The night of Dec. 3, President Yoon Suk Yeol stunned South Koreans when he declared martial law on television, reawakening dark memories of military rule.
Military helicopters landed inside the National Assembly compound and troops moved to take control of the opposition-controlled parliamentary body.
Mr. Yoon came close to disabling the Assembly, but he misjudged the public’s resistance and the commitment of his military enforcers. His martial law lasted only six hours.
South Koreans worry: Could it happen again?
There were only four dinner guests: the defense minister and three army generals. President Yoon prepared the meal for them himself at his hilltop residence overlooking South Korea’s capital, where hours earlier they had watched columns of troops marching in a military parade to celebrate the Oct. 1 Armed Forces Day. They talked about the political opposition, the left-wing news media and labor activists — all of which the conservative leader detested. Then they discussed a subject South Koreans had thought no longer possible: imposing martial law.
It was a critical moment in a plot that had begun six months before, bringing together all the key players to discuss a military takeover of the country.
They hatched bold plans, often over meals at a safe house inside a heavily guarded government compound and at a burger chain outlet, to incapacitate the National Assembly and arrest Mr. Yoon’s critics, according to some of the people involved in the discussions and prosecutors. They would cut off electricity and water to unfriendly newspapers and TV stations, seize a YouTube channel highly critical of Mr. Yoon and raid the National Election Commission (which right-wing conspiracy theorists claimed had manipulated parliamentary election results against Mr. Yoon’s party).
Few saw it coming, and Mr. Yoon and his allies came close to achieving the unthinkable. Soldiers swiftly took over the election commission, while elite troops and police officers laid siege to the Assembly. But when they met a wall of ordinary South Koreans who had raced there to block them, the soldiers relented. Rather than dragging people away or preparing for combat, they left their weapons unloaded. Some bowed in apology and even hugged angry citizens.
Mr. Yoon’s plan collapsed and he was forced to back down.
To piece together how the dramatic events came about and fell apart, The New York Times pored through courtroom and parliamentary testimonies by those involved in Mr. Yoon’s imposition of martial law, reports by prosecutors, and interviewed a dozen lawmakers and aides.
The picture that emerged shows that Mr. Yoon began nurturing a military takeover much earlier than commonly believed, and hatching emotionally driven plans to hamstring his political opponents. But it also shows that, for all his preparation, he made a series of major miscalculations.
The first was overestimating his allies.
Lacking a majority in Parliament, Mr. Yoon needed a military willing to use brute force on his behalf. But as courtroom and parliamentary testimonies revealed, he failed to win support from the broader military leadership, relying mainly on one loyal ally who shared his wild dreams: his defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, a retired three-star Army general. When Mr. Kim was the president’s chief of security, his bodyguards gagged and dragged away dissidents who shouted criticism at Mr. Yoon during public events. Now, as defense minister, he roped three generals into the martial law plan, telling Mr. Yoon that he should trust their loyalty.
Forces deployed on the night of martial law
But the generals — and especially their underlings — were not as committed to Mr. Yoon’s takeover. Some former generals involved in martial law decades ago had ended up in prison and been publicly disgraced. And so while they followed Mr. Yoon’s orders to go to the Assembly, they told their troops not to carry ammunition and, after they met strong resistance, to retreat.
Mr. Yoon’s second big miscalculation was failing to predict how fast ordinary South Koreans would mobilize to stop the troops taking over the Assembly. Their actions gave opposition lawmakers time to gather and vote down the martial law order.
There were other blunders, too.
Black Hawk helicopters carrying troops to the Assembly were slowed down because their superior officers did not get advance clearance to fly over Seoul, losing precious time. Mr. Yoon could have declared martial law in the wee hours of a weekend to make it easier to seize the Assembly; instead he did so at a time when people were still awake and could react. There were plans to arrest Mr. Yoon’s enemies, but the military didn’t even know where they were when the decree came.
Mr. Yoon’s martial law rose and fell in such a bewildering sequence of events that South Koreans still wonder how their country, considered one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies, was pushed to the edge of military rule for the first time since the 1980s.
For some, Mr. Yoon’s failure was hailed as a victory for South Korea’s democracy and its constitutional safeguards. For others, the episode revealed gaping loopholes, raising fears that it could happen again as some of the country’s politicians become more radicalized.
