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South Korea’s president has said he will lift the emergency martial law order he had declared just hours earlier.

Yoon Suk Yeol’s decision comes after parliament voted to block the order, with the speaker of the National Assembly, Woo Won Shik, declaring it “invalid” and saying politicians would “protect democracy with the people”.

The president, who appears likely to be impeached over his actions, had said in a TV address on Tuesday night he was putting the military in temporary charge to defend the constitutional order and “eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces”.

But in a U-turn, Mr Yoon said martial law command forces have withdrawn and a cabinet meeting will be held as soon as possible.

In the end martial was in effect for about six hours.

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After his earlier shock announcement, troops had entered the National Assembly building as police and protesters clashed outside and helicopters, likely to be from the military, flew overhead.

Staff barricaded the doors of the building, in the capital Seoul, to try to stop the soldiers entering.

Inside however, politicians were able to hold a vote and unanimously decided by 190-0 to block the president’s declaration.

According to the law, martial law must be lifted if the assembly votes against it – and police and soldiers were later seen leaving parliament.

South Korean martial law soldiers try to enter the National Assembly compound in Seoul, South Korea.
Pic: Newsis/AP
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Soldiers at the National Assembly compound in Seoul. Pic: Newsis/AP

Police officers stand guard in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea.
Pic: AP
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Police officers clashed with protesters. Pic: AP

Lee Jae-myung, who heads the opposition liberal Democratic Party, which holds the majority in the 300-seat parliament, said anyone acting under the orders of Mr Yoon or the martial law edict was now “breaking the law”.

Despite the vote, the defence ministry told reporters it would uphold the order “until the president lifts [it]”.

South Korea's main opposition Democratic Party's staff set up a barricade to block soldiers at the National Assembly after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in Seoul, South Korea.
Pic: Reuters
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Staff in parliament barricaded doors to stop soldiers entering. Pic: Reuters

Furniture and boxes are piled up to barricade the entrance doors of the National Assembly.
Pic Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

The president had said in his earlier TV address that martial law was necessary to protect “from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order”.

The declaration was the first since the country’s democratisation in 1987.

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Moment emergency martial law announced

UK ‘deeply concerned’

Following the announcement, the military said parliament and other political gatherings were suspended and the media was under its control, reported Yonhap news agency.

US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell said the White House was watching with “grave concern” while Britain’s minister for the Indo-Pacific, Catherine West, said the UK was “deeply concerned”.

She advised Britons to monitor and follow Foreign Office advice and said its Seoul embassy was “in touch with the Korean authorities”.

“We call for a peaceful resolution to the situation, in accordance with the law and the constitution of the Republic of Korea,” said Ms West.

South Korea’s democracy was tested – and its people rose to the occasion


Dominic Waghorn - Diplomatic editor

Dominic Waghorn

International affairs editor

@DominicWaghorn

People power appears to have prevailed in South Korea, defanging a last ditch attempt by a beleaguered lame duck president to declare martial law.

President Yoon’s gambit has backfired spectacularly.

His bombshell announcement late at night led not to a swift imposition of military rule, but instead galvanised popular opposition.

Protesters raced to the country’s parliament allowing MPs inside to vote to overturn the rogue president’s martial law plan.

There was a tense standoff between protesters and police but no violence.

The swift response seized the initiative from the president who was left with little option but to backdown. He now faces investigation by his political opponents along with his minister for national defence who they say was also complicit.

President Yoon may be familiar to some from a viral video showing him crooning American Pie in a soft soothing baritone in an impromptu performance in the White House.

He was not a conventional political performer and has been embroiled in deepening political difficulty since his party lost its parliamentary majority in this year’s elections.

He is now in a world of political pain as he prepares to pay the price for his extraordinarily rash move.

South Korea itself emerges from the episode with less to worry about.

It may have been unnerving, but the constitution, the parliament and the people appear to have weathered the storm and risen to the moment.

