South Korean president is impeached over martial law declaration

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean lawmakers voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law, which plunged the East Asian democracy and key U.S. ally into chaos.

The vote was 204 in favor and 85 against, with three abstentions and eight votes ruled invalid. All 300 lawmakers in the unicameral National Assembly voted on the motion, which required a two-thirds majority to pass.

“Dear people, now go and enjoy the year-end parties,” Woo Won-sik, the speaker of the National Assembly, said after the motion passed.

The motion held that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unconstitutional and illegal because there were no signs of national emergency and he neglected to follow procedural rules such as notifying the National Assembly in advance.

Supporters of the motion included members of Yoon’s governing People Power Party (PPP), whose boycott of an earlier impeachment vote had caused it to fail. Though the opposition controls parliament, it holds only 192 seats and needed support from at least eight PPP lawmakers to impeach Yoon.

Park Chan-dae, floor leader for the main opposition Democratic Party, said the vote was “a triumph for the people and democracy.”

“This is only the beginning,” he said. “We will conduct a thorough investigation of people involved with the martial law.”

Following the vote, Yoon was immediately suspended from state duties, with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo serving as acting president. The PPP had earlier said that Yoon was already effectively suspended from duty and that it was working with Han to manage state affairs.

“I will do my best in the stable governance of our country,” Han told reporters after the impeachment vote.

Han could also face impeachment over his alleged role in the martial law declaration.

The presidential office confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that Yoon was in the presidential residence, where he will remain until a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which has six months to decide whether to uphold the impeachment motion.

There have been widespread calls for Yoon to step down since he declared emergency martial law last week. The short-lived order, which Yoon lifted within hours after lawmakers voted unanimously to reject it, banned all political activity and censored the news media.

Yoon, 63, who once served as the country’s chief prosecutor, is barred from traveling overseas as he faces investigation on possible rebellion charges. Police tried unsuccessfully Wednesday to raid his office, where they were blocked by security officials.

Yoon, who took office in 2022 for a single five-year term, has struggled to advance his agenda in the opposition-controlled parliament, and the martial law declaration has only further eroded his public support. A Gallup Korea poll released Friday showed Yoon’s approval rating at a record low of 11%, the Yonhap news agency reported, down from 13% a week earlier.

Support for Yoon’s impeachment had grown even within his conservative PPP.

“All we all have to think of today is our country South Korea and the people of South Korea,” PPP leader Han Dong-hoon told reporters before lawmakers gathered for the vote.

Newly elected PPP floor leader Kweon Seong-dong, a veteran politician who is close with Yoon, had said the party remained formally opposed to impeachment.

In Seoul, the capital, a large crowd of protesters gathered ahead of the vote in front of the National Assembly, braving chilly weather.

Yoon’s martial law declaration has deeply shaken South Korea, which spent decades under military-authoritarian rule.

In the hours after he announced it on Dec. 3, “I thought if the country was not stable, my dream could be shattered at once, no matter how well I did on exams and prepared for my dreams,” Park Geun-ha, a member of the Korean University Students’ Progressive Alliance, said in a speech at a rally ahead of the vote on Saturday.

“So we are asking for President Yoon’s immediate impeachment and arrest.”

Supporters of the protesters, many of whom carried K-pop light sticks, preordered food for them. K-pop singer-songwriter IU said she was providing 200 pieces of bread, 100 rice cakes, 200 bowls of rice soup and oxtail soup and 200 drinks so rallygoers could “warm up a little bit.”

A dedicated website helped protesters keep track of where they could find bathrooms as well as free food and drinks, while a bus was provided for parents needing a place to change their children’s diapers.

Others rallied in support of Yoon, with pro-Yoon protester Lee Gang-san saying almost a million people were at his event. NBC News was not able to independently verify that figure.

“We fear that if President Yoon is impeached, the opposition will gain more power,” he told NBC News by phone.

Advocacy group Humans Rights Watch said South Koreans had “stood up and fought to protect their democracy and human rights.” 

“The impeachment proceedings highlight how checks and balances are essential in stopping abuses of power and supporting the rule of law,” Deputy Asia Director Simon Henderson said.

A number of people have already been arrested in connection with the martial law declaration, including former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, the commissioner of the National Police Agency and the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Though Yoon has apologized twice for the “anxiety” his order caused the public, he vowed to “fight to the end” in a defiant speech Thursday in which he accused the opposition of paralyzing the government to the point where he felt declaring martial law was his only choice.

Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party, said Friday that Yoon’s speech was “a declaration of war against the people.”

“Impeachment is the quickest and surest way to end the crisis,” said Lee, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election.  

He urged PPP lawmakers to vote in favor of the second impeachment motion, saying “history will remember and record your choice.” 

Lee also thanked the United States and allied countries “for their consistent support” for democracy in South Korea, which hosts almost 30,000 American troops.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told lawmakers on Friday that he would put “all efforts into restoring trust in international relations and maintaining the South Korea-U.S. alliance.”

Yoon’s impeachment is not the end of South Korea’s political turmoil, said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“It is not even the beginning of the end, which will ultimately involve election of a new president,” he said. 

Lee, who is favored to win an election to replace Yoon, is also in legal jeopardy, with one conviction on appeal and several other rulings pending that could disqualify him from office, Easley said. 

Communist-ruled North Korea has seized on the political turmoil in the South, highlighting protests “demanding the impeachment of the puppet Yoon Suk Yeol regime” in a second day of state media coverage Thursday after not reporting on the martial law declaration for a week. The two Koreas technically remain at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, rather than a peace treaty.

Without providing evidence, Yoon, who takes a harder line on North Korea than his democratic predecessor, had accused the opposition of sympathizing with the nuclear-armed state, citing it as justification for the martial law declaration when he announced it.

In his speech Thursday, Yoon said without evidence that North Korea had hacked into South Korea’s National Election Commission last year, exposing security issues that he said called into question the integrity of the results of April’s parliamentary election, which the liberal opposition won in a landslide.

Kim Yong-bin, the commission’s secretary general, said Friday that there was no evidence of election fraud or that its system was hacked, saying all votes are cast with paper ballots.

“It is impossible to commit election fraud with our system,” he said.

Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.