Mr. Yoon has since been impeached and suspended from office, but if the country’s Constitutional Court doesn’t formally remove him — a ruling is expected soon — he could yet return to office. He maintains that he declared martial law in a desperate but legitimate attempt to alert South Koreans that the opposition was running a dictatorial parliament and creating a national crisis of governance.
The Rage
Mr. Yoon won the presidential election by a whisker in 2022, but his leadership soon proved deeply unpopular and divisive. He grew exasperated by South Korea’s polarized politics, and particularly by Parliament, which kept blocking his policy agenda. Especially galling for Mr. Yoon was a demand by the opposition for an investigation into his wife, whom they accused of accepting expensive gifts and meddling in government affairs.
Mr. Yoon accused the opposition of abusing its majority to impeach government officials and slash budgets for his projects, such as drilling for oil and gas. By the summer of 2023, he began adopting the language past military dictators once used against political adversaries, calling his critics “anti-state forces.” Right-wing YouTubers he liked watching called on him to declare martial law, claiming there had been widespread vote fraud in parliamentary elections — allegations that were dismissed by the authorities and the courts.
In private, Mr. Yoon first began mentioning the use of “extraordinary presidential powers” last spring, when he met with close confidants, including Mr. Kim, at a safe house in central Seoul, prosecutors and some of the participants said.
Among them was the defense minister then, Shin Won-sik, who later said he had opposed the idea. He also said that after the meeting, he met Mr. Kim separately, asking him to persuade Mr. Yoon not to use the military to solve political problems. He was excluded from subsequent meetings, and Mr. Yoon eventually replaced him with Mr. Kim.
“The president had emotional fluctuations when things didn’t go well and the political situation aggravated,” Mr. Kim said later in court.
But Mr. Kim was the president’s most zealous enabler.
He hosted a dinner at his residence in April for three Army lieutenant generals to get them on board with the martial law plan. Two months later, he introduced them to Mr. Yoon as generals he could trust, according to prosecutors.
In public, Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kim made no mention of martial law. When opposition lawmakers began accusing Mr. Yoon of planning it last summer, the president’s office called it a “groundless ghost story.”
And when Mr. Kim was asked about it during a parliamentary confirmation hearing on his promotion to defense minister in September, he said the military would not be on board.
“Our people would not tolerate martial law,” Mr. Kim said, denying rumors of a plot in the works.
Mr. Kim, however, was busy recruiting a friend from his military days: Noh Sang-won, a former military intelligence chief.
Having been discharged from the military dishonorably after being convicted of sexually assaulting a female soldier in 2018, Mr. Noh was running a fortune-telling shop when Mr. Kim asked him to lead an operation to seize the National Election Commission, arrest its officials and find evidence of election fraud.
Mr. Noh had an odd way of judging whom he could work with: He visited a shaman to ask whether the military officers assigned to work with him were trustworthy, the shaman, Lee Seon-jin, said in parliamentary testimony.
She said she had tried to dissuade him from whatever he was planning to do for Mr. Yoon’s government, saying that the president would be impeached. Mr. Noh did not believe her, she said.
Mr. Yoon’s already dismal public approval ratings were sinking, and Mr. Noh sought to find evidence of election fraud that might turn the political tide.
“If we round up and torture those involved in vote fraud, we will get their confession,” Mr. Noh said when he met with senior military intelligence officers at Lotteria, a hamburger restaurant chain, on Nov. 17. “Get some baseball bats, cable ties and blindfolds ready,” Mr. Noh instructed, according to the prosecutors’ indictment.
Items confiscated after troops tried to take the National Election Commission
Source: Supreme Prosecutors Office, Republic of Korea
Not everyone shared Mr. Noh’s enthusiasm. On Nov. 30, Lt. Gen. Yeo In-hyong, the defense counterintelligence commander, got upset when Mr. Kim told him that martial law appeared imminent. The general said in court that he raised his voice and slammed the table to argue against it.
But generals like him were hard-wired to follow orders.
The following day, on Dec. 1, Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kim pushed ahead. Mr. Kim showed the president draft martial law documents he had prepared after consulting those used by past military dictators. Mr. Yoon scanned them, suggesting one change: delete a night curfew from the martial law decree.
Under orders from Mr. Kim, the generals told their units to cancel training and stand by because there could be provocations from North Korea.
