South Korean president faces second impeachment vote over martial law declaration

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean lawmakers are set to vote for a second time Saturday on whether to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law, with support for the motion appearing to grow within his own party after he defiantly defended his actions.

There have been widespread calls for Yoon to step down since he declared emergency martial law last week, plunging the East Asian democracy and key U.S. ally into chaos. 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.

In the meantime, Yoon’s governing People Power Party (PPP) says he is effectively suspended from duty and that it is working with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to manage state affairs, raising questions about who is running the world’s 10th-largest economy.

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.

An effigy of Yoon at a demonstration calling for his ouster in Seoul on Thursday.Anthony Wallace / AFP - Getty Images

Support for Yoon’s impeachment has grown even within his conservative PPP, whose lawmakers boycotted a first impeachment vote last Saturday, causing it to fail.

“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 at 4 p.m. local time (2 a.m. ET).

But newly elected PPP floor leader Kweon Seong-dong, a veteran politician who is close with Yoon, 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.

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 main opposition 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.”

Six opposition parties submitted the new impeachment motion late Thursday. Though the opposition controls parliament, it is eight seats short of the 200 it needs for the bill to pass.

Since the first vote failed, at least seven PPP members have publicly said they now support impeachment, bringing the motion within one vote of passage.

Yoon defended his actions in a defiant speech Thursday.AFP - Getty Images

If Yoon is impeached, the case would go to the Constitutional Court, which would then have six months to decide whether to uphold the impeachment motion.

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 a surprise late-night address on Dec. 3.

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.