The tide seems to have turned for Yoon Suk Yeol.

In 2017, then-attorney general led the lawsuit to remove then-President Park Geun-hye from office after she was convicted of abuse of power.

Now, in the most bizarre and chaotic hours of South Korea’s recent political history, Yoon himself is faced with the music.

It took just a few hours for Yoon’s position as president to go from precarious to untenable on Tuesday. Two years after being sworn in following a bitterly contested election, it is hard to imagine how Yoon, an arch-conservative, can survive Tuesday’s disastrous attempt to impose martial law.

Opposition parties are gathering forces – which may include members of Yoon’s own People Power Party – in anticipation of an impeachment vote in the same National Assembly that voted to immediately lift martial law about six hours after it was imposed.

As Asia’s fourth-largest economy – and neighbor of hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea – reels from the political unrest fomented by Yoon, it appears only his resignation will stop attempts to make him South Korea’s second president since the 19th. The country became a democracy less than four decades ago.

While Yoon defeated his Democratic Party challenger Lee Jae-myung in the March 2022 presidential election, the momentum now lies with Lee, who led the challenge to martial law in the early hours of Wednesday.

Yoon had attempted to justify the imposition of martial law by citing the presence of “shameless pro-North Korean, anti-state forces” in South Korea determined to destroy (South Korea’s) democracy, although he offered no evidence to support his claim.

It is far more likely that other, less imaginative factors were behind his decision.

Yoon, a controversial figure who is said to have consulted shamanist healers before deciding not to move into the official presidential residence at the Blue House, vowed to take a tough stance on North Korea, echoing the attempts of his liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in To commit to ending with the regime through summit meetings with its leader Kim Jong-un.

Yoon credited his victory to support from young male voters who said they had been alienated by the country’s rush to champion women’s empowerment, despite South Korea’s proven poor record on gender equality.

An avowed “anti-feminist,” he promised to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and claimed that South Korean women were not systematically discriminated against. While the ministry remains in place, the minister’s post has been vacant since February.

Born in Seoul in 1960, Yoon is a relative newcomer to politics. He worked as a prosecutor for 27 years before running for president. After studying law, he developed into an experienced prosecutor and fighter against corruption. In 2019, as South Korea’s attorney general, he cemented his reputation as a legal thought leader after indicting a senior adviser to the outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, in a fraud and bribery case.

But Yoon’s approval ratings have plummeted since he took office in 2022 due to a series of scandals and controversies that sparked calls for his impeachment before Tuesday night’s events.

Protests against his government have increased in recent weeks amid anger over his handling of the economy, rising prices and his failure to push policies through the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Last week, a Gallup Korea poll showed his approval rating had fallen to just 19%.

The allegations against his wife, First Lady Kim Keon Hee, have only exacerbated his problems. Kim, who married Yoon 12 years ago, initially won admirers for embracing her public persona, using her status to promote Korean art, culture and fashion and opposing South Korea’s now-banned dog meat trade.

But her love of designer handbags landed her – and her husband – in trouble when she was accused of accepting a Dior bag worth three million won (£1,675) as a gift from a priest earlier this year. Anti-corruption laws prohibit a public official’s spouse from receiving gifts worth more than a million won in one session, but this must be “related to the public official’s duties.” Yoon and his supporters dismissed the claims as part of a political smear campaign.

Together, the opposition parties have 192 seats, just over the two-thirds of the 300 seats in the National Assembly they need to impeach Yoon – a move that would then have to be confirmed by at least six of the nine judges on the Constitutional Court.

But his dramatic move to declare martial law, reportedly carried out without the prior knowledge of South Korea’s main ally the United States, even turned members of his own party against him, with the People Power leader calling his actions “unlawful.” In their pre-dawn vote, 10 of Yoon’s party members joined opposition lawmakers in rejecting martial law by a vote of 190 to zero.

While the world was caught off guard by the turmoil, it was clear for some time that Yoon was planning something extraordinary, say Jamie Doucette and Jinsoo Lee, Korea experts at the University of Manchester.

In a letter on the Jacobin website, they cited a warning about Yoon’s behavior from Democratic Rep. Kim Min-seok, issued in September, which noted that Yoon was promoting high school classmates and close associates to senior positions in government and the military have.

“To many people, this kind of foreboding sounded jarring,” Doucette and Lee wrote. “But early Wednesday even Korea’s deeply conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo declared that ‘Kim Min-seok was right’.”

Yoon was instrumental in Park Geun-hye’s political downfall; Now he appears to be the architect of his own downfall.