South Ko­rea’s par­lia­ment on Sat­ur­day im­peached Pres­i­dent Yoon Suk Yeol over his stun­ning and short-lived mar­tial law de­cree, a move that end­ed days of po­lit­i­cal paral­y­sis but set up an in­tense de­bate over Yoon’s fate, as ju­bi­lant crowds roared to cel­e­brate an­oth­er de­fi­ant mo­ment in the coun­try’s re­silient democ­ra­cy.

The Na­tion­al As­sem­bly passed the mo­tion 204-85. Yoon’s pres­i­den­tial pow­ers and du­ties were sub­se­quent­ly sus­pend­ed and Prime Min­is­ter Han Duck-soo, the coun­try’s No. 2 of­fi­cial, took over pres­i­den­tial pow­ers lat­er Sat­ur­day.

The Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court has up to 180 days to de­ter­mine whether to dis­miss Yoon as pres­i­dent or re­store his pow­ers. If he’s thrown out of of­fice, a na­tion­al elec­tion to choose his suc­ces­sor must be held with­in 60 days.

It was the sec­ond Na­tion­al As­sem­bly vote on Yoon’s im­peach­ment af­ter rul­ing par­ty law­mak­ers boy­cotted the first-floor vote last Sat­ur­day. Some Peo­ple Pow­er Par­ty law­mak­ers had since said they would vote for Yoon’s im­peach­ment as pub­lic protests in­ten­si­fied and his ap­proval rat­ing plum­met­ed.

Na­tion­al As­sem­bly Speak­er Woo Won Shik said Yoon’s im­peach­ment was an out­come dri­ven by “the peo­ple’s ar­dent de­sire for democ­ra­cy, courage and ded­i­ca­tion.”

Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple gath­ered near the par­lia­ment roared in ju­bi­la­tion, waved ban­ners and bran­dished colour­ful K-pop glow sticks, as a lead ac­tivist shout­ed on stage, “We have pre­served the con­sti­tu­tion­al or­der!”

In a cen­tral Seoul plaza, an­oth­er huge crowd gath­ered sup­port­ing Yoon, but they grew sub­dued af­ter hear­ing he had been im­peached. Both ral­lies have large­ly been peace­ful.

The act­ing leader bol­sters the coun­try’s se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture

Yoon is­sued a state­ment say­ing he would “nev­er give up” and call­ing for of­fi­cials to main­tain sta­bil­i­ty in gov­ern­ment func­tions dur­ing what he de­scribed as a “tem­po­rary” pause of his pres­i­den­cy.

“I will car­ry with me all the crit­i­cisms, en­cour­age­ment and sup­port di­rect­ed to­ward me, and I will con­tin­ue to do my ut­most for the coun­try un­til the very last mo­ment,” Yoon said.

Yoon’s Dec. 3 im­po­si­tion of mar­tial law, the first of its kind in more than four decades in South Ko­rea, last­ed on­ly six hours, but has caused mas­sive po­lit­i­cal tu­mult, halt­ed diplo­mat­ic ac­tiv­i­ties and rat­tled fi­nan­cial mar­kets. Yoon was forced to lift his de­cree af­ter par­lia­ment unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to over­turn it.

Han, the act­ing leader, or­dered the mil­i­tary to bol­ster its se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture to pre­vent North Ko­rea from launch­ing provo­ca­tions by mis­cal­cu­la­tion. Han asked the for­eign min­is­ter to in­form oth­er coun­tries that South Ko­rea’s ma­jor ex­ter­nal poli­cies re­main un­changed, and the fi­nance min­is­ter to work to min­i­mize po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pacts on the econ­o­my by the po­lit­i­cal tur­moil, ac­cord­ing to Han’s of­fice.

“I earnest­ly ask pub­lic ser­vants this. At this mo­ment, we have the crit­i­cal task of en­sur­ing nor­mal and sta­ble op­er­a­tions of state af­fairs ... I ask you to car­ry out your du­ties with­out any ne­glect to en­sure that the gov­ern­ment is op­er­at­ed with­out be­ing shak­en,” Han said in a tele­vised state­ment.

South Ko­rea’s ex­ec­u­tive pow­er is con­cen­trat­ed with the pres­i­dent, but the prime min­is­ter leads the coun­try if the pres­i­dent be­comes in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed. Han is a sea­soned of­fi­cial and has pre­vi­ous­ly held a string of top gov­ern­ment posts such as trade min­is­ter and fi­nance min­is­ter and was the am­bas­sador to the U.S. He al­so served as a prime min­is­ter from 2007-2008.

Philip S. Gold­berg, the U.S. am­bas­sador in South Ko­rea, wrote on X that he just met South Ko­re­an For­eign Min­is­ter Cho Tae-yul and they reaf­firmed the two coun­tries’ al­liance will re­main “iron­clad.” Gold­berg said the U.S. sup­ports South Ko­rea’s “de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and con­sti­tu­tion­al process here and stands with its peo­ple.”

Af­ter de­clar­ing mar­tial law, Yoon sent hun­dreds of troops and po­lice of­fi­cers to the par­lia­ment to try to im­pede its vote on the de­cree, be­fore they with­drew af­ter the par­lia­ment re­ject­ed Yoon’s de­cree. No ma­jor vi­o­lence oc­curred.

Op­po­si­tion par­ties and many ex­perts ac­cuse Yoon of re­bel­lion, cit­ing a law that cat­e­go­rizes as re­bel­lion the stag­ing of a ri­ot against es­tab­lished state au­thor­i­ties to un­der­mine the con­sti­tu­tion. They al­so say that a pres­i­dent in South Ko­rea is al­lowed to de­clare mar­tial law on­ly dur­ing wartime or sim­i­lar emer­gen­cies and has no right to sus­pend par­lia­ment’s op­er­a­tions even un­der mar­tial law.

The im­peach­ment mo­tion al­leged that Yoon “com­mit­ted re­bel­lion that hurt peace in the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea by stag­ing a se­ries of ri­ots.” It said Yoon’s mo­bi­liza­tion of mil­i­tary and po­lice forces threat­ened the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly and the pub­lic and that his mar­tial law de­cree was aimed at dis­turb­ing the con­sti­tu­tion.

Yoon re­mains de­fi­ant

In a fiery speech on Thurs­day, Yoon re­ject­ed the re­bel­lion charges, call­ing his mar­tial law in­tro­duc­tion an act of gov­er­nance. The con­ser­v­a­tive Yoon said he aimed to is­sue a warn­ing to the main lib­er­al op­po­si­tion De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, call­ing it “a mon­ster” and “an­ti-state forces” that he ar­gued has flexed its leg­isla­tive mus­cle to im­peach top of­fi­cials and un­der­mine the gov­ern­ment’s bud­get bill for next year. He claimed the de­ploy­ment of troops was meant to main­tain or­der, rather than dis­rupt it.

De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty leader Lee Jae-myung called Yoon’s speech a “mad de­c­la­ra­tion of war” against his own peo­ple.

Ob­servers say Yoon’s speech sug­gest­ed a fo­cus on le­gal prepa­ra­tions to de­fend his mar­tial law de­cree at the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court, even as opin­ion sur­veys showed more than 70% of South Ko­re­ans sup­port­ed his im­peach­ment. A sur­vey re­leased Fri­day put Yoon’s ap­proval rat­ing at 11%, the low­est since he took of­fice in 2022.

Some of Yoon’s claims don’t align with tes­ti­mo­ny by some mil­i­tary com­man­ders whose troops were de­ployed to the As­sem­bly.

Most no­tably, Kwak Jong-ke­un, com­man­der of the Army Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand, said that af­ter mar­tial law was an­nounced, Yoon called him and asked for his troops to “quick­ly de­stroy the door and drag out the law­mak­ers who are in­side.” Kwak said he didn’t car­ry out Yoon’s or­ders.

Yoon is the third South Ko­re­an pres­i­dent im­peached while in of­fice. In 2016, par­lia­ment im­peached Park Ge­un-hye, the coun­try’s first fe­male pres­i­dent, over a cor­rup­tion scan­dal. The Con­sti­tu­tion­al Court up­held her im­peach­ment and dis­missed her from of­fice.

In 2004, Pres­i­dent Roh Moo-hyun was im­peached at par­lia­ment over an al­leged elec­tion law vi­o­la­tion but the court lat­er over­turned his im­peach­ment and re­stored his pres­i­den­tial pow­ers. Roh jumped to his death in 2009, af­ter he had left of­fice, amid a cor­rup­tion scan­dal in­volv­ing his fam­i­ly.

Yoon has been banned from leav­ing South Ko­rea.

He has the pres­i­den­tial priv­i­lege of im­mu­ni­ty from crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion but that doesn’t ex­tend to al­le­ga­tions of re­bel­lion or trea­son. Sub­se­quent­ly, Yoon could be in­ves­ti­gat­ed, de­tained, ar­rest­ed or in­dict­ed over his mar­tial law de­cree, but many ob­servers doubt that au­thor­i­ties will force­ful­ly de­tain him be­cause of the po­ten­tial for clash­es with his pres­i­den­tial se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice.

Yoon’s de­fence min­is­ter, po­lice chief and the head of Seoul’s met­ro­pol­i­tan po­lice agency have been ar­rest­ed. Oth­er se­nior mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­so face in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

SEOUL, South Ko­rea (AP) —