South Korea’s democracy has been tested and proven resilient in an unprecedentedly challenging few hours.

Scandals and a government in crisis

Since taking office in 2022, President Yoon has struggled to push his agenda against an opposition-controlled parliament.

His conservative People Power Party has been in a deadlock with the liberal Democratic Party over next year’s budget.

Ministers protested the move on Monday by the Democratic Party to slash more than four trillion won (approximately £2.1bn) from the government’s proposal.

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Crowds gather outside South Korean parliament

Police officers stand guard in front of the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
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Pic: AP

Mr Yoon said that action undermines the essential functioning of government administration.

The president has also dismissed calls for independent investigations into scandals involving his wife and top officials, which has drawn criticism from his political rivals.

Security and defence analyst Professor Michael Clarke told Sky News the government in South Korea has been in “crisis” for a couple of years.

People watch South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's televised address  at a bus terminal in Seoul, South Korea.
Pic: AP
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The president made the martial law announcement on Tuesday night. Pic: AP

“Yoon has been leading a minority government for some time, against him the Democratic Party have just frustrated whatever he has tried to do,” Clarke said.

“He has decided to get ahead of his opposition by creating this move.

“The last thing that liberal democracy needs at the moment is one of the democracies of Asia turning into a short-term dictatorship, so I think this is only a short-term parliamentary manoeuvre, but it may turn out to be more.”

Martial law is typically temporary, but can continue indefinitely. It is most often declared in times of war and/or emergencies such as civil unrest and natural disasters.

South Korea’s previous period of martial law was in October 1979.

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Israeli soldiers ‘psychologically broken’ after ‘confronting the reality’ in Gaza, UN expert says

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Israeli soldiers 'psychologically broken' after 'confronting the reality' in Gaza, UN expert says

A UN expert has said some young soldiers in the Israeli Defence Forces are being left “psychologically broken” after “confront[ing] the reality among the rubble” when serving in Gaza.

Francesca Albanese, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, was responding to a Sky News interview with an Israeli solider who described arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza.

She told The World with Yalda Hakim that “many” of the young people fighting in Gaza are “haunted by what they have seen, what they have done”.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Ms Albanese said. “This is not a war, this is an assault against civilians and this is producing a fracture in many of them.

“As that soldier’s testimony reveals, especially the youngest among the soldiers have been convinced this is a form of patriotism, of defending Israel and Israeli society against this opaque but very hard felt enemy, which is Hamas.

“But the thing is that they’ve come to confront the reality among the rubble of Gaza.”

An Israeli soldier directs a tank at a staging area near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
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An Israeli soldier directs a tank near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel. Pic: AP

Being in Gaza is “probably this is the first time the Israeli soldiers are awakening to this,” she added. “And they don’t make sense of this because their attachment to being part of the IDF, which is embedded in their national ideology, is too strong.

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“This is why they are psychologically broken.”

Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesman who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, said he believes the Sky News interview with the former IDF solider “reflects one part of how ugly, difficult and horrible fighting in a densely populated, urban terrain is”.

“I think [the ex-soldier] is reflecting on how difficult it is to fight in such an area and what the challenges are on the battlefield,” he said.

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Ex-IDF spokesperson: ‘No distinction between military and civilians’

‘An economy of genocide’

Ms Albanese, one of dozens of independent UN-mandated experts, also said her most recent report for the human rights council has identified “an economy of genocide” in Israel.

The system, she told Hakim, is made up of more than 60 private sector companies “that have become enmeshed in the economy of occupation […] that have Israel displace the Palestinians and replace them with settlers, settlements and infrastructure Israel runs.”

Israel has rejected allegations of genocide in Gaza, citing its right to defend itself after Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.

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‘Israel has shifted towards economy of genocide’

The companies named in Ms Albanese’s report are in, but not limited to, the financial sector, big tech and the military industry.

“These companies can be held responsible for being directed linked to, or contributing, or causing human rights impacts,” she said. “We’re not talking of human rights violations, we are talking of crimes.”

