I keep saying this, but it bears repeating: If you’re going to institute military rule, you gotta see it through. As I put it last month, there’s no such thing as trial ballooning a military junta.

A decision to forcibly overwhelm a nation’s democracy using the army has to be firm and irreversible. A move to declare martial law, complete with a ban on political activity and enforced by heavily-armed troops, is a crossing the Rubicon moment. There’s no going back. If you waver at any point, you’re going to be exiled from any role in government, arrested or worse.

South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol didn’t understand that. A month ago today, he attempted to seize control of the country through an ill-conceived martial law decree, which he walked back just hours later after the 300 (give or take) troops he sent to the legislature failed to stop the opposition (which controls the country’s unicameral lawmaking body) from declaring his order null and void.

Yoon’s political fate remains in limbo, just like South Korea’s democracy. Last week, interim leader Han Duck-soo was also impeached for failing to fill vacant seats on the court which’ll ultimately rule on Yoon’s ouster.

On Friday, in the latest episode of this sad soap opera, corruption police waving a warrant showed up to arrest Yoon for insurrection (i.e., treason), only to find themselves in a ridiculous standoff with his Praetorian Guard. Throngs of Yoon supporters were on the scene too, shouting, crying and waving flags, at least one of which said “Stop The Steal.”

The police presence was heavy, but in the end, the Corruption Investigation Office was unable to reach Yoon, barricaded as he was in his Yongsan residence, which now doubles as a bunker fortress, I suppose.

The spectacle was yet another egregious embarrassment for the country, where democracy’s undergoing a trial by fire. Yoon had an opportunity (several, actually) to voluntarily answer the corruption office’s questions about the martial law decree, but he refused investigators’ requests for a sit down.

On Friday, Yoon’s attorney unironically chided the corruption office for marshaling police troops. Investigators don’t have a mandate to probe Yoon for any sort of treason, the lawyer said, on the way to suggesting the corruption office should be charged with trespassing and unlawful arrest and detention (which is to say attempted kidnapping).

For what it’s worth, the relevant statute doesn’t specifically mention insurrection as a crime that falls under the office’s remit. But it does mention abuse of power. Yoon’s attorneys would have you believe that attempting to institute military rule doesn’t count as abuse of power. That seems — I don’t know — like a stretch.

If your question is what happens next, the answer’s “Who knows.” Not me, that’s for sure. Corruption officers abandoned the effort to detain Yoon after about six hours. I assume they’ll try again. Or maybe not. Because it looks like barring a scenario where he surrenders voluntarily, police will have to arrest protesters to get to him, and maybe even overwhelm his security detail.

In an assessment that was both correct and absurd at the same time, one investor on Friday told Bloomberg that the political drama’s “already fully priced” in South Korean assets, which are “very cheap right now.”