South Korean lawmakers move to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol after aborted martial-law attempt

South Korean lawmakers on Thursday formally introduced a motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, after he declared martial law and plunged the East Asian nation into political chaos.

However, Mr. Yoon’s People Power Party – of which about 10 members voted to overturn the martial law edict – said it would not support his impeachment. Opposition lawmakers need at least eight ruling party members to back the bill for it to pass, and hope to vote on it as early as Friday.

On Thursday, Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun resigned, saying he took responsibility for the crisis created by the martial law declaration, in what could be the beginning of an attempt by Mr. Yoon’s closest circle to shield the President from impeachment.

In dramatic scenes earlier this week, lawmakers barricaded themselves in the National Assembly, where they successfully voted to overturn Mr. Yoon’s martial law order, forcing him to back down after only six hours and likely ending his political career.

With his address Tuesday, the conservative former prosecutor succeeded in doing something he has struggled with for his entire term: ending parliamentary gridlock and bringing together South Korea’s fractious political parties. What united them, however, was their fierce rejection of Mr. Yoon’s attempt to enact military rule for the first time since 1979.

In his initial announcement, Mr. Yoon said he had been forced to enact martial law “to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order.”

In submitting a bill to impeach Mr. Yoon, Park Chan-dae, a senior member of the opposition Democratic Party – which controls the legislature – said the President’s actions had “revealed to the entire nation” that he was no longer fit to hold office and should resign. Five other opposition parties are also supporting the measure.

Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in South Korea. What does that mean, and what has happened so far?

“The Yoon Suk Yeol regime’s declaration of emergency martial law caused great confusion and fear among our people,” Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Seung-won told a session of the National Assembly held in the early hours of Thursday.

“We need to immediately suspend the authority of President Yoon. He has committed an indelible, historic, crime against the people, whose anxiety needs to be soothed so that they can return to their daily lives.”

Led by labour groups, thousands marched through downtown Seoul late Wednesday, demanding Mr. Yoon’s removal. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the largest workers body in the country, called for an indefinite, nationwide strike until the President is removed from office.

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Outside the National Assembly – now bereft of the soldiers and police who swarmed it during the brief period of martial law – around a thousand people gathered to demand Mr. Yoon’s impeachment at a rally organized by the Democratic Party.

Attendees held candles, a deliberate nod to the mass demonstrations in 2016 and 2017, which resulted in the impeachment of then-president Park Geun-hye. Hundreds of thousands gathered in Seoul for months during the brutal Korean winter of that unrest, and within hours of Mr. Yoon’s edict Tuesday, opposition groups were already mobilizing to organize similar resistance.

Yoonseo Hur, 18, told The Globe and Mail she feared there would have been bloodshed had lawmakers not been able to force the end to martial law. Ms. Hur said she thought “North Korea had finally come” when she first saw images of soldiers taking over key political sites on Tuesday night.

Duyong Kim, 23, said she couldn’t believe something like this could happen “in the year 2024,” and said she had come to the assembly to see with her own eyes the resistance to Mr. Yoon.

Removing the president from office requires a two-thirds majority.

In Seong-ho, 20, said he had voted for Mr. Yoon in 2022 – one of the many young men whose shift to the right helped fuel the President’s narrow victory – but now felt he must step down.

“I supported President Yoon and his party, but I never thought this could happen in Korea,” he said.

If Mr. Yoon is removed or steps down, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo will take over until a new election is held within 60 days. The Democratic Party, which won a landslide victory in legislative elections earlier this year, will be hoping for a repeat of 2017, when its candidate Moon Jae-in won handily in the election prompted by Ms. Park’s impeachment.

While Seoul was calm Wednesday, there was a widespread sense of having stepped back from the abyss. Mr. Yoon had deliberately made his move late at night, hoping lawmakers would not be able to gather and vote to overrule him. Opposition figures also said the military had moved to arrest key leaders, including Democratic Party head Lee Jae-myung and even PPP leader Mr. Han.

Had Mr. Yoon initially been successful, however, he likely would have faced huge protests, and resistance from across the political spectrum and from South Korea’s allies, including the United States, which welcomed the rescinding of the martial law edict Wednesday.

“The United States has watched closely the developments over the last 24 hours in the Republic of Korea,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. “We continue to expect political disagreements to be resolved peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law.”

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Mr. Yoon’s martial law edict was apparently prompted by the opposition’s recent rejection of a government budget and attempts to impeach senior prosecutors and bring corruption cases against high-ranking officials and people connected to Mr. Yoon, including his wife, first lady Kim Keon-hee.

Prior to the edict, Mr. Yoon’s office had accused the Democratic Party of exercising “parliamentary tyranny.” Many analysts said he may have taken a desperate move Tuesday with a view that he was likely to be impeached in coming months anyway.

Sungmin Cho, an associate professor of politics at Seoul’s Sungkyunkwan University, said Mr. Yoon’s “pure stupidity” had unintentionally served to highlight “the resilience of South Korean democracy.”

“The National Assembly stopped the leader’s wrong decision,” he wrote Wednesday. “The system of checks and balance worked once again.”

With reports from Reuters and the Associated Press