailing the sitting president and his

dramatic comeback as head of the powerful Seoul Central District

Prosecutors' Office, marked the start of a dizzying rise to

power.

Two years later, he became prosecutor general and

spearheaded a corruption probe against a close ally of the next

president, Moon Jae-in. That made him a darling of conservatives

frustrated with Moon's liberal policies, setting him up to be a

candidate for the presidency in 2022.

But his presidency got off to a rocky start when he pushed

ahead with moving the presidential office out of the Blue House

compound to a new site, facing questions whether it was because

of a feng shui belief that the old presidential compound was

cursed. Yoon at the time denied any involvement by himself or

his wife with a shaman.

When Yoon refused to fire top officials after a 2022

Halloween night disaster, in which 159 people were killed, he

was accused of protecting his "yes men". One of them was Safety

Minister Lee Sang-min, a fellow graduate of Yoon's high school.

Another alumnus of the Choongam High School in Seoul was Kim

Yong-hyun, the man who spearheaded the presidential office move,

then became the presidential security service, and in September

was appointed defence minister.

Kim was one of the two people who recommended that Yoon

declare martial law, a senior military official said. Lee was

the other.