At 7:20 p.m. on Dec. 3, Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kim met with police chiefs at Mr. Yoon’s safe house. They told them to help the military control the Assembly once Mr. Yoon declared martial law.
The president’s office began summoning cabinet members to his office, and the clock started ticking.
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A five-minute cabinet meeting
Cabinet members did not know why they had been called into Mr. Yoon’s office until they got there. The gathering lasted only five minutes before Mr. Yoon stood up impatiently.
“This is my decision as president and I take responsibility.”
Mr. Yoon dismissed objections from cabinet members.
Mr. Yoon went on TV, launching into an emotionally charged diatribe against the National Assembly, calling it a “monster” and “a den of criminals.” He declared martial law four minutes into the speech.
Mr. Yoon’s martial law plans, which lawyers from the defense ministry never had a chance to vet, had deep flaws.
South Korea’s Constitution places strict limits on how a president can declare martial law: It must be during war or comparable national emergency; the president must hold a deliberation at a cabinet meeting before declaring it; and once it is declared, the president must immediately notify the National Assembly, giving lawmakers a chance to vote on it.
Mr. Yoon ignored all these requirements, prosecutors said in their indictment.
By the time the cabinet had a quorum to discuss the plan, it was 17 minutes after Mr. Yoon had planned to declare martial law. Mr. Yoon’s usually meek prime minister, Han Duck-soo, spoke against imposing martial law, saying it would hurt the country’s economy and its global image. But there was little time for actual deliberation before Mr. Yoon stood up and left.
“We wondered, ‘Where did he go?’” said Song Mi-ryung, the agriculture minister. “Then someone turned on the phone and we heard his voice.”
After declaring martial law, Mr. Yoon gave instructions to his finance minister to cut funds to the Assembly and prepare new budgets for “a national emergency legislature.”
Mr. Kim moved to the military’s underground command and control center nearby, where top generals were gathered.
“From now on, I am responsible for all military activities,” he said, according to prosecutors and to officers who were there. “Those who don’t follow orders or are negligent will be punished for mutiny.”
Mr. Kim ordered troops and police officers to be sent to six locations across the Seoul metropolitan area, including the National Assembly, the headquarters of the main opposition, and the National Election Commission. Another target was the studio of a popular influencer, Kim Ou-joon, who hosts a talk show on YouTube that Mr. Yoon’s party has accused of spreading “fake news” against the president.
Mr. Yoon’s plan to take over the National Election Commission went off without a hitch.
Three minutes after the declaration of martial law, Mr. Noh’s military intelligence agents moved in to secure its computer server room, cut off landlines and confiscate the mobile phones of those on duty. Backed by troops streaming in from the Special Warfare Command, they were under orders to detain 30 election officials who would arrive for work the next morning. The troops planned to tie and blindfold the officials, then take them to an underground military bunker for interrogation, prosecutors said.
But the race to seize the National Assembly did not go as Mr. Yoon hoped.
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A race against time
Three minutes after the declaration, the police started sending officers to the National Assembly. They were ordered to stop anyone from entering the complex.
Rushing to the Assembly, Lee Jae-myung, the main opposition leader, went on YouTube to ask South Koreans to come and block the troops.
When the troops reached the Assembly about an hour later, there were thousands of angry citizens standing in their way.
Black Hawk helicopters carrying special forces were supposed to arrive earlier. But they were delayed because the pilots did not have advance clearance to enter Seoul’s airspace.
Lawmakers rushed to the Assembly to vote to end the decree.
Cha Jiho, an opposition legislator, found a spot on the perimeter of the Assembly with fewer police officers guarding it. He scaled the nearly five-foot wall. As he helped two other people over, the police swarmed around them. In his rush to climb over a second wall, his pants got caught, leaving him dangling in the air until he fell and suffered minor injuries. But the three made it over.
The National Assembly speaker, Woo Won-shik, also climbed into the compound.
Source: Woo Won-shik’s official Facebook account
Police chiefs deployed 1,778 police officers and 168 police buses around the Assembly. But some officers were confused over whether they had the right to block lawmakers from entering the complex.
A formal directive didn’t arrive until an hour after Mr. Yoon’s decree. It banned all political activities, including the operation of the Parliament, and empowered the authorities to arrest those who violated the ban. All news media were put under military control.
