SEOUL - South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was still clinging to power on Thursday, with his party announcing they will oppose an opposition impeachment motion put forward after his stunning but brief imposition of martial law.
Yoon suspended civilian rule late Tuesday and deployed troops and helicopters to parliament only for lawmakers to vote down the measure and force him into a U-turn in a night of protests and drama.
Seoul's allies were alarmed -- Washington said it found out via television -- and on Wednesday, the opposition filed an impeachment motion saying Yoon "gravely violated the constitution and the law".
The opposition aims to bring the bill to a vote Saturday, Yonhap reported.
They hold a large majority in the 300-member legislature and need only a handful of defections from Yoon's People Power Party (PPP) to secure the two-thirds majority needed to pass.
But on Thursday, the PPP leader said that while he had asked Yoon to leave the party, he would block the impeachment motion.
Han Dong-hoon told reporters his party was "not trying to defend the president's unconstitutional martial law".
"All 108 lawmakers of the People Power Party will stay united to reject the president's impeachment," the party's floor leader Choo Kyung-ho said.
If the motion passes, Yoon will be suspended pending a verdict by the Constitutional Court. If the judges give the nod, Yoon will be impeached and new elections must happen within 60 days.
Yoon, who has lurched from crisis to crisis since taking office in 2022, has not been seen in public since his televised address in the early hours of Wednesday.
On Thursday, his office said that Defence Minister Kim Yong-hyun had resigned, but other key allies including Interior Minister Lee Sang-min remain in office.
Yoon's martial law declaration was the first in more than four decades in South Korea and brought back painful memories of the country's turbulent past.
The move was to "safeguard a liberal South Korea from the threats posed by North Korea's communist forces and to eliminate anti-state elements plundering people's freedom and happiness," Yoon said.