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A day after he declared — and then withdrew — martial law, President Yoon Suk Yeol was politically isolated as observers pondered his future in leadership.
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For Yoon Suk Yeol, the unpopular president of South Korea, things appeared to worsen with each passing day. Thousands of doctors had been on strike for almost a year to resist his health care reforms. The opposition in Parliament repeatedly pushed for investigations into his wife, as well as the impeachment of his cabinet members, accusing them of corruption and abuse of power. And the lawmakers blocked many of Mr. Yoon’s bills and political appointments.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Yoon took a desperate measure, his boldest political gamble, which he said was driven by frustration and crisis. In a surprise, nationally televised address, he declared martial law, the first such decree in the country in decades. The move banned all political activities, civil gatherings and “fake news” in what he called an attempt to save his country from “pro-North Korean” and “anti-state forces.”
But it ended almost as abruptly as it had started.
Thousands of citizens took to the streets, chanting “Impeach Yoon Suk Yeol!” Opposition lawmakers climbed the walls into the National Assembly as citizens pushed back police. Parliamentary aides used furniture and fire extinguishers to prevent armed paratroopers from entering the Assembly’s main hall. Inside, lawmakers who included members of Mr. Yoon’s own People Power Party voted unanimously to strike down his martial law. Six hours after declaring it, Mr. Yoon appeared on television again, this time to retract his decision.
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It was the shortest-lived and most bizarre martial law in the history of South Korea, which had had its share of military coups and periods of martial law before it became a vibrant democracy after the military dictatorship that ended in the late 1980s.
In the end, driven by his own impulsiveness and surrounded by a small group of insiders, who seldom said no to a leader known for angry outbursts, Mr. Yoon shot his own foot, according to a former aide and political analysts. Now his political future is on the chopping block, thrusting one of the United States’ most important allies in Asia into political upheaval and leaving many South Koreans in a state of shock.
