Before the verdict in President Yoon Suk Yeol's trial, is the Constitutional Court telling the opposition to stop abusing the power to impeach?

When the court this week ruled on the impeachment of Prime Minister and acting President Han Duck-soo, we expected it, as the referee, to either say there had been no foul or say there had been, and show him a red card.

Instead, the court said he'd committed a foul, wagged its finger at him, and said, "Play on."

How may we interpret this? Can we expect the same in Yoon's impeachment case? Or is he more certain to get a red card?

As a reminder, the National Assembly had impeached Han on grounds of colluding with Yoon in the Dec. 3 martial law declaration and then, as acting president after Yoon's impeachment, violating the Constitution by refusing to appoint three justices the Assembly had selected for the Constitutional Court.

The judges said there was no evidence to suggest Han was involved in martial law. They said his failure to accept the judicial appointments was unconstitutional but not egregious enough to amount to a breach of public trust. There was no evidence that Han intended to harm constitutional principles, they said.

This was not a unanimous decision. But it was clear enough for everyone to accept. One judge did dissent, arguing that Han should be impeached. Two of the judges thought the case did not meet the standards to even be heard.

Of course, the verdict was met with a roar of approval from some fans and disappointment from the opposing team.

Non-partisan analysts were taken by surprise. This combination of yes, you did something wrong, but no, you're not being sent off, was unexpected. They thought the impeachment might be rejected but assumed that it would be on the grounds that the prime minister hadn't done anything wrong.

What the ruling means is that the standard for impeachment as far as the court is concerned is loftier than we, the people yelling on the street, had assumed. Motivation matters.

Given that this was the eighth impeachment case rejected so far by the court, there is a message underlying this verdict: the judges are not amused by the way opposition parties in the Assembly are impeaching everything that moves.

Since Yoon took office three years ago, they have submitted an unprecedented 30 impeachment motions. Seventeen have been voted down and 13 have been submitted to the court. Final verdicts are still to come on five cases, including, of course, Yoon's.

Quite naturally, our attention has been focused on his case. He is the man at the top and his offense, the astonishing declaration of martial law, was more dramatic than that of any of the others. He not only may be fired if the court upholds the impeachment — there is also a criminal case underway in which the most severe penalty is the death penalty or — much more likely — a very long prison sentence, with him inevitably receiving a pardon from his successor or successor's successor a few years later.

Given this total focus on Yoon, if the final impeachment score is 12:1, as it seems it might well be, the opposition will nevertheless declare victory. However, the court's ruling this week is making us look twice at its shabby own goals.

The court is clearly sending a message that the way the opposition has been using impeachment is a step too far.

When it declared this time last year (long before martial law) that its policy was to impeach Yoon and then impeach any auditor, prosecutor or other official who did not obey, the major opposition party was not violating the letter of the law of democracy, but it was certainly violating the spirit. It seems to already think it is the de jure government and that it has a right to shortcut the process to an election to make it de facto.

This concern of the justices puts a question mark over how they might interpret the declaration of martial law when there was no emergency or unrest to merit it. Yoon's argument has been that he was not suppressing democracy or the Constitution but rather using martial law to fight the opposition's weaponization of impeachment. Will the judges accept this?

Somehow, I doubt it. My suspicion at this stage is that Yoon is not innocent as Han has been judged to be, but rather guilty of exactly what the opposition has been doing.

The difference that allows the opposition parties to get away with it is that they have only violated the spirit of law-based democracy, while the President violated both the spirit and the letter.

Of course, I might be wrong. We are getting used to surprises and need to prepare ourselves.

Michael Breen (mike.breen@insightcomms.com) is the author of "The New Koreans." The views expressed here are his own.