The conviction of a former president is never a comfortable moment in a democracy. It is destabilizing by nature, polarizing by effect and revealing by consequence. Yet such moments test not the resilience of political loyalties, but the integrity of constitutional order. The recent ruling finding former President Yoon Suk Yeol guilty of obstructing law enforcement is therefore significant not because of who was convicted, but because of what his conduct, and his response to the judgment, reveals about power, accountability and democratic restraint. Predictably, reactions have fractured along partisan lines. Yoon's supporters dismissed the verdict as judicial overreach and political retaliation. Critics viewed it as a necessary reckoning. But beneath these surface disputes lies a more troubling reality: a persistent willingness to excuse abuses of power when committed by one’s own political champion. In Yoon’s case, this reflex has been reinforced by his own posture — defiant, dismissive and strikingly devoid of contrition. Rather than acknowledging the gravity of interfering wit