Lawmakers in South Korea have voted to block the president's move to declare martial law, after both the ruling party and opposition vowed to obstruct the declaration.
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00:00It is very fluid. We have different live pictures coming into the building and just in the last few minutes
00:05Our BBC producer Jake Hwan who's in Seoul is in a position outside of the Parliament building
00:12So I want to bring him into the conversation
00:15Jake just set the scene for us. Tell me what it's been like since you've been there
00:22Hi, so this place there are dozens and dozens of
00:26police officers
00:27Protesters I see dozens of right police
00:30Bands and and buses and you can hear probably behind me the chanting and people are chanting
00:36You know bring down the dictatorship
00:39Stop the martial law and arrest president Yoon. These people are
00:44Against this martial law being enacted. I mean this thing was a complete
00:50Stunning moment. I think the general mood here is one of incredulity
00:54And we've heard that from just about everybody who has joined us here in the last couple of hours as this news is emerged
01:02And no one was anticipating
01:04Has the news?
01:06Filtered out to the people around you that actually we've had a vote inside of the Parliament itself
01:12And they have voted that this move is invalid has that news spread out
01:17Yes, it has so a lot of people here were watching the
01:21Vote happening in the Parliament live on their YouTube and as soon as the the bill was passed
01:26The motion was passed you heard a loud cheer among the crowd and a lot of people were saying open the door now
01:33Open the gate now and people are ready to go into the National Assembly
01:37and in terms of the National Assembly earlier we saw
01:41Just scenes of jostling we saw some
01:44Scenes of jostling we saw soldiers. We think there are special forces soldiers inside the building
01:51Are you seeing large numbers of security?
01:57That's right, I mean most of the police officers here
01:59I see easily hundreds of police officers all in their high-vis jackets
02:06But there they are not carrying any batons. They're not carrying a riot shield
02:11I saw some people who are carrying those but the mood is for now quite peaceful. I think the
02:19The public is still kind of standing by waiting to see what is going to happen
02:23I spoke to a few experts today on what is going to happen
02:27But none of them could really give an answer because we are really in an uncharted territory. I mean this hasn't happened
02:33since 1979
02:35Yes, a lot of people looking now
02:38What the military will do if you have a standoff between
02:41President and Parliament the worry is that
02:45Instructions will be given to the military to try to enforce his will but do we know I was asking Su Min
02:51Who's here with me in the studio, but you're there. Do we know even the whereabouts?
02:56Geographically physically of where the president actually is as we're talking now
03:01Well, the best guess is that he's it he's a young son presidential office which is in the right in the middle of Seoul City
03:08The the thing is a lot of people have to
03:12Gather here because they wanted the the police here
03:16The military here to let the lawmakers through because a big fear was that the police will will block the access of the National Assembly
03:24To prevent the the the motion to lift and lift the martial law from taking place. So
03:31we actually heard the stories of a single a lawmaker who had to hop over this one and a half meter fence to get
03:38Into the assembly hall to take to participate in the vote and police were blocking anybody from going in and out
03:44So that was a kind of widespread fear
03:47Thankfully the vote had taken place
03:49But now the question is will the president back down because this is a huge gamble for him
03:56Going back to some of the politics. We were just talking to
04:00other contributors here who were talking about how
04:04Politically his will was being thwarted has that been evident that there was a standoff brewing?
04:14It was it was a
04:17It was it was a week of very tense standoff
04:21I mean the headline for the last week has been dominated by all the tit-for-tat between the presidential office and the National Assembly here
04:28The mood between those two institutions have been the worst
04:32In recent years and we saw the president escalating his his rhetoric against the National Assembly National Assembly
04:41Responding in kind but no one could have predicted that
04:45President Yoon would essentially go for the nuclear option
04:48and Jake tell me more about
04:51Whether those people who have gathered with you know about some of the restrictions that he brought in with martial law
04:59I mean those restrictions even extend to the media has have those details actually filtered out. I
05:06I
05:08Think the people who are gathered here are ones who are very much invested in the political news of
05:14Of the country. I mean it is it is past 1 30
05:191 30 a.m
05:20here most of the people
05:21Would be in bed actually when the when the news broke a lot of people must have been in bed and then people I saw
05:28You know when I first arrived here, there were dozens of people at the gate and now there are hundreds of people
05:34So these people had been glued to their phone looking at every single update looking at the YouTube videos of the live streaming
05:42Sorry, yes, they are they are screaming
05:46for this martial law to be lifted and there's a
05:50There's a there had been a real fear amongst the main opposition party circles that this might come to pass and that you know
05:57Yoon would essentially press the button and then
06:01I'm sure you have been talking about all these laws being suspended. Like there's no technically there's no freedom of press as of now
06:08There's no freedom
06:10in terms of the military can come and arrest you and search you without any warrants, so
06:17there had been a huge anxiety amongst the general public and secondly
06:22There had been also fake news going around that there might be a curfew
06:26From 11 p.m. So there has been a lot of confusion. A lot of people have been glued to their phone all night
06:34And you there outside of the Parliament, you know, you look at the last time this was done
06:41some sort of martial law and it was back in
06:451979 so in your lifetime, you won't have experienced anything like this
06:50Everything is new in terms of what they've tried here overnight
06:56Exactly exactly. This is the first time martial law was declared since the democratization of 1987
07:04Since the military dictatorship was brought down and like last like I said the last time
07:081979 it only happened because the president the dictator at the time was assassinated and then
07:14It allowed lasted for two years and then it was soon followed by a military coup. So
07:19this
07:21Thing happening in a democracy in one of the few full democracies in Asia
07:30Jake just in terms of those people shouting. What are they actually shouting?
07:36They're shouting arrest prison you so you can see that a lot of these people are supporters of the main opposition party