South Korea’s President Yoon will be lucky to escape jail

Six hours. That was the duration of the profoundly disturbing and simultaneously farcical version of martial law invoked by South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday night – the country’s first experience of military rule for 40 years. It was so brief in duration that if you weren’t plugged in to social media or watching TV you may not have been aware it had even occurred.

What this brief but extraordinary episode amounted to was a deployment of troops to the parliament building to bar the entrance of lawmakers. That operation failed utterly, as protesters were quickly on the scene to take on the military, in some cases with fire extinguishers, and facilitate the entrance of the representatives. 190 lawmakers made it in, every single one of whom then voted for the suspension of the martial law decree (including 19 members of Yoon’s own People Power party – or PPP). A few hours later President (at the time of writing) Yoon rescinded it.

What now? The next step would seem to be the impeachment of Yoon, which a coalition of lawmakers from six opposition parties have called for today and which could be voted on within 72 hours.