SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean lawmakers voted Saturday to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his failed attempt to impose martial law that plunged East Asian democracy and a key U.S. ally into chaos.

The vote resulted in 204 yes votes and 85 no votes, with three abstentions and eight annulled votes. All 300 members of the unicameral National Assembly voted in favor of the motion, which required a two-thirds majority to pass.

“Dear people, now go and enjoy the year-end parties,” National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-sik said after the motion was passed.

The motion stated that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was unconstitutional and unlawful because there were no signs of a national emergency and he failed to follow procedural rules such as prior notification to the National Assembly.

Supporters of the motion included members of Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP), whose boycott of an earlier impeachment vote led to the motion’s failure. Although the opposition controls parliament, it only has 192 seats and needed the support of at least eight PPP MPs to impeach Yoon.

Park Chan-dae, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, said the vote was “a triumph for the people and democracy.”

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We will conduct a thorough investigation into those involved in martial law.”

Following the vote, Yoon was immediately suspended from his public positions, with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo serving as acting president. The PPP had previously said that Yoon was already effectively suspended from duty and was working with Han to manage state affairs.

“I will do my best for stable governance of our country,” Han told reporters after the impeachment vote.

Han could also face impeachment over his alleged role in declaring martial law.

The presidential office confirmed to NBC News on Saturday that Yoon was at the presidential residence, where he will remain pending a ruling by the Constitutional Court, which has six months to decide whether to uphold the impeachment motion.

There have been widespread calls for Yoon to step down since he declared a martial law state of emergency last week. The short-lived order, which Yoon repealed within hours after lawmakers voted unanimously to reject it, banned all political activity and censored the news media.

Yoon, 63, who once served as the country’s chief prosecutor, is barred from traveling abroad as he faces investigation into possible rebellion charges. Police tried unsuccessfully to search his office on Wednesday but were prevented from doing so by security officers.

Yoon, who took office in 2022 for a single five-year term, has struggled to push his agenda through the opposition-controlled parliament, and the declaration of martial law has only further eroded his public support. A Gallup Korea poll released Friday showed Yoon’s approval rating at a record low of 11%, Yonhap news agency reported, compared to 13% a week earlier.

Support for Yoon’s impeachment had grown even within his conservative PPP.

“All we all have to think about today is our country South Korea and the people of South Korea,” PPP chief Han Dong-hoon told reporters before lawmakers gathered to vote.

Newly elected PPP leader Kweon Seong-dong, a veteran politician close to Yoon, had said the party remained formally opposed to impeachment.

In the capital Seoul, a large crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the National Assembly ahead of the vote, braving the chilly weather.

Yoon’s declaration of martial law has deeply shocked South Korea, which was under military authoritarian rule for decades.

In the hours after he announced it on December 3, “I thought that if the country was not stable, my dream could be shattered immediately, no matter how well I did in exams and prepared for my dreams,” he said Park Geun-ha, a member of the Korean University Students’ Progressive Alliance, said in a speech at a rally ahead of Saturday’s vote.

“Therefore, we call for the immediate impeachment and arrest of President Yoon.”

Supporters of the protesters, many of whom carried K-pop light sticks, pre-ordered food for them. K-pop singer and songwriter IU said she provided 200 pieces of bread, 100 rice cakes, 200 bowls of rice soup and oxtail soup, and 200 drinks so that rally-goers could “warm up a little.”

A dedicated website helped protesters keep track of where they could find toilets and free food and drink, while a bus was provided for parents who needed a place to change their children’s diapers.

Others rallied in support of Yoon, with pro-Yoon protester Lee Gang-san saying nearly a million people attended his event. NBC News could not independently verify this figure.

“We fear that the opposition will gain more power if President Yoon is impeached,” he told NBC News by telephone.

Some South Koreans expressed relief after the impeachment vote, saying the declaration of martial law may have hurt the world’s 10th-largest economy.

“I was so worried that if the president stays in office, he might do something so unexpected and unimaginable again and further ruin our business spirit,” said Hyo-won Park, who owns a car rental company in Seoul.

Advocacy group Humans Rights Watch said South Koreans “stood up and fought to protect their democracy and human rights.”

“The impeachment proceedings demonstrate the importance of checks and balances in stopping abuses of power and supporting the rule of law,” said Deputy Asia Director Simon Henderson.

Several people have already been arrested in connection with the declaration of martial law, including former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, the commissioner of the National Police Agency and the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency.

Although Yoon has apologized twice for the “fear” his order caused among the public, he vowed to “fight to the end” in a defiant speech on Thursday in which he blamed the opposition for paralyzing the government to such an extent that in his opinion declaring martial law was his only choice.

Democratic Party Chairman Lee Jae-myung said Friday that Yoon’s speech was “a declaration of war on the people.”

“Impeachment is the quickest and surest way to end the crisis,” said Lee, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election.

He urged PPP lawmakers to vote for the second impeachment motion, saying, “History will remember and record your decision.”

Lee also thanked the United States and allied countries “for their consistent support” of democracy in South Korea, where nearly 30,000 American troops are stationed.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told lawmakers Friday he would “make every effort to restore confidence in international relations and maintain the South Korea-U.S. alliance.”

Yoon’s removal from office is not the end of South Korea’s political unrest, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

“It is not even the beginning of the end, which will ultimately include the election of a new president,” he said.

Lee, who is considered a candidate to win the election to replace Yoon, is also in legal jeopardy with a conviction on appeal and several other rulings pending that could disqualify him from office, Easley said.

Communist-ruled North Korea seized on the political unrest in the South, pointing to protests “demanding the removal of the puppet regime Yoon Suk Yeol” in a second day of state media coverage on Thursday, after failing to report the declaration of martial law for a week . The two Koreas remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

Without providing any evidence, Yoon, who has taken a tougher line on North Korea than his Democratic predecessor, had accused the opposition of sympathizing with the nuclear state and used this in his announcement as justification for declaring martial law.

In his speech on Thursday, Yoon said without evidence that North Korea hacked into South Korea’s National Election Commission last year, exposing security problems that he said called into question the integrity of the results of April’s general election, which the liberal opposition won in a landslide.

Kim Yong-bin, the commission’s secretary-general, said Friday there was no evidence of voter fraud or that the system had been hacked, and said all votes would be cast using paper ballots.

“With our system it is impossible to commit voter fraud,” he said.

Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.