South Korea Martial Law Crisis
President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on live television at about 10.30 on the night of 3 December 2024, and it lasted roughly six hours. His stated justification was that anti-state forces sympathetic to North Korea had paralysed the government. What had actually paralysed it was an opposition majority in the National Assembly that had impeached his ministers, cut his budget, blocked his legislation and opened investigations into his wife. The decree banned political activity, placed the press under control and ordered medical staff back to work. Troops and helicopters were sent to the National Assembly to prevent it meeting, because the constitution requires martial law to be lifted if a majority of the chamber demands it. Legislators climbed fences and pushed past soldiers to get in; staff barricaded doors with furniture; and crowds gathered outside. Of 300 members, 190 reached the chamber and voted the decree down unanimously at about 1 a.m. The soldiers did not fire, and several commanders later testified that they had slowed their own operations deliberately. Yoon rescinded it before dawn. The Assembly impeached him on 14 December after one failed attempt, and the Constitutional Court removed him unanimously in April 2025. He was arrested in January 2025 after a standoff at the presidential residence, the first sitting South Korean president detained, and tried for insurrection. The episode is read as a demonstration that the institutions built after 1987 held — the legislature, the courts and, decisively, an army that would not shoot.
- Year: 2024 CE
- Category: Political