“Arrest all lawmakers trying to enter the Assembly,” Mr. Yoon told Cho Ji-ho, the national police chief, according to prosecutors. “They are all violating the decree.”
Crowds of citizens and parliamentary staff blocked the troops. “Shame on you!” a young female politician shouted at a soldier, holding his gun barrel.
“Officers and soldiers at the scene were bewildered,” said Brig. Gen. Lee Sang-hyeon, who led hundreds of special forces troops into the Assembly. “We were trained in absolute obedience, absolute loyalty, to charge into our mission with gunpowder on our back, ready to die. But someone put us in the wrong place.”
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‘What are we doing here?’
“Hurry and break the door down and get in and drag them out.”
Lt. Gen. Kwak Jong-geun, the special warfare commander, said Mr. Yoon ordered him to remove lawmakers before they had a quorum to vote down the martial law.
Special forces troops broke windows to climb into the main Assembly building, where lawmakers were gathering for the vote.
Parliamentary staff members and citizens built barricades with furniture and sprayed fire extinguishers at the soldiers to stop them from reaching the Assembly’s voting chamber.
Mr. Yoon continued making demands to break the door down, by shooting if necessary, prosecutors said.
“We asked ourselves ‘What are we doing here?’ and felt ashamed,” said Col. Kim Hyeon-tae, who led the troops through the windows. “We could not aim our guns at, and use force against, our own people. When they beat us, we just took the blows.”
Colonel Kim said his superior officer, Lieutenant General Kwak, asked him in an apologetic voice whether he could lead his troops further in. Colonel Kim said he could not. And both of them agreed not to.
“I didn’t want my troops to become criminals and did not want many people hurt,” Lieutenant General Kwak said.
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The plan collapses
Of the country’s 300 lawmakers, 190 gathered at the Assembly and unanimously voted against martial law.
Prosecutors said Mr. Yoon was unwilling to admit defeat even after the vote, threatening to declare martial law again.
But the military and police forces around the Assembly and the National Election Commission began withdrawing. And Mr. Kim, the architect of martial law, conceded defeat, telling the generals: “We did what we could.”
Six hours after the declaration, Mr. Yoon went on TV again to withdraw it.
But protesters stayed outside the Assembly well into the morning. “Arrest Yoon Suk Yeol,” they shouted.
Mr. Yoon’s plans to detain 14 of his political enemies and take them to an underground bunker, described by a Navy officer during a parliamentary hearing, were also thwarted by the crowds and unwilling officials. Hong Jang-won, a former deputy director of the National Intelligence Service, said he was fired after he failed to follow orders to help arrest the politicians.
“There is one country in the world that does this kind of thing: North Korea,” Mr. Hong said.
Mr. Yoon has since been impeached and suspended from office by the Assembly. The president, Mr. Kim, the generals and the police chiefs have all been arrested on insurrection charges. Mr. Yoon is the first sitting South Korean president to face criminal charges. He was released from custody on Saturday after a court ruled his detention had been procedurally flawed, although the ruling does not affect the case against him.
Mr. Yoon has said that he was justified in declaring martial law and that he did not breach the Constitution. He denied any attempt to neutralize the Assembly or to detain lawmakers, saying the police and troops were sent there to keep order. He also said that “confusion and loopholes” in his imposition of martial law, as well as “the lack of a detailed operational plan,” showed that he did not intend to take over the country by military force.
“It was different from the martial law of the past,” he said.
In hearings at the Constitutional Court, which is deliberating whether to formally remove Mr. Yoon from office, both Lieutenant General Lee and Lieutenant General Yeo refused to discuss details of their roles for fear that their testimony would be used against them during their own criminal trials.
South Koreans fear that martial law might happen again should Mr. Yoon be restored to office or should their country’s increasingly polarized politics produce another leader like him. The Constitutional Court could reinstate Mr. Yoon if it doesn’t get at least six of its eight justices to reach the majority needed to confirm his impeachment.
Lawmakers this month began discussing new legislation that would give the Assembly more oversight in how future presidents could use martial law.
“This martial law was something that should not have happened,” said Lieutenant General Kwak, who was ordered to seize the Assembly. “I regret that I didn’t say ‘No, sir’ when I received the first order.”