“Some of the companies have engaged in good faith, others have not,” Ms Albanese said.

Read more:
Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza
British surgeons on life in Gaza

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The companies she has named include American technology giant Palantir, which has issued a statement to Sky News.

It said it is “not true” that Palantir “is the (or a) developer of the ‘Gospel’ – the AI-assisted targeting software allegedly used by the IDF in Gaza, and that we are involved with the ‘Lavender’ database used by the IDF for targeting cross-referencing”.

“Both capabilities are independent of and pre-ate Palantir’s announced partnership with the Israeli Defence Ministry,” the statement added.

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Israeli PM nominates Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize – as Gaza ceasefire talks continue

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Israeli PM nominates Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize - as Gaza ceasefire talks continue

Israel’s prime minister has nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Benjamin Netanyahu made the announcement at a White House dinner, and the US president appeared pleased by the gesture.

“He’s forging peace as we speak, and one country and one region after the other,” Mr Netanyahu said as he presented the US leader with a nominating letter.

Mr Trump took credit for brokering a ceasefire in Iran and Israel’s “12-day war” last month, announcing it on Truth Social, and the truce appears to be holding.

The president also claimed US strikes had obliterated Iran’s purported nuclear weapons programme and that it now wants to restart talks.

“We have scheduled Iran talks, and they want to,” Mr Trump told reporters. “They want to talk.”

Iran hasn’t confirmed the move, but its president told American broadcaster Tucker Carlson his country would be willing to resume cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.

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But Masoud Pezeshkian said full access to nuclear sites wasn’t yet possible as US strikes had damaged them “severely”.

Away from Iran, fighting continues in Gaza and Ukraine.

Mr Trump famously boasted before his second stint in the White House that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.

The reality has been very different; with Russia last week launching what Ukraine said was the heaviest aerial attack of the war so far.

Critics also claiming President Putin is ‘playing’ his US counterpart and has no intention of stopping the fighting.

However, President Trump could try to take credit for progress in Gaza if – as he’s suggested – an agreement on a 60-day ceasefire is able to get across the line this week.

Indirect negotiations with Hamas are taking place that could lead to the release of some of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages and see a surge in aid to Gaza.

America’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is to travel to Qatar this week to try to seal the agreement.

Whether it could open a path to a complete end to the war remains uncertain, with the two sides criteria for peace still far apart.

President Netanyahu has said Hamas must surrender, disarm and leave Gaza – something it refuses to do.

Mr Netanyahu also told reporters on Monday that the US and Israel were working with other countries who would give Palestinians “a better future” – and indicated those in Gaza could move elsewhere.

“If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” he added.

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Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza

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Israeli soldier describes arbitrary killing of civilians in Gaza

An Israeli reservist who served three tours of duty in Gaza has told Sky News in a rare on-camera interview that his unit was often ordered to shoot anyone entering areas soldiers defined as no-go zones, regardless of whether they posed a threat, a practice he says left civilians dead where they fell.

“We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die,” he said. “If they’re inside, they’re dangerous you need to kill them. No matter who it is,” he said.

Speaking anonymously, the soldier said troops killed civilians arbitrarily. He described the rules of engagement as unclear, with orders to open fire shifting constantly depending on the commander.

The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division. He was posted twice to the Netzarim corridor; a narrow strip of land cut through central Gaza early in the war, running from the sea to the Israeli border. It was designed to split the territory and allow Israeli forces to have greater control from inside the Strip.

He said that when his unit was stationed on the edge of a civilian area, soldiers slept in a house belonging to displaced Palestinians and marked an invisible boundary around it that defined a no-go zone for Gazans.

“In one of the houses that we had been in, we had the big territory. This was the closest to the citizens’ neighbourhood, with people inside. And there’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know it, and that they know they are not allowed to pass it,” he said. “But how can they know?”

People who crossed into this area were most often shot, he said.

