What next for South Korea after night of political drama and turmoil

Troops tried to take control of the building as parliamentary aides sprayed fire extinguishers to hold them off. Meanwhile, protesters confronted security forces outside.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” one woman shouted as she tried to take a rifle away from one of the soldiers.

Lawmakers defied the security cordon to enter the building, and around 1 a.m., all 190 lawmakers present — out of 300 total — voted to reject the martial law order. Soldiers promptly agreed to leave the building, and the order was lifted around 4:30 a.m.

The martial law order, South Korea’s first since 1980, was reversed so quickly that many South Koreans weren’t aware of it until they woke up on Wednesday.

‘Shock and disbelief’

Jeong So-hee, a Seoul shop owner in her 50s, said she heard the news from a family member around 11 p.m. and stayed up watching the news until lawmakers passed the resolution nullifying it.

People her age who had experienced martial law under the military dictatorship rushed to convenience stores to buy canned food, she said. On Wednesday, Jeong said she noticed fewer people in the streets.

Jeong said Yoon should step down and that declaring emergency martial law was “the worst move he could have made.”

Emily Jo, a university student, said she was getting ready for bed when a family member rushed into her room to check that she was home.

“My initial reaction was shock and disbelief that such a thing would happen in the middle of the night, especially when most people would already be at home sleeping,” she said.

Jo said the main reason the issue was resolved so quickly was because of South Korea’s history.

“Such an incident has happened before, and because the people, especially the older generation, know about the importance of curbing it in its budding stages, they managed to take control of the situation before things got out of hand,” she said. 

Not even the most senior officials in Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) were notified in advance, said PPP lawmaker Yoo Yong-won.

“What happened yesterday cannot be understood with your normal common sense,” she told NBC News.

Yoo said it wasn’t until dawn that she made it inside the National Assembly building and met with fellow PPP lawmakers and party leader Han Dong-hoon.

“We huddled together and tried to make sense of what was happening, and it was clear that my fellow lawmakers were in shock,” he said. 

Yoo said they had discussed the possibility of impeachment proceedings against Yoon, adding that “if it comes to that, we will have to vote.” 

Han, the party leader, said Wednesday that PPP officials had requested that Yoon leave the party. But the party later said it opposed the impeachment motion, which requires a two-thirds majority vote by the unicameral legislature’s 300 members to pass.

The opposition bloc holds 192 seats, meaning the motion could fail if PPP lawmakers follow the party line when it comes to a vote as early as Friday or Saturday. 

Political impasse, corruption allegations

Yoon, whose conservative government took office in 2022, had been frustrated by an impasse with the opposition-controlled parliament, accusing lawmakers in his address on Tuesday of paralyzing the government by seeking to impeach multiple government officials and slashing critical funding from next year’s national budget.

Conservatives see opposition lawmakers’ resistance as retribution for their criminal investigations of Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party and Yoon’s rival in the 2022 election.

Yoon has also been embroiled in a series of scandals involving his wife and top officials. A poll last week by Gallup Korea found he had an approval rating of 19%, The Korea Times reported Friday.

Yoon, who takes a harder line on North Korea than his Democratic Party predecessor, also accused his opponents of sympathizing with the nuclear-armed communist state, with which the South technically remains at war.

The international fallout to the martial law order was immediate. A spokesperson for Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Wednesday that he had postponed a South Korean visit scheduled for this week. A possible visit next week by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is also now in question.

Biden, who hosted Yoon for a state visit to Washington last year, has worked to enhance military and other ties with South Korea as a deterrent against China and North Korea, establishing a new trilateral security partnership with South Korea and its historic rival Japan. Earlier this year, South Korea became the first country outside the U.S. to host Biden’s annual Summit for Democracy.

The order also raised questions about the nearly 30,000 American troops that South Korea hosts in bases around the country as well as in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the South from North Korea.

Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday that the martial law order had “essentially no impact” on U.S. forces and that they had not been put under any type of curfew.

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said it was canceling routine consular appointments on Wednesday, maximizing remote work for employees and limiting in-person school attendance by their children.

The U.S. travel advisory for South Korea remains at its lowest level, or “exercise normal precautions.”

Still, the debacle may be more damaging to South Korea’s domestic politics and international reputation than the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill was to the U.S., said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“Yoon’s declaration of martial law appeared to be both legal overreach and a political miscalculation, unnecessarily risking South Korea’s economy and security,” he said in an email.

The president should have known how difficult it would be to implement his decree, given that opposition parties in the legislature clearly had enough votes to reject it, Easley said.

“He sounded like a politician under siege, making a desperate move against mounting scandals, institutional obstruction and calls for impeachment, all of which are now likely to intensify,” he said. 

As South Korea grapples with political instability, the U.S. “should remain a steadfast ally,” Easley said.

“A troubling trend in many democracies is that polarization and extreme measures to address deadlock are increasingly testing trust in international alliances,” he added. 

Stella Kim and Cho Beomsoo reported from Seoul, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.