J ust under a year ago, Yoon Suk-yeol was serenading guests at a White House state dinner with a rendition of Don McLean’s “American Pie.” On Friday, South Korea’s former

Yoon Suk Yeol joins a list of the country's former leaders who have faced impeachment, exile and assassination.

Three years after winning South Korea's closest presidential race, President Yoon Suk Yeol was formally removed from office as the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment over a stunning December martial law imposition — a self-inflicted downfall that continued the country's trend of troubled presidencies.

Yoon Suk Yeol’s political rise was fast: the former star prosecutor clinched South Korea’s presidency only a year after he entered politics. Yoon's style — highly assertive and strong-willed, but often uncompromising and inflexible — worked for a prosecutor standing up to higher-ups,

South Korea's Constitutional Court will rule on Friday whether to remove or reinstate impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration that sparked a crisis in a country seen as a democratic success story.

South Korea is bracing for a potentially violent public reaction to a Constitutional Court ruling on Friday on whether to remove impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol from office or reinstate him amid the country's worst political crisis in decades.