SEOUL, South Korea — Lawmakers in South Korea are set to vote Saturday on whether to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol after he plunged the country into chaos by declaring emergency martial law only to lift the order hours later under intense pressure from lawmakers and the public.
The vote is scheduled to take place around 5 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) after six opposition parties began impeachment proceedings against Yoon this week. The opposition bloc holds 192 of the unicameral legislature’s 300 seats, just under the two-thirds majority needed for the motion to pass.
But the likelihood that the motion will succeed increased Friday after the leader of Yoon’s governing People Power Party (PPP), Han Dong-hoon, said the president’s powers should be suspended, adding that Yoon might continue to “put South Korea and its people in great danger.”
It was a surprise shift from the conservative party, which had earlier said it would oppose the impeachment motion. While it freed up PPP lawmakers to vote for the bill without breaking with their party, they remained divided, with some lawmakers still expressing support for Yoon.
Opposition lawmakers, by contrast, are adamant that Yoon be removed from office, as is much of the public. Police in Seoul, the capital, said tens of thousands of people were expected at a mass rally around 1 p.m. on Saturday.
The presidential office said Saturday that Yoon would address the nation at 10 a.m. local time (8 p.m. Friday ET).
Lee Jae-myung, leader of the liberal opposition Democratic Party and Yoon’s rival in the 2022 presidential election, said the president’s “unconstitutional and illegal declaration of martial law” had caused chaos and fear in the country of 50 million people, a key U.S. ally that spent decades under military-authoritarian rule before transitioning into a vibrant democracy and the world’s 10th-largest economy.
“The democracy of this nation that has been achieved through blood, sweat and tears is now being wrecked by an unruly power, and our people have suffered serious wounds to their national dignity and pride,” he said Friday.
Lee also expressed concern about how the martial law declaration might affect South Korea’s relations with the U.S., noting that meetings of the U.S.-South Korea Nuclear Consultative Group that were planned in Washington this week had been postponed amid the turmoil.
“Our national credibility, as well as diplomacy, has been severely impacted,” he said.
Biden administration officials said they were not notified in advance that Yoon would declare martial law. But they have repeatedly reaffirmed the “ironclad” nature of the U.S. alliance with South Korea, which it views as an important bulwark against North Korea, China and Russia, and which hosts almost 30,000 American troops.
The U.S. relationship with South Korea “transcends any particular president or government on both sides of the Pacific Ocean,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Thursday.
Yoon, 63, who once served as the country’s chief prosecutor, has not made any public appearances since lifting the martial law order early Wednesday after lawmakers defied a security cordon to enter the National Assembly building and voted unanimously to reject it.
Since then, he has accepted the resignation of his defense minister Kim Yong-hyun, who said he took full responsibility for what happened. Many other officials, including Yoon’s chief of staff and all senior presidential secretaries, have also tendered their resignations.
South Korean police and prosecutors are investigating claims of insurrection and treason against Yoon, Kim and Interior Minister Lee Sang-min. The Ministry of National Defense has also suspended three top commanders from duty and requested overseas travel bans for them, Kim and seven other active-duty military officers.
Military officers and government officials described a chaotic six hours from the time Yoon declared martial law around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday to the time he lifted the order around 4:30 a.m. Wednesday. Many of them said they learned about the order from Yoon’s surprise TV address or from news reports.
In his address, Yoon accused the opposition-controlled parliament of paralyzing the government by seeking the impeachment of multiple government officials and slashing critical funding from next year’s national budget. He also accused his opponents of sympathizing with nuclear-armed North Korea, its reclusive communist neighbor that the South technically remains at war with.
A martial law proclamation issued after Yoon’s address banned all political activity, including demonstrations, and censored the news media. It also ordered the country’s striking doctors to return to work within 48 hours.
Officials said Friday that Yoon had ordered the arrest of prominent politicians including Lee, the leader of the Democratic Party, and Han, the leader of Yoon’s own party, along with other opposition lawmakers, a journalist, a former Supreme Court justice and a former Supreme Court chief justice.
Yoon’s office has not commented on the allegations.
If Yoon is impeached, he will be suspended from office until the Constitutional Court decides whether to uphold the motion, with a deadline of 180 days. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo would serve as acting president in the meantime.
While it wouldn’t take many defections from Yoon’s party to pass the impeachment motion, “I do think it is important that this be bipartisan,” said Eun A Jo, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth.
“Because once it reaches the Constitutional Court, I think there will be much more pressure for them to uphold it.”
Stella Kim reported from Seoul, and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.