South Korea’s long history of martial law – and impeachments

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s decision to declare martial law has triggered the biggest political crisis in decades in the East Asian nation and sent shock waves across the world.

Yoon imposed the emergency law after accusing the main opposition Democratic Party of sympathising with North Korea and of antistate activities.

Hours later, Yoon was forced to back down after opposition lawmakers forced their way past security forces to enter parliament. All 190 lawmakers present in the 300-member assembly voted unanimously to lift the martial law order.

Calls to impeach Yoon, the leader of the conservative People Power Party, have grown as the country reels from the political turbulence.

Yet few countries with advanced economies have as much history with martial law and scandal-riddled governments as South Korea does.

What is martial law?

Martial law ensures temporary rule by military authorities during emergencies. But most young South Koreans have no memory of its last imposition, in the late 1970s.

“People are texting to ask, ‘What is this martial law?’ Nobody saw this coming,” Al Jazeera’s Eunice Kim, reporting from Seoul, said on Tuesday.

While Yoon’s brief imposition of martial law was the first of its kind in four decades, South Korea has had a long history of military rule.

“South Korea’s democracy is still very young, only starting in 1988 after nearly three decades of authoritarian rule, much of which had been a very harsh dictatorship under three different dictators,” Katharine Moon, a political science professor at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, United States, told Al Jazeera.

History of martial law in South Korea

August 15, 1948

The Republic of Korea, as South Korea is known officially, was founded in 1948 after the Korean Peninsula was divided into South and North Korea. Staunch anti-communist Syngman Rhee became its first president, imposing martial law to crack down on communists.

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when North Korean troops entered South Korea in a bid to reunite the two. Fighting raged on for three years between China-backed northern troops against US-backed United Nations forces. The war left an estimated two million people dead by the time an armistice was signed in 1953.

In 1960, protests broke out against electoral corruption, also called the April Revolution. Rhee again imposed martial law. But with protests mounting, Syngman was forced to step down. The National Assembly elected Yun Bo-seon as president on August 13, 1960.