South Korean lawmakers voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law, which plunged the East Asian democracy and key U.S. ally into chaos.
The vote was 204 in favor and 85 against, with three abstentions and eight votes ruled invalid. All 300 lawmakers in the unicameral National Assembly voted on the motion, which required a two-thirds majority to pass.
“Dear people, now go and enjoy the year-end parties,” Woo Won-sik, the speaker of the National Assembly, said after the motion passed.
The motion held that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unconstitutional and illegal because there were no signs of national emergency and he neglected to follow procedural rules such as notifying the National Assembly in advance.
Supporters of the motion included members of Yoon’s governing People Power Party (PPP), whose boycott of an earlier impeachment vote had caused it to fail. Though the opposition controls parliament, it holds only 192 seats and needed support from at least eight PPP lawmakers to impeach Yoon.
Park Chan-dae, floor leader for the main opposition Democratic Party, said the vote was “a triumph for the people and democracy.”
“This is only the beginning,” he said. “We will conduct a thorough investigation of people involved with the martial law.”
Following the vote, Yoon was immediately suspended from state duties, with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo serving as acting president.
“I will do my best in the stable governance of our country,” Han told reporters after the impeachment vote.
Han could also face impeachment over his alleged role in the martial law declaration.
The presidential office confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that Yoon was in the presidential residence, where he will remain until a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which has six months to decide whether to uphold the impeachment motion.
There have been widespread calls for Yoon to step down since he declared emergency martial law last week. 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.
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.
Support for Yoon’s impeachment had grown even within his conservative PPP.
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.
Some South Koreans expressed relief after the impeachment vote, saying the martial law declaration might have damaged the world’s 10th-largest economy.
A number of people have already been arrested in connection with the martial law declaration, including former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, the commissioner of the National Police Agency and the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.
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.