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“It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle,” he said.

IDF whistleblower
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The soldier is seen in Gaza. Photos are courtesy of the interviewed soldier, who requested anonymity

The soldier described a prevailing belief among troops that all Gazans were terrorists, even when they were clearly unarmed civilians. This perception, he said, was not challenged and was often endorsed by commanders.

“They don’t really talk to you about civilians that may come to your place. Like I was in the Netzarim road, and they say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn’t be there, and if he still comes, it means he’s a terrorist,” he said.

“This is what they tell you. But I don’t really think it’s true. It’s just poor people, civilians that don’t really have too many choices.”

He said the rules of engagement shifted constantly, leaving civilians at the mercy of commanders’ discretion.

“They might be shot, they might be captured,” he said. “It really depends on the day, the mood of the commander.”

He recalled an occasion of a man crossing the boundary and being shot. When another man came later to the body, he too was shot.

Later the soldiers decided to capture people who approached the body. Hours after that, the order changed again, shoot everyone on sight who crosses the “imaginary line”.

IDF whistleblower
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The Israeli soldier during his on-camera interview with Sky News

At another time, his unit was positioned near the Shujaiya area of Gaza City. He described Palestinians scavenging scrap metal and solar panels from a building inside the so-called no-go zone.

“For sure, no terrorists there,” he said. “Every commander can choose for himself what he does. So it’s kind of like the Wild West. So, some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don’t face the consequences of that.”

The soldier said many of his comrades believed there were no innocents in Gaza, citing the Hamas-led 7 October attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Dozens of hostages have since been freed or rescued by Israeli forces, while about 50 remain in captivity, including roughly 30 Israel believes are dead.

He recalled soldiers openly discussing the killings.

“They’d say: ‘Yeah, but these people didn’t do anything to prevent October 7, and they probably had fun when this was happening to us. So they deserve to die’.”

He added: “People don’t feel mercy for them.”

“I think a lot of them really felt like they were doing something good,” he said. “I think the core of it, that in their mind, these people aren’t innocent.”

IDF whistleblower
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The IDF soldier during one of his three tours in Gaza

In Israel, it is rare for soldiers to publicly criticise the IDF, which is seen as a unifying institution and a rite of passage for Jewish Israelis. Military service shapes identity and social standing, and those who speak out risk being ostracised.

The soldier said he did not want to be identified because he feared being branded a traitor or shunned by his community.

Still, he felt compelled to speak out.

“I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country,” he said

“I think the war is… a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over,” he said.

He added: “I think in Israeli community, it’s very hard to criticise itself and its army. A lot of people don’t understand what they are agreeing to. They think the war needs to happen, and we need to bring the hostages back, but they don’t understand the consequences.

“I think a lot of people, if they knew exactly what’s happening, it wouldn’t go down very well for them, and they wouldn’t agree with it. I hope that by speaking of it, it can change how things are being done.”

IDF whistleblower
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The soldier is a reservist in the Israel Defence Force’s 252nd Division

We put the allegations of arbitrary killings in the Netzarim corridor to the Israeli military.

In a statement, the IDF said it “operates in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

“The IDF operates against military targets and objectives, and does not target civilians or civilian objects,” the statement continued.

The Israeli military added that “reports and complaints regarding the violation of international law by the IDF are transferred to the relevant authorities responsible for examining exceptional incidents that occurred during the war”.

On the specific allegations raised by the soldier interviewed, the IDF said it could not address them directly because “the necessary details were not provided to address the case mentioned in the query. Should additional information be received, it will be thoroughly examined.”

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What is the possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal?
Two security workers injured at Gaza aid site, group says
The man acting as backchannel for Hamas in US negotiations

The statement also mentioned the steps the military says it takes to minimise civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation warnings and advising people to temporarily leave areas of intense fighting.

“The areas designated for evacuation in the Gaza Strip are updated as needed. The IDF continuously informs the civilian population of any changes,” it said.

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