Troops tried to take control of the building while parliamentary aides sprayed fire extinguishers to stop them. Meanwhile, protesters faced security forces outside.

“Aren’t you embarrassed?” a woman shouted as she tried to take the rifle away from one of the soldiers.

Deputies defied security to enter the building, and around 1 a.m. all 190 deputies present – out of a total of 300 – voted to reject the martial law order. The soldiers immediately agreed to leave the building and the order was lifted around 4:30 a.m

The martial law order, South Korea’s first since 1980, was lifted so quickly that many South Koreans were not aware of it until they woke up on Wednesday.

“Shock and disbelief”

Jeong So-hee, a shopkeeper in Seoul in her 50s, said she heard the news from a family member around 11 p.m. and followed the news until lawmakers passed the resolution to repeal it.

People her age, who had experienced martial law under the military dictatorship, were rushing to grocery stores to buy canned goods, she said. On Wednesday, Jeong said she noticed fewer people on the streets.

Jeong said Yoon should resign and that declaring emergency law was “the worst step he could have taken.”

Emily Jo, a university student, said she was just about to go to bed when a family member stormed into her room to check if she was home.

“My first reaction was shock and disbelief that something like this would happen in the middle of the night, especially when most people would already be at home sleeping,” she said.

Jo said the main reason the issue was resolved so quickly was South Korea’s history.

“Such an incident has happened before and because people, especially the older generation, know the importance of containing the incident at its initial stage, they managed to bring the situation under control before things got out of control got stuck,” she said.

Not even the top officials of Yoon’s People Power Party (PPP) were notified in advance, said PPP lawmaker Yoo Yong-won.

“What happened yesterday cannot be understood by ordinary common sense,” she told NBC News.

Yoo said she only made it to the National Assembly building at dawn and met with other PPP lawmakers and party leader Han Dong-hoon.

“We huddled together trying to make sense of what was happening and it was clear that my fellow MPs were in shock,” he said.

Yoo said they discussed the possibility of impeaching Yoon, adding: “If it comes to that, we have to vote.”

Han, the party chairman, said on Wednesday that PPP officials had asked Yoon to leave the party. However, the party later said it opposed the impeachment motion, which requires a two-thirds majority of the 300 members of the unicameral parliament.

The opposition bloc has 192 seats, meaning the motion could fail if PPP lawmakers follow the party line in a vote as early as Friday or Saturday.

Political stalemate, allegations of corruption

Frustrated by the standoff with the opposition-controlled parliament, Yoon, whose conservative government took office in 2022, accused lawmakers in his address on Tuesday of trying to paralyze the government by trying to impeach several government officials and withdraw key funding from the to cut next year’s state budget.

Conservatives see opposition lawmakers’ resistance as retaliation for their criminal investigation into Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party leader and Yoon’s rival in the 2022 election.

Yoon has also been embroiled in a series of scandals involving his wife and top officials. A Gallup Korea poll last week showed he had an approval rating of 19%, The Korea Times reported Friday.

Yoon, who has taken a harder line on North Korea than his predecessor in the Democratic Party, also accused his opponents of sympathizing with the nuclear-armed communist state, with which the South technically remains at war.

The international impact of the martial law regime was immediate. A spokesman for Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said this on Wednesday has postponed a visit to South Korea planned for this week. A possible visit by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin next week is also in question.

Biden, who hosted Yoon on a state visit to Washington last year, has worked to strengthen military and other ties with South Korea as a deterrent against China and North Korea and to build a new trilateral security partnership with South Korea and its historic rival Japan. Earlier this year, South Korea became the first country outside the United States to host Biden’s annual pro-democracy summit.

The order also raised questions about the nearly 30,000 American troops South Korea has stationed at bases across the country as well as in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the South from North Korea.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday that the martial law order had “substantially no impact” on U.S. forces and that no curfew had been imposed on them.

The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said Wednesday that it is canceling routine consular appointments, maximizing telework for employees and limiting in-person school attendance for its children.

The U.S. travel advisory for South Korea remains at its lowest level or “normal precautions will be taken.”

Still, the debacle could be more damaging to South Korea’s domestic politics and international reputation than the Capitol Hill insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 was to the United States, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“Yoon’s declaration of martial law appeared to be both a legal overreach and a political miscalculation that needlessly endangered South Korea’s economy and security,” he said in an email.

The president should have known how difficult it would be to implement his decree since opposition parties in parliament clearly had enough votes to reject it, Easley said.

“He sounded like a politician under siege, taking a desperate step against mounting scandals, institutional gridlock and calls for impeachment that are now likely to intensify,” he said.

As South Korea struggles with political instability, the U.S. should “remain a steadfast ally,” Easley said.

“A worrying trend in many democracies is that polarization and extreme measures to break deadlocks are increasingly testing trust in international alliances,” he added.

Stella Kim and Cho Beomsoo reported from Seoul and Jennifer Jett from Hong Kong.