Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—

The leader of South Korea’s main opposition party thought the president’s late-night announcement of martial law was a fake when he first saw it, he told CNN on Thursday, as his party now seeks to impeach the country’s leader.

President Yoon Suk Yeol announced the decree – which was in effect for just a few hours before it was struck down by lawmakers who pushed past soldiers into parliament – in an extraordinary televised address late Tuesday night

“That night, after I got home from work, I was lying in bed with my wife in our house… when my wife suddenly showed me a YouTube video and said, ‘The president declares martial law,'” Lee Jae-myung said , leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (DP), told CNN.

“I replied, ‘That’s a deepfake.’ It must be a deepfake. “There is no way this is real,” he said, referring to the term for fake audio and video files created using artificial intelligence.

“But when I watched the video, the president actually declared martial law – and yet I thought to myself, ‘This is made up, this is fake.'”

The news was particularly startling given that South Korea has emerged over the past four decades as a vibrant democracy with frequent protests and protected freedoms – a hard-fought victory after a long history of bloody authoritarian rule.

In recent days, after Yoon relented and revoked the decree early Wednesday, protesters called for the president’s removal while opposition parties, including the DP, launched impeachment proceedings.

Lee, who was Yoon’s main rival in the 2022 presidential election and is himself embroiled in several legal troubles after being indicted on criminal charges, led the impeachment effort.

On Tuesday evening, just an hour after Yoon declared martial law, Lee rushed to Parliament in Seoul – broadcast live as he climbed a fence to enter the building as lawmakers scrambled to vote against the decree. The video has since gone viral and has been viewed tens of millions of times on social platform X.

Parliament could vote on impeachment as early as Saturday. If it achieves a two-thirds majority for passage, it will be sent to one of the country’s highest courts for further approval.

However, Yoon’s ruling People Power Party is working to block the move.

Several members of Yoon’s party joined their political opponents in blocking the martial law decree during the remarkable nighttime scenes in Parliament.

But party leader Han Dong-hoon said in a briefing on Thursday that he would oppose impeachment because it could cause “unprepared chaos,” although he stressed that he “does not defend President Yoon’s unconstitutional martial law.”

Meanwhile, many MPs did not dare to leave the parliament building – including opposition lawmaker Kang Sun-woo, who had been there since Tuesday evening.

“We are concerned and fear that President Yoon could declare martial law again at any time… as the last martial law failed,” she told CNN on Thursday. “That’s why we stay here and don’t go home… We sleep, eat and some colleagues wash here in the National Assembly.”

Questions now surround the future of Yoon’s presidency, his party’s position in government and how it could change the country’s political landscape as a major Asian economy and a key regional ally of the United States.

Lee, a human rights lawyer and former provincial governor, narrowly lost the 2022 election – but neither candidate was particularly popular. Both men were embroiled in scandal and were dogged by lawsuits and allegations in the years that followed.

Lee now faces multiple trials, including bribery and charges related to a $1 billion real estate development scandal, Reuters reported. In November he was charged with personal misuse of public funds and separately convicted of violating election law.

Lee has denied the allegations and said he